EU's Elysée Treaty: 50 years of Franco/German Hegemony [BLOG]

An apparently last-ditch attempt by the once widely respected BBC to present itself as an ongoing serious broadcaster on international current affairs to its domestic audience - those interested being a tiny percentage of the entire population of its coerced sponsors - is a rather strange, low-budget programme, aired weekly at weekends, on its 24-hour domestic news TV channel, called Dateline London. Foreign news journalists here discuss for 30 minutes what they are reporting of London to their readers abroad.

A regular participant in this programme is the London correspondent for the famed Le Monde newspaper of Paris, Marc Roche. Ending this weekend's broadcast, presumably in anticipation of Tuesday's elaborate celebrations in Berlin of the 50th anniversary of the Franco-German Elysee Treaty, Mr Roche launched into a glowing tribute to all the supposed achievements of the European Union.

The other participants, an Algerian writer who had explained the workings and history of her country with insight and panache, an American reporting for AP from Connecticut, who had movingly described his feelings and views on the recent school massacre in that state, a British reporter knowledgeable on events in the Maghreb and even the typical BBC clone-like chairman, Gavin Esler, usually strictly sticking to the corporation line of slavering admiration for anything related to the EU, were all unable to disguise their bemused contempt for the long list of nonsense presented by the Belgian, finally giving way to almost contemptuous laughter.

The condition of the 27 nations now making up the European Union is of course far, far from being any laughing matter, although its supposed attributes, when extolled in glowing terms by a still-believing Francophone enthusiast speaking in English, are indeed, no doubt, hysterical in the extreme for others lucky enough to be viewing it all from the actual (or in Britain's case, presumed) outside.

As the widespread and daily ever-growing failures of the EU become ever more obvious, opposition is becoming stronger among the deceived populations of the formerly sovereign nations, all across the economically ravaged and corruptly administered EU area. This is particularly true in the UK where the rise in the opinion polls of the popularity rating for the UK Independence Party, led by Nigel Farage MEP, is leading to a complete rethink on Britain's role in the clearly doomed conglomeration of mismatched member states.

The reasons for that become obvious in this interview with Mr Farage. It was undertaken for a French audience but conducted in English. It would do President Obama a lot of good in his second term were he to make watching this video one of his earliest tasks, and possibly aid him in recovering from the error of urging Britain to remain trapped within this doomed construct.

This observer would agree with almost all the points made by Mr Farage, with one huge and potentially dangerous exception. I must take issue with the statement that the war reparations demanded by the Allies after World War One were insufficient. Furthermore, nor can I accept that the kind of physical trashing and complete humiliation of Germany that occurred during the closing stages of World War II would have been preferable had they first happened in 1918/19. I cannot possibly agree that this would somehow have brought our continent earlier to peace. Indeed is it not possible that the events of 1944/45 are partially responsible for our present plight, or are all Europe's woes forever to be laid at the door of a never-ending Prussian legacy?

Many historians believe that the rise of Hitler was brought on by the severity of the reparations, demanded by France, as agreed at Versailles. My fear is that the end result of the present rising German economic power within the EU, referred to in the interview with Mr Farage, might itself perhaps, be a direct and planned result of this dreadful 1945 destruction (including the use of napalm against the last German defenders in the Royan Pocket). It is that very fear that has motivated my written campaign against the EU and all its works, ongoing for almost 20 years, my fears of which have diminished not one jot.

France's obsesssion with socialism

Such worries would indeed have been considerably less in my own case, had it not been that Germany was complicit with France in smashing the original Growth and Stability Pact. This destruction was made partly feasible through the secretive meetings established under the terms of the aforesaid treaty, apparently in pursuit of objectives pandering to France's obsession with socialism and spending, and to smooth German reunification heading towards the creation of a Greater Germany that I believe is already discernible today. The most influential body on record as pointing out all the likely results of EU monetary union, lacking a G &S Pact, which the EU is so disastrously encountering today, having been the Bundesbank, when setting up the euro single currency and no less significantly by British premier Margaret Thatcher, when reunification was so determinedly being pushed ahead. For the uttering of these warnings she was presumably so unceremoniously removed.

The volume of warnings by German economists and other eminent figures in Germany, on the disaster EMU would become without a G&S Pact, is shocking evidence that some must have intended this present EU existential economic crisis to arrive. What then could have been their aim?

Tuesday 22<sup>nd January 2013, the 50<sup>th anniversary of this secretive and conspiratorial arrangement, should not be a day of celebration for Europe. The Elysée Treaty cemented into the foundations of what became the EU, old-fashioned, Major Power delusions harking back to the Victorian Age and the Concert of Europe.

If the EU is to be reformed, a good place to begin would be by the scrapping of this treaty. Let all attend the EU Council meetings, at least at their commencement, by standing upon a level playing field, not stitched up in advance by the leaders of Germany and France.

Martin Cole runs several politically themed blogs, mainly Ironies Too, and tweets and comments almost unceasingly about the erosions of our liberties