Dateline 25th March 2007

INTRODUCTION by Rodney Atkinson. The corporation which published Nazi propaganda material for the German armed forces in the 1930s and 1940s, Bertelsmann, has long been a driving force behind the German controlled European Superstate. It is involved as a media group in the promotion of its eurofederalist propaganda today and even administers local government in Britain. It promotes cross border infrastructure, media ownership and military power and organises propaganda conferences for big business journalists academics and politicians. Its policy papers and strategies designed to achieve a German Europe are remarkably swiflty put into practice by German politicians. No sooner had Bertelsmann proposed a unified European army (for which it had long ago proposed better cross border transport infrastucture, the better to deploy armed forces!) than the federalists new Gauleiter Chancellor Angela Merkel took up the cause. Merkel's background in East Germany (where her Pastor father co-operated with the Communist Regime) as a State collaborator, propaganda expert and agitator is kept rather quiet! No wonder she has adapted so well to the new hegemony in Berlin. This report from our German friends, as most analyses of the "New" Europe, reads like a communique from the 1940s. Corporatists making policy, politicians threatening war or peace, a German Chancellor driving integration, the Czechs attacked, Britain spineless, militarism rising, the manipulation of "European" opinion, faits accomplis presented as agreements and democracy swept aside.

BERLIN/GUETERSLOH (Own Report). In spite of days of controversy, today’s signing of the “Berlin Declaration” went ahead without amendment. The pivot and crux of the controversy is the announcement of an intended replacement for the failed EU constitution which will have the same content under a different title and is to be ratified as quickly as possible. This arrangement has occasioned great displeasure in several European capitals. The most influential German think tank, the Bertelsmann Foundation, maintains that European unification must be driven forward; the greatly contested EU constitution is to be merely the “point of departure” .

For the first time, the foundation recently presented a draft paper to top politicians from twenty EU countries and the USA over the “strategic reorientation” of the EU in which it recommended, as a first step, that the national armed forces of all member states should be combined into a single EU army. The German Chancellor has taken up this suggestion. Frau Merkel warned against refusing so-called integration. She said “The ideal of European unification is today again a matter of war and peace”.

Our Great Good Fortune

In spite of its notable lack of content the “Berlin Declaration”, announced this Sunday, has provoked widespread criticism. One cause was the unilateral procedure of the German Federal Government. The declaration was based on a suggestion of the German Chancellor’s office which was discussed in secret with delegates (“focal points”) in EU member states (1). As the envoy of the Czech Republic made known, those nominated as “focal points” had only a single bilateral phone conversation with the German authorities and were then advised of the declaration’s content by email.(2)

Neither the national parliaments nor the European parliament had sight of the wording, arrived at in this conspiratorial way. In no case, was the people of any member state consulted. In this declaration, arrived at by the sole decree of the executive without the slightest democratic feedback, it now states “We citizens of the European Union are, to our good fortune, united….” (3)

As the Federal Government has made known, it will continue with this unusual procedure to compel ratification of a lightly modified EU constitution. Government circles have let it be known that the method of instituting the “Berlin Declaration” is “ of value in itself because we wish to use this method for progressing the second half of our presidency and the road map for the constitution, if member states can live with it and something useful comes out of it”. Having succeeded in quietening Czech resistance in the last week, Berlin hopes to advance its position on the EU constitution to a breakthrough by means of this procedural trick.

The foundation funded by the German media group Bertelsmann is demanding further large steps. At the end of February it called together 45 high ranking participants from 21 countries to a “Strategy Group” – amongst them the former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, the former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra, the former German Foreign Minister Josef Fischer and several EU Commissioners. The Bertelsmann Foundation publicised the event, claiming that “the hand-picked circle of participants (…) covered all the great geographical areas of today’s European Union, EU candidate states and the USA” – a rather Germano-centric collective effort aimed at “the strategic reorientation” of the EU. (4)

EU Armed Forces

According to the report, further development of the EU “is only possible on the basis of an altered treaty”. (5) The EU constitution proposed in Berlin today is “simply the point of departure to enable the achievement of totally new goals”. “Europe wishes to be acknowledged alongside the United States of America as the voice of the West,” it states in a “memorandum” upon which the debate was based. “For this, considerably greater efforts are necessary on the world stage, from world trade through global environment up to civil and military crisis management”. (6)

As the next step, the members of the “Strategy Group” took into their consideration the merging of European national forces into a unified EU army.

The Euro Currency Group

The German Federal Chancellor has now made this suggestion her own. “In the EU itself we must move closer to a common European army,” demanded Angela Merkel in Berlin’s tabloid press last week. (7) This drives the EU debate far beyond the EU constitution and limits the elbow room of those previously opposed to it. The same goes for another suggestion by the Bertelsmann foundation which was laid before the “Strategy Group”. According to this proposal, the internal hierarchy of the EU should be more strongly formalised than proposed in the constitution. Increased powers of political decision should be conferred on those states which have adopted the euro currency. “The euro group should have a special role in designing the future of the EU”. (8)

Radical Determination

To increase pressure on the smaller EU members, the German government is dropping bellicose hints and portraying their EU plans as a method of avoiding descent into a new catastrophe – war. The Federal Chancellor announced in tones pregnant with disaster, “We should not take peace and democracy for granted. The ideal of European unification is still today a question of war and peace.” (9) Similar threats already enabled the Federal Government to force through the Eastern expansion of the EU against massive resistance in the mid Nineties. Then the present Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble, declared in a strategy paper that “Germany might be required or compelled by its own security considerations to achieve the stabilisation of Eastern Europe alone and in the traditional manner”. The paper was published on 1st September 1994, the 45th anniversary of Germany’s attack on Poland. (10) The Federal Chancellor’s warning is a spin on those threats of war in a scarcely concealed form. It makes clear the radical determination of German foreign policy to achieve a total reordering of Europe under the aegis of Berlin, enforced by all means – apparently not excluding military.

The following texts on the main theme of the “Berlin Declaration” are available from links on www.german-foreign-policy.com . The article “Kriegsverlierer” is an interview in English with Lord Stoddart of Swindon. See also (in German) Erfolgsgeschichte, Unter Fuehrung des Reiches, Nicht hinnehmbar sowie Auszuege aus dem Memorandum der Bertelsmann-Stiftung.

(1) s. dazu Finales Europa

(2) s. dazu Nicht hinnehmbar

(3) “Berliner Erlaerung” zum Jubilaeum im Wortlauf . www.tagesschau.de

(4) (5) Strategiegruppe Europa ueber die Zukunft der Europaeischen Integration. Pressemitteilung der Bertelsmann-Stiftung 28.02.2007

(6)Memorandum zur Zukunft der EUropaeischen Union;Guetersloh 21.02.2007 german-foreign-policy.com

dokumentiert

(7) “Die Europaeische Einigung ist auch heute noch eine Frage von Krieg un Frieden” Bild 23.03.2007

(8) Memorandum zur Zukunft der Europaeischen Union; Guetersloh 21.02.2007 german-foreign-policy.com

dokumentiert Auszuege

(9) “ Die Europaeische Union ist auch heute noch eine Frage von Krieg und Frieden” Bild 23.03.2007

(10) CDU/CSU Fraktion des Deutschen Bundestages; Ueberlegungen zur europaeischen Politik 01.09.1994

Note: BERTELSMANN FOUNDATION. This organisation, which has charitable status, is the principal shareholder in the Bertelsmann group of media companies. A Bertelsmann subsidiary is in a public/private partnership providing all the administrative services to the East Riding of YorkshireDistrict Council in England. See earlier article “Under German Administration”.