CORRESPONDENCE.

• Author: Heale, Toby
• Position: Letter to the editor

Sir,

Contrary to Andrew Wierzbicki's assertions in his article 'Whither European Unity? (vol 43, no 4), I believe the European Union will fail.

The European Union is not what it seems and to accept the 'correct' litany is to perpetuate the falsehood. France has schemed for possession of the German territories the Saar and the Ruhr since before Germany existed. If those natural resources were French, the French thinking ran, it would be France that was prosperous, not Germany.

In 1945 de Gaulle flew to Washington to demand of President Truman that the Saar and the Ruhr be transferred to France as sovereign French territory. With the American Morgenthau Plan, requiring the 'pastoralisation' of Germany, US policy at the time, it must have appeared to the French that the American government would agree. Truman refused.

In pursuit of their objective the French strove to find a route the Americans would follow. The final result of their efforts was the European Coal and Steel Community. The Americans agreed to it and Marshall Aid was granted to it. The objective of the ECSC was to rehabilitate the Saar and the Ruhr. The structure of the ECSC was to ensure that no benefit from Germany's natural resources accruing to Germany did not equally benefit France. The ECSC was the well into which 'deep' government was sunk in Europe. De Gaulle was a supporter of deep government. It is based on the Code Napoleon, which not only is economically defective but also thwarts meaningful democracy. Konrad Adenauer was also a supporter of deep government, which was fortuitous, because he did not have a choice.

The European Union, as it has become, was built on the foundations it inherited. It is unaccountable, it is not responsive and it is not democratic. But it is necessary to insist on the most robust definition of the abused word 'democracy' before going forward.

The Code Napoleon defines what a subject must do, not what he must not do. Common law defines what you must not do. And here is the real clash between the British and the European Union. In 2000 the European Court of Human Rights adopted the Declaration of 2000, which changed the definitions of human rights from a gentle assembly of guiding principles to a vicious litany of partial activist demands to be imposed on the population.

The ECHR is the most corrupt body in Europe because it wrote its own mandate and it is answerable (effectively) to nobody and, as Lord Acton said (3 April 1887), power tends...