European Union: a global anomaly with no future

+ Brussels takes advantage of the French and German government crises

Today I am providing again my English translation of 2 articles, originally in Italian.

The first one is an article by Tiziano Tanari published on ComeDonChisciotte.org two days ago, Sunday 15th December 2024. (All formatting original, footnotes mine).

European Union: a global anomaly with no future

They have been telling us for years that Italy, a small nation in the centre of the Mediterranean, alone would not be able to compete in international markets dominated by big economic players such as the USA, China and India. They have inculcated the same illusion in other European countries by creating a fetish that, to date, after more than twenty years, is proving to be the most unsuccessful of systems. We will analyse the four most important aspects, but not the only ones, that outline the structural aspects of a framework that is becoming increasingly unsustainable: economic, political, geopolitical and cultural.

-ECONOMY-

The economic model imposed by the Maastricht Treaties, the liberalist one, imposes certain inescapable dogmas: Debt/GDP¹ ratio tending towards 60% (see Fiscal Compact); maximum budget deficit allowed, except for particular events, below 3%; tendency to a balanced budget necessary to keep the “accounts in order”. These objectives must be achieved according to imposed paths that imply, almost always, a containment of public spending, an increasingly lighter presence in the economy by the state, maximum privatisation of public assets and wage restraint, in a word: austerity, perennial, constant, destructive.

Now we will try to explain why this economic strategy cannot technically allow any economic recovery, even if these are the parameters that the markets impose on us in order to buy our government bonds, the only source of financing that we can draw on, since we do not have a Central Bank, in our case the ECB [European Central Bank], that can directly finance states through the so-called “monetisation of debt”.

It is good to explain what is meant by this term: the state would be able to be financed directly by its own Central Bank [CB], which we know has the power to “create money out of nothing”. Since 1971 with Richard Nixon's abolition of the “gold exchange standard”, national currencies have become “fiat money”, i.e. without any precious metal as underlying value; from that moment on, a state will no longer have any objective constraints that could limit the creation of new money. Hence a CB can create as much money as it needs to be able to finance public spending and make the state independent and sovereign. Therefore, it is necessary to have a national currency that the government can control; the Euro is not a currency that we can dispose of according to our needs and this makes us a state/colony under the total control of the markets. The budget deficit and public debt, which in a country with its own currency would not create any problems, within the Eurozone is a real debt that makes us a candidate for possible default.

For some thirty years now, in the name of these principles, we have been forced to run primary surpluses in the state budget that create a constant scarcity of monetary liquidity in our economy; this dynamic has led the Eurozone to have the worst growth performance in the OECD² countries and, in particular, Italy, where we have suffered a worrying stagnation of wages; more than twenty years of history are the most evident testimony to this. If we continue along this line, we can only continue to worsen the level of our economic parameters, fuelling a constant impoverishment of the country.

Italy is founded on principles and values admirably enshrined in our Constitutional Charter, a well-defined socio-economic model that, however, is radically opposed to the ultra-liberal model imposed by the EU. Even a superficial analysis reveals the obvious inconsistencies between the two systems, which we can summarise here.

As this graph shows, only Western countries that implement liberalist deficit-containment policies have practically negligible growth. This aspect is clearly explained by macroeconomic science in that the government deficit corresponds perfectly to a specular increase in the net financial wealth of the private sector, i.e. companies and households, which is useful for boosting the economy, both production and consumption. It is decisive to note that, as of today, the interest on government bonds is around €90 billion per year, around 4% of GDP; this unequivocally confirms that we will continue to be subjected, as we have been for the past thirty years, to a heavy primary surplus in state budgets that takes and will continue to take away liquidity from the economic and productive system. All this continues to result in a slow but steady recessionary process in the economies of the Eurozone countries, as it has been certified for over twenty years now.

-POLITICS-

The political structure of the EU is characterised by the total absence of the fundamental and inalienable right of any people: democracy. The sovereignty of the states is completely subjugated to the political bodies that from Brussels impose every new law subordinated to the dictates of the Maastricht Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty, which have de facto legislative power over the constitutions of the member states with the exception of Germany where the national parliament still has the last word.

The European Commission, the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank are the main bodies that coordinate EU policies. The only one elected by the European citizens is the Parliament, which, in fact, has no decision-making power but only advisory power. Laws can only be proposed and approved by the European Commission and monetary policies are decided by the ECB, a body independent of governments. As we can see, both the citizens and the national governments have no decision-making power, also due to the overwhelming lack of a direct relationship between the electoral base and the leadership of the European institutions.

It is clear and obvious that in such a system, the demands of individual countries have no chance of being represented, let alone heard. The European Commission and the ECB are hostage to the large supranational financial powers that impose their guidelines by exerting pressure on the few appointed (not elected) members that make up the governing bodies of these bodies. In essence, a European Union built in the interests not of the peoples, but of the global financial elites.

-GEOPOLITICS-

In such a political context, without a representation that guarantees a common and shared foreign policy for all states, it is natural that the role of the EU, in the global geopolitical landscape, will become totally irrelevant and subordinate to the Anglo-American powers and NATO, an institution that no longer represents a bulwark for our security but, on the contrary, a belligerent and warmongering body co-responsible for the most important international conflicts of recent decades. Particularly in these days, following Donald Trump's election, the major limitations of a European Union that finds itself unprepared and lost in the face of the new US administration's possible change in foreign policy with regard to the conflict in Ukraine, economic support for NATO, and new economic relations including the ventilated application of new tariffs on goods imported from Europe are surfacing. What appears before our eyes, and those of the entire world, is an EU that shows itself in all its inconsistency: a total inability to make decisions and coordinate between states, an economy destroyed by unholy constraints, a foreign policy that has reached its lowest level of lucidity with the tightening of sanctions against Russia, sanctions that have had devastating effects only on European countries. The pressure exerted by Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer, the new and almost unknown British prime minister, on the Biden administration to obtain immediate authorisation for the use of long-range missiles on Russian soil is recent; the absurd and warmongering policy that qualifies this European Union as a giant that not only has feet of clay… but also its head continues. It is unbelievable that the European Commission, in such a fluid and destabilised context, continues with masochistic tenacity to advocate a policy of support for Ukraine in a war it has already lost, precluding any possibility of rapprochement with a country, Russia, with which close economic and political, as well as cultural, cooperation would be more than natural, as it represents the only true ally that could really contribute to creating a European context of general stability and prosperity. But it seems that peace and prosperity are not the priority objectives of this “European business association” whose only purpose is to serve multinationals and international finance.

This European Union is our biggest problem; it fails to provide us with a single valid perspective for our future, in any sphere; despite this, Italian politics continues to genuflect before such devastating incompetence and unreasonableness. We must be fully aware of this in order to distance ourselves from it, before it is too late.

-Culture and Tradition-

It is in the cultural, social and environmental sustainability spheres that the EU appears in all its dangerous inability to plan for the future of different peoples who, moreover, in their complexity, have important common values that should be enhanced in order to give meaning to the concept of the “European community”. Even here it seems that a true form of integration, with respect for differences, does not want to be pursued, starting with the deliberately neglected “common Christian roots” and the now blatant attack on its deepest values. In this neo-liberal Europe that moves in a context of a “highly competitive social market economy” where the flexibility and fluidity of the market itself imposes the abandonment and detachment from our historical, national and cultural roots, if not even from our personal, even affective ties; gender theories and woke culture constitute a real attack on the traditional family and represent one of the most perverse degenerations of the new model of society that is, in fact, practically imposed on us. The destabilisation process is now at an advanced stage and is a necessary step towards the total control of the masses; they are creating an atomised society of increasingly confused, disoriented and isolated individuals, and above all set in systematic opposition to one another: left/right, yes vax/no vax, pro-Putin/pro-Ukraine. But the most grotesque and incredible element of global conditioning is the unsustainable theory of climate change, understood as a phenomenon of an anthropogenic nature. This gives rise to an absurd project that threatens to disrupt our lives and those of future generations. An ecological transition forced on fallacious paradigms such as the replacement of the entire vehicle fleet with electric cars, the reduction of CO2, the efficiency of all dwellings, and the activation of the infamous smart cities constitute an obvious plan towards a future capitalism of control. We are at the point of madness and most people do not seem to notice anything. This generalised apathy is only and exclusively made possible by the massive and total use of the media as instruments of manipulation and outright mass disinformation. The next goal will be the complete co-optation of all social channels; it becomes truly difficult to envisage a process of awakening of the populations of Europe and beyond.

At the end of this attempt at analysis, we have not detected a single note of merit, and I believe we can only certify the complete failure of a project of “union” with the European peoples while, on the contrary, a system has been constructed that is perfectly functional to the interests of the globalist, stateless and supranational financial powers, to those we can define as the destroyers of Humanity.

We must interrupt this dictatorial drift and return to a Union of Sovereign States that know how to cooperate for the well-being of their Citizens, all of them.

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The second article was published on Movisol.org yesterday, Monday 16th December 2024. (All emphasis and footnotes mine).

Brussels takes advantage of the French and German government crises

Solidarité & Progress leader Jacques Cheminade.

Political crises in France and Germany have created a power vacuum in Europe, which is filled by the supranational EU government, the European Commission. In the post-war period, European governance was built on the Franco-German axis as the engine of stability; later as the backbone of the EU system. All major EU decisions were the product of policies shared by Paris and Berlin, even when one side or the other had to compromise.

With the fall of the “traffic light” government in Germany and the upcoming general elections, a long period of paralysis is on the horizon. Even if the elections will be held as planned next February and it will be possible to obtain a parliamentary majority, one must not forget how governments are formed in Germany: the partners negotiate and draw up a government contract, which can take a long time. For the last Merkel government, SPD³ and CDU⁴/CSU⁵ took six months to complete the agreement.

In France, political uncertainty reigns after the fall of the Barnier government. Attempts to form another minority government are likely to fail and, in the end, Emmanuel Macron's presidency may be at stake. In a statement on 4th December [2024], after the Left and Right (RN⁶) alliance voted together to topple Barnier, Solidarité & Progress leader Jacques Cheminade (photo) nailed the government to its responsibility, as well as that of the conservatives, in having handed over the management of the French debt to the “feudal financial powers”, a term used by the National Council of Resistance at the end of World War II, which inspired the preamble to the transalpine Constitution.

Cheminade proposed the creation of “a true popular bloc, which addresses the real problems (...) putting an end to media narratives that push for rearmament, support the financial oligarchy and promote war”.

In the meantime, in the power vacuum generated by the crises in France and Germany, the EU Commission reigns supreme, while Berlin and Paris struggle to settle conflicts. Without consulting with major European capitals, Ursula von der Leyen flew to Montevideo on 5th December [2024] to sign the free trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur. The agreement eliminates 90% of tariffs on products from South America and is seen as a threat by European farmers. While Berlin supported the agreement despite farmers' protests, France, Italy and other nations opposed it. The rift between Berlin and Paris also concerns the tariffs on Chinese electric cars, which France voted for but Germany opposed, as well as the war in Ukraine, with France allowing Kiev to strike Russian territory with its weapons and Germany blocking the delivery of Taurus missiles.

All this while the former economic locomotive, Germany, is driving the European economy into the abyss, unable to change course in the absence of political change. The composite business purchasing managers' PMI index (manufacturing and services) fell to 47.2 from 47.3 expected and 48.6 previous November in Germany. In France, it fell from 48.1 in October to 45.9 in November, signalling the sharpest contraction in French private sector activity since January. In Italy, the figure fell to 44.5 in November from 46.9 in October and below the 45.7 forecast, showing a strong contraction. Recall that a PMI figure above 50 indicates expansion, below 50 a contraction.

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1. Gross Domestic Product

2. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

3. Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, i.e. Social Democratic Party of Germany

4. Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands, i.e. Christian Democratic Union of Germany

5. Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern, i.e. Christian Social Union in Bavaria

6. Rassemblement National