Britons are excluded in EU's murky process to elect its Commission President

By DAVID PRICE
Updated: FEBRUARY 20, 2016 19:55
To elect a president in the USA, the parties go through a selection process of party primaries that takes more than a year. The EU does things differently.
The EU's President of the European Commission not only holds the key European office, he is supposed to represent the moral authority of 508 million people. Yet the selection of the Commission President follows a murky, immoral process. It will continue to be the source of distrust whatever the outcome of the British reform referendum.
In 2014 UK Prime Minister was perfectly clear about Mr Jean-Claude Juncker as potential European Commission President. ‘He is the wrong man.’ The UK was forced by the Top Pol or Spitzenkandidat system to accept him. The wrong person is likely to be selected in 2018. You can be sure it will not be a Briton!
What will happen after the UK referendum on BREXIT? The reform package ignores a major injustice. There will never be a British Commission President while the Spitzenkandidat system exists!
Let’s move to 2018. In the BREXIT referendum of 2016 or 2017, Britain has voted overwhelmingly to stay inside the EU. Everyone is relieved. Great Britophilia subfuses the whole of Europe. British Union flags are waved everywhere. The French toast their island friends in prize-winning, home-grown British ‘sparkling wine’ which is called ‘champagne’ in other parts of the world.
At last Britain, ‘the mother of democracies‘ as some like to call her, is the darling of Europe. Britons are the heroes of Brussels. So what happens about the selection of the European Commission President?
Even if everyone in Europe is enthusiastic for British personalities, the ‘Top Pol” system of the Continentals would make it impossible to agree to a British president. The ‘Top Pol‘ system forbids it. The Europe’s biggest party political grouping can, and in fact, must, force its candidate on the willing or unwilling European public.
Only a card-carrying member of the Continental ‘Top Pol‘ EPP-Socialist Cartel is allowed.
Let’s say the largest grouping, the EPP, wanted to renew the candidature of the present incumbent, Mr Juncker, or has another candidate it has elected by its special 800 EPP electors, Mme Dupont. Then the European Union would force that candidate on the public.
Imagine that the opinion polls say Mr Jones, the British choice had 75 percent of the European public in favour of his becoming the new Commission President. Mme Dupont has the support of 20 percent and 5 percent are undecided.
According to the Spitzenkandidat system, the public would be told that Mme Dupont is the choice of the European Popular Party. If the Continentals again returned the EPP as the majority, the EPP politicians in governments would automatically demand that Mme Dupont become Commission President. The same goes for the Socialists.
We can assume that in 2018 the ballot papers for the European Parliamentary elections do not say anything that exposes this swindle to daylight. Murkiness covered the 2014 elections. Further fog is forecast for 2018.
Firstly, the politicians are likely to do everything to avoid the legal and moral embarrassment. They will try to keep Mr Juncker on. They will thus avoid any question being asked about his legitimacy.
Secondly they will use sleight of hand. Voters came to the polls in 2014 and voted for their MEPs. No ballot paper said that if you vote for an EPP politician, of whatever shade of EPP, the party cartel says you are supporting Mr Juncker. No ballot paper said that if you vote for the Socialists you will be demanding that Herr Martin Schulz become Commission President.
But the Political Pickpockets or manipulators tried to make out that was the case. The treaties say no such thing. They say the opposite. Politicians are banned. Nor does any European law or Regulation. The Commission and the European Parliament are independent institutions.
Thirdly, they will make lightning decisions on the top jobs. Mr Juncker was elected. Mr Schulz wasn’t. He got second prize. That is the presidency of the European Parliament. Nowhere do any regulations or treaties say there is any second prize! It is evident that the political manipulators cut an undemocratic deal.
Where did the second prize come from? Mathematics. The EPP has 221 members and Socialists 191 in the 751 member chamber. The two groups working together have more than 400 votes. They can dictate the programme of the Parliament. They can endorse the Commission President. They elect a Socialist Speaker of Parliament. All it takes is an undemocratic secret stitch-up.
This secret deal also depends getting away with pure chicanery. These political parties say they have the rights to elect a politician as Commission President. Why don’t all the Member State governments come clean? Why didn’t they print on the ballot paper the following:

Attention, Warning, Achtung! When you vote for any EPP candidate you are endorsing Mr Juncker to become the Commission President

When you vote for any Socialist candidate for MEP, you are endorsing Herr Schulz to become Commission President. etc ?

Wouldn’t that cause electors to think twice before casting their vote? It would poison any enthusiasm.

If politicians wished to have the same honesty as a cigarette packet they could go further. They could add:

Attention! Warning! Achtung! The runner-up may well get the Presidency of the European Parliament. The newly elected MEPs are not allowed to elect their Speaker. It is decided behind closed doors by Council politicians. In order to perform this political somersault the majority in the EP will arrange it so that they do not put up a candidate. As the majority would normally have the best chance, they will just manipulate the democratic vote in Parliament as their first act of Democracy.

What would happen to Mr Jones? Would the European public be demanding a British president? They might but it wouldn’t help.

Even if Mr Jones got all the British votes, it would be in vain. The British Conservatives are not members of the EPP and therefore, even with their allies, they would never gain a majority in the EP. The British Labour party did not endorse Mr Schulz. So that creates a double loss for a British candidate.
Let’s now turn to the opposite scenario. Following the secular trend, fewer people will vote. Now nearly three out of every five people refuses to vote at all. And of those that do, one third voted against SpitzenKandidat parties. Besides the British Conservatives and its allies, there are what Brussels calls ‘euro-sceptic’ parties: the French National Front, the British UK Independence Party, the German Alternative etc. Some of these are not anti-European but anti- the European scam and stitch-up that has been going on since the time of General de Gaulle blocked the democratic development of Europe. De Gaulle told his press secretary Alain Peyrefitte that his programme was to block all aspects of supranational democracy. It has never been unblocked. And the politicians since de Gaulle have used his system to provide jobs for themselves.
De Gaulle believed that only one election was required — to elect him. He made sure the public had no real choice by having a two-tier election process. He would then select a prime minister and his government. The Top Pols use the same system with modifications. That is how these politicians have succeeded in taking over, root, stock and branch, the key domain of the Commission presidency. They say that it belongs them. They have party membership cards. Yet they are just 2 percent of the European population. Being partisan means they have a political club and organization that can be used against the public, not for it. Talk about Apartheid!! The treaties say all members of the public have this right to office!
So if all the people, who are ‘turned off’ and in the past didn’t vote, now do start voting, and the anti-scam parties continue to increase in popularity, then It may well be that such parties could form a majority. They might, at least, have enough votes to block the mathematics of the EPP-Socialist cartel.
Let’s say they represented the biggest faction in the EP. Would you expect governments running the scam to form a Commission composed of anti-scam people?
Yet unless the 28 governments begin to act responsibly and as democrats who are against political corruption, they might well be faced with such a nightmare scenario.
It would be suicide. If in 2018 two thirds of the new Members of Parliament are ‘Euro-sceptical’ does that mean that the Commission should be chosen on the policy basis to destroy the institutions? That would make any future election meaningless. It would be the equivalent of an anarchistic revolution. Europe would be left without any governance system. With no single market and no protection, it could be picked off by powerful world forces whether in the energy field or elsewhere. They could destroy European human rights and open the countries to jihadis, religious warfare and terrorists. A disintegrated Europe would leave Europe the prey of North African terror cells and terror governments. Instead Europe would have thrown up its hands on its duty to help these States establish human rights and freedom across and around the Mediterranean.