“To understand Europe you have to be a genius or French,” said an exasperated Madeleine Albright when she was US Secretary of State.
So if, like Secretary Albright, you are not up to speed on the European Union debate, despite the months of politicians campaigning for this week’s elections to the European Parliament — or if you are an American, which certainly means you are (and should be) clueless about the EU — a Dutch film maker has just released a one hour-documentary that might be the fastest way for you to get a handle on what is really going on in the EU.
“Euromania” was written and directed by Peter Vlemmix, an unshaven, hoodie-wearing 38-year old who does not have the attitude or the look of a natural right-winger. Yet there is the hairy leftie on film, asking the questions and summing up the facts that point to just how dangerous the EU is to all of us.
However, since your tolerance for talk about the EU might not stretch to the full 60 minutes, below is a menu covering the most important issues. Find what interests you then scroll through to the time indicated.
So, watch all of “Euromania” or watch some. Or watch none, because all you really need to know about the EU is that it is evil. Everything else is just a detail.
4.38: Dutch socialist MP explaining that 80 per cent of Dutch laws are made in Brussels.
4.51: The European Commission, not national parliaments, now controls national budgets.
5.45: The vast EU budget and some of the extravagances on which Brussels spends taxpayers’ money, including a €230m project in Poland to build 121km of sound walls in a remote area with no people, where “the only ones to have their ears protected were cows.”
6.24: In the last five years, the EU has given €800m directly to the government of Egypt, but “reports show that most of the money cannot be traced.” Despite this, the EU is about to give a further €5bn to Egypt.
8.01: The disgraceful story of Paul Van Buitenen, the former European Commission accountant who found evidence of vast fraud but saw his career and personal life destroyed by the boss eurocrats when he refused to keep silent about it.
10.10: The lies and secrecy behind the founding myths of the EU.
12.20: On Jean Monnet, the former brandy salesman and lobbyist now sanctified as one of the 1950s founding fathers of the European project. “He didn’t think that elections with people involved was a good idea.” The film touches on the way Monnet successfully lobbied big American corporations to back his idea for a single Europe without countries.
What Vlemmix doesn’t know, or doesn’t mention in this episode, is that the Ford Foundation and other corporate money pots such as the Rockefeller Foundation were actually being used as fronts for CIA money to promote the State Department’s Cold War obsession with a united Europe. See “The Great Deception” by Christopher Booker and Richard North for details.
12.49: The explanation of the European method of political encroachment on the once sovereign states, “all in small steps” until it is too late to see what is happening: “Integration by stealth.”
14.10: Laws in the EU are now made by the unelected European Commission, not by elected national parliaments. Nigel Farage explains.
14.45: Vast influence of the 15,000 to 30,000 lobbyists influencing EU laws, with no compulsory registration of who they are, what they spend or who they see. Example: 60 per cent of the “expert food group” that helps the commission draft legislation has direct ties to the food industry.
19.37: A visit to Vlemmix’s local food bank in the Netherlands, showing some of the poverty under which many people in the eurozone must now live.
21.49: How the European Parliament persuaded the European Commission to impose a ban on porn in all media by burying it in legislation called “eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU.” When libertarians started an email campaign to MEPs to protest against such a ban, arrogant MEPs had the tech department at the parliament put a spam filter on the word “porn” so they never had to see the protest emails.
Whether or not you want a ban on porn, the episode illustrates the shadowy way the commission and parliament act together.
23.33: Vlemmix persuades a Dutch MEP to open his pay cheque on camera: €8,000 per month base salary, €300 daily allowance “you can use it and you never have to explain,” and on it goes, right through travel allowances, free haircuts and chauffeur driven cars. Staff working for the parliament get a monthly salary of €18,600 and pay almost no tax.
25.46: How national parliaments cannot keep up with the amount of legislation pouring out of Brussels.
28.27: Scandal of the way the euro-elite ignored the referendum results in France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland rejecting the European Constitution, and brought the same constitution back titled the Lisbon Treaty, which was railroaded through.
30.44: The good sense, good life, high earnings and genuine democracy of the Swiss people, who refuse to join the EU.
36.00: The difficulty, the near impossibility, of member states taking any powers back from Brussels.
38.44: Nigel Farage on open plans for an EU empire.
47.00: How the EU representations in member states now act as spies for the commission.
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