Skybird
03-21-25, 09:03 AM
German original: https://www.tichyseinblick.de/meinungen/thinktank-fordert-neustart-der-eu-mit-mehr-demokratie/
Its abojt this paper: https://europeanstudies.mcc.hu/publication/the-great-reset-restoring-member-state-sovereignty-in-the-european-union
So bad that so many of these alternative opinions so very often tend to be friendly to fascist Russia.
---------------
Orbán Think Tank Calls for a "Reboot" of the EU as a Confederation of States with More Democracy
By Matthias Nikolaidis
Is the EU on its way to becoming the "most competitive economic area in the world"? Not really. This is the complaint of two think tanks from Hungary and Poland, who are developing scenarios for EU reform. A foundation close to Trump is also involved.
Two conservative think tanks from Hungary and Poland have presented a proposal for a fundamental reform of the EU. The Budapest-based Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) and the Polish Ordo Iuris Institute have written a 40-page report on the topic. The Polish institute has close ties to the former ruling Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS for short), while the Budapest institute is close to the Hungarian ruling Fidesz party.
The two institutes have titled their report "The Great Reset." This is actually a term familiar from a completely different context, such as the World Economic Forum. There, it refers to a kind of unification of the world under the sign of fashionable ideas, in supranational alliances such as the EU, the UN, and many others. Hungarians and Poles, on the other hand, are concerned with reversing what is often called "European integration," but which, in their view, increasingly restricts the national sovereignty of member states and replaces representative democracyas it exists in all member stateswith a technocratic form of government. The authors of the report thus want a "Great Reset" or "great reboot" for the EU. It should, so to speak, be reset to its factory settings, i.e., to the conditions in 1957.
Politically interesting, the two European institutes are also collaborating with the American Heritage Foundation, a foundation close to the Republicans, which also published the well-known "Project 2025," often seen as a blueprint for Trump's second term. On March 11, even before the European presentation, the Hungarian-Polish paper was discussed in the offices of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, supposedly sealed off from the press. What concrete results will emerge from this transatlantic cooperation remains unclear. But Donald Trump, as is well known, has also already spoken critically about the EU. Vice President J.D. Vance was the most recent to do so, particularly with reference to the Union's misguided migration policy.
"It is time for a Great Reset, but not in the way the globalists envision it," the MCC writes on X about its proposal. In 70 years, the EU has evolved from a forum for economic cooperation to a "powerful supranational entity" that controls currencies and courts and imposes financial sanctions on member states. "What began with free trade and peace has led to a centralized power structure that comes at the expense of national sovereignty." What is needed is a "return to Europe's fundamental values," namely "democracy, sovereignty, and balance."
In the foreword to their report, the authors complain that, despite ambitious goals for the EU to be "the most competitive and dynamic economic area in the world" by 2010 (according to the Lisbon Strategy of 2000), it is in fact increasingly developing into a "politically, economically, and scientifically third-rate sideshow." And the enforced "cohesion" of the bloc of states has not helped in this regardquite the opposite.
So it's about reversing the drive toward an "ever-closer union." The two think tanks even put forward two proposals for this. While one gradually builds on the existing structure, the other considers a more radical change. But even the second proposal remains in many ways similar to what we know or knew.
At the presentation of the report on March 18 in Budapest, Balázs Orbán, political advisor to Viktor Orbán (to whom he is not related) and representative of the MCC, said that the EU is currently losing its bearings and thus risking its future. Without reform, a "rigid, dogmatic" EU will collapse. This sounds as if the leathery skin of the EU institutions already conceals a largely pulverized, destabilized interior. Rodrigo Ballester (MCC), who gained 16 years of experience in the European Parliament and the Commission and is the lead author of the report, said that until the Maastricht Treaty, the EU served the member states. Today, it is all about centralization. His counter-remedy: more subsidiarity, more unanimity in the Council, and a limitation of EU bureaucracy. Jerzy Kwaśniewski of the Ordo Iuris Institute expressed this view that the elected representatives of the member states, not unelected bureaucrats, must once again have greater influence in the future.
The report itself states that it is widely recognized that the EU is currently facing an "existential crisis." However, the reaction of many to this crisis is strange: they would recommend even more of the same old remedy to the union of states: more federalization. At the end of 2023, the European Parliament called for an expansion of EU competences with regard to climate, energy, economic, and social policy, as well as a de facto abolition of the principle of unanimity in the Council, a stronger role for the European Court of Justice, and the transformation of the Commission into an even stronger EU executive. The authors consider such proposals absurd. After all, the integration of the member states has been pursued for decades with precisely the current, unsatisfactory result.
In the authors' view, today's EU has a democratic deficit. And who would deny that? The EU's most important institutions are simply unelected, the decision-making processes unclear, while the European Parliament struggles to represent and "unite" 27 member states in the absence of a European people. Meanwhile, the Commission, Parliament, and European Court of Justice have assumed considerable power "beyond their original mandate."
This means that the EU is developing into a "quasi-federal state," increasingly restricting the autonomy and decision-making capacity of nation states. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is also continuing to expand its jurisdiction. Finally, Brussels' bureaucratic elites are imposing ever new, ideologically motivated policies on the member states. The resulting bureaucracy is stifling the competitiveness of the member states, while permitted mass migration is undermining security within the EU. The authors of the report raise a host of criticisms.
It is noteworthy that they also describe the dangers to which civil liberties are exposed in this EU. In particular, freedom of opinion and expression is being eroded by the criminalization of so-called "hate speech" a term so broad that it encompasses "any expression that, according to the subjective perception of certain groups (usually with left-wing ideology), is considered offensive." The Digital Services Act (DSA) appears to be merely the last flowering of this long-standing practice. The legal ambiguity of terms such as "discriminatory" or "hate speech" also makes the DSA capable of discriminating against certain "views on issues such as immigration, religion, or abortion."
What solution does the report propose? The most important demands of the report (which can be read here) are: National sovereignty should once again take precedence over the influence of community institutions. National constitutions should be valued more highly than the "activism of the courts," and representative democracy should once again be given greater weight over technocratic governance. National interests should replace supposedly "European values" such concepts involuntarily remind the authors of the "Soviet man." Finally, free speech should once again become more important than the ideological control of citizens.
Two scenarios are then explained, each of which could lead to success. The first proposal is "back to the roots," i.e., to the model of a European Economic Community as founded in 1957. This scenario would bring about decentralization and thus a reduction in the burden of EU regulations. The sovereignty of the member states should be restored in explicit contrast to Emmanuel Macron's call for "European sovereignty." National governments should regain responsibility for key policy areas. They could also cooperate on individual projects.
There is talk of an "à la carte model of integration": States choose for themselves where they want to participate in a closer association and where they do not (opt-in and opt-out). In any case, EU law should no longer have priority over national law and may only refer to the "competences of the EU." The ECJ would therefore no longer have authority over national legal systems. In essence, it would thus become a kind of "arbitration court" of the EU, as it will be called in the second scenario.
National delegations in the EU Parliament are also proposed to increase its legitimacy. However, the Parliament's role in the future is to be purely advisory and consultative. The Commission is also to be a more "technical" kind of general secretariat that would lose its monopoly on responding to violations of law and legislative initiatives.
And another important point: the principle of subsidiarity should be consistently applied again. This means that what can be resolved in Budapest or Warsaw does not have to be regulated by Brussels. Member states should also be able to reclaim powers where the EU fails to implement them within its mandate a somewhat sophisticated political-legal formulation. Finally, according to this first proposal, the EU should be renamed the European Community of Nations (ECN).
The second proposal is entitled "A New Beginning" and can be considered the more decisive path. The EU would be replaced by a "flexible, intergovernmental system," with the Council of Heads of State and Government becoming the decisive body. This tendency is also present in the first proposal. An "Executive Secretariat" (the remnant of the Commission) would monitor the implementation of this Council's decisions. A European Arbitration Court could settle any disputes between member states.
Here, too, the à la carte nature of the federal government is emphasized, with the possibility of opting in and opting out in all areas. Examples cited include border protection, energy security, and joint research. The principle of conferral, well-known from EU law, is to apply without restriction. This is intended to more clearly delineate the powers of the EU and the member states. National constitutions would, as expected, have absolute priority over EU obligations in this system.
In their report, the authors of MCC and Ordo Iuris particularly reject the "false dichotomy that Europe can only exist as a totalitarian European superstate or forgo any possibility of cooperation." Their report attempts to open up a new path of albeit voluntary cooperation among European nations. The Hungarian-Polish plan is likely far from being directly implemented. Not even the current Polish Prime Minister (himself a former "Eurocrat") is likely to support it, but perhaps other heads of government like Giorgia Meloni might. Any possible support from across the Atlantic would likely only be very indirect and mediated. But sometimes it's important to explore and present possible ways of thinking, also to avoid ceding intellectual supremacy to the other side.
----------------------
Instead, this year we have got a gold register in the EU, and later this year we will have the EU asset register, so that the EU looters already have a treasure map of where and from whom there is how much to rob and steal. It is no coincidence that this coincides with the completion of the ECB's preparatory work for a digital euro and an EU project to push through the debt union. In addition, the gold price is soaring (in fact, the gold price has been astonishingly stable for 5,000 years; what is depreciating in comparison to it are the alternative counterfeit systems such as tin coins, dollars and euros: gold is money, banknotes are credit, they are promissory bills).
I'm afraid of what's coming next, it cna and will ruin me and millioisn of others, and turning Europe into a totalitarian surveillance and reeducation camp by Cnhiense exmaple. The debt decision in the German Bundestag is a sign of imminent (within the next 1-2 legislative periods) serious state crimes against the citizens.
Really, I have started to be really afraid. The openeness and frankness and shamelessness on display by the EU and ECB criminals is terrifying. And all people around - do not care, grin, talk nonsense. Its horrifying. Npobody wnats to listen. Nobody wnats to beleive it. Its too terrible as if anybody could believe its happening. Its so bad, it cant be true, right?
Its abojt this paper: https://europeanstudies.mcc.hu/publication/the-great-reset-restoring-member-state-sovereignty-in-the-european-union
So bad that so many of these alternative opinions so very often tend to be friendly to fascist Russia.
---------------
Orbán Think Tank Calls for a "Reboot" of the EU as a Confederation of States with More Democracy
By Matthias Nikolaidis
Is the EU on its way to becoming the "most competitive economic area in the world"? Not really. This is the complaint of two think tanks from Hungary and Poland, who are developing scenarios for EU reform. A foundation close to Trump is also involved.
Two conservative think tanks from Hungary and Poland have presented a proposal for a fundamental reform of the EU. The Budapest-based Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) and the Polish Ordo Iuris Institute have written a 40-page report on the topic. The Polish institute has close ties to the former ruling Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS for short), while the Budapest institute is close to the Hungarian ruling Fidesz party.
The two institutes have titled their report "The Great Reset." This is actually a term familiar from a completely different context, such as the World Economic Forum. There, it refers to a kind of unification of the world under the sign of fashionable ideas, in supranational alliances such as the EU, the UN, and many others. Hungarians and Poles, on the other hand, are concerned with reversing what is often called "European integration," but which, in their view, increasingly restricts the national sovereignty of member states and replaces representative democracyas it exists in all member stateswith a technocratic form of government. The authors of the report thus want a "Great Reset" or "great reboot" for the EU. It should, so to speak, be reset to its factory settings, i.e., to the conditions in 1957.
Politically interesting, the two European institutes are also collaborating with the American Heritage Foundation, a foundation close to the Republicans, which also published the well-known "Project 2025," often seen as a blueprint for Trump's second term. On March 11, even before the European presentation, the Hungarian-Polish paper was discussed in the offices of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, supposedly sealed off from the press. What concrete results will emerge from this transatlantic cooperation remains unclear. But Donald Trump, as is well known, has also already spoken critically about the EU. Vice President J.D. Vance was the most recent to do so, particularly with reference to the Union's misguided migration policy.
"It is time for a Great Reset, but not in the way the globalists envision it," the MCC writes on X about its proposal. In 70 years, the EU has evolved from a forum for economic cooperation to a "powerful supranational entity" that controls currencies and courts and imposes financial sanctions on member states. "What began with free trade and peace has led to a centralized power structure that comes at the expense of national sovereignty." What is needed is a "return to Europe's fundamental values," namely "democracy, sovereignty, and balance."
In the foreword to their report, the authors complain that, despite ambitious goals for the EU to be "the most competitive and dynamic economic area in the world" by 2010 (according to the Lisbon Strategy of 2000), it is in fact increasingly developing into a "politically, economically, and scientifically third-rate sideshow." And the enforced "cohesion" of the bloc of states has not helped in this regardquite the opposite.
So it's about reversing the drive toward an "ever-closer union." The two think tanks even put forward two proposals for this. While one gradually builds on the existing structure, the other considers a more radical change. But even the second proposal remains in many ways similar to what we know or knew.
At the presentation of the report on March 18 in Budapest, Balázs Orbán, political advisor to Viktor Orbán (to whom he is not related) and representative of the MCC, said that the EU is currently losing its bearings and thus risking its future. Without reform, a "rigid, dogmatic" EU will collapse. This sounds as if the leathery skin of the EU institutions already conceals a largely pulverized, destabilized interior. Rodrigo Ballester (MCC), who gained 16 years of experience in the European Parliament and the Commission and is the lead author of the report, said that until the Maastricht Treaty, the EU served the member states. Today, it is all about centralization. His counter-remedy: more subsidiarity, more unanimity in the Council, and a limitation of EU bureaucracy. Jerzy Kwaśniewski of the Ordo Iuris Institute expressed this view that the elected representatives of the member states, not unelected bureaucrats, must once again have greater influence in the future.
The report itself states that it is widely recognized that the EU is currently facing an "existential crisis." However, the reaction of many to this crisis is strange: they would recommend even more of the same old remedy to the union of states: more federalization. At the end of 2023, the European Parliament called for an expansion of EU competences with regard to climate, energy, economic, and social policy, as well as a de facto abolition of the principle of unanimity in the Council, a stronger role for the European Court of Justice, and the transformation of the Commission into an even stronger EU executive. The authors consider such proposals absurd. After all, the integration of the member states has been pursued for decades with precisely the current, unsatisfactory result.
In the authors' view, today's EU has a democratic deficit. And who would deny that? The EU's most important institutions are simply unelected, the decision-making processes unclear, while the European Parliament struggles to represent and "unite" 27 member states in the absence of a European people. Meanwhile, the Commission, Parliament, and European Court of Justice have assumed considerable power "beyond their original mandate."
This means that the EU is developing into a "quasi-federal state," increasingly restricting the autonomy and decision-making capacity of nation states. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is also continuing to expand its jurisdiction. Finally, Brussels' bureaucratic elites are imposing ever new, ideologically motivated policies on the member states. The resulting bureaucracy is stifling the competitiveness of the member states, while permitted mass migration is undermining security within the EU. The authors of the report raise a host of criticisms.
It is noteworthy that they also describe the dangers to which civil liberties are exposed in this EU. In particular, freedom of opinion and expression is being eroded by the criminalization of so-called "hate speech" a term so broad that it encompasses "any expression that, according to the subjective perception of certain groups (usually with left-wing ideology), is considered offensive." The Digital Services Act (DSA) appears to be merely the last flowering of this long-standing practice. The legal ambiguity of terms such as "discriminatory" or "hate speech" also makes the DSA capable of discriminating against certain "views on issues such as immigration, religion, or abortion."
What solution does the report propose? The most important demands of the report (which can be read here) are: National sovereignty should once again take precedence over the influence of community institutions. National constitutions should be valued more highly than the "activism of the courts," and representative democracy should once again be given greater weight over technocratic governance. National interests should replace supposedly "European values" such concepts involuntarily remind the authors of the "Soviet man." Finally, free speech should once again become more important than the ideological control of citizens.
Two scenarios are then explained, each of which could lead to success. The first proposal is "back to the roots," i.e., to the model of a European Economic Community as founded in 1957. This scenario would bring about decentralization and thus a reduction in the burden of EU regulations. The sovereignty of the member states should be restored in explicit contrast to Emmanuel Macron's call for "European sovereignty." National governments should regain responsibility for key policy areas. They could also cooperate on individual projects.
There is talk of an "à la carte model of integration": States choose for themselves where they want to participate in a closer association and where they do not (opt-in and opt-out). In any case, EU law should no longer have priority over national law and may only refer to the "competences of the EU." The ECJ would therefore no longer have authority over national legal systems. In essence, it would thus become a kind of "arbitration court" of the EU, as it will be called in the second scenario.
National delegations in the EU Parliament are also proposed to increase its legitimacy. However, the Parliament's role in the future is to be purely advisory and consultative. The Commission is also to be a more "technical" kind of general secretariat that would lose its monopoly on responding to violations of law and legislative initiatives.
And another important point: the principle of subsidiarity should be consistently applied again. This means that what can be resolved in Budapest or Warsaw does not have to be regulated by Brussels. Member states should also be able to reclaim powers where the EU fails to implement them within its mandate a somewhat sophisticated political-legal formulation. Finally, according to this first proposal, the EU should be renamed the European Community of Nations (ECN).
The second proposal is entitled "A New Beginning" and can be considered the more decisive path. The EU would be replaced by a "flexible, intergovernmental system," with the Council of Heads of State and Government becoming the decisive body. This tendency is also present in the first proposal. An "Executive Secretariat" (the remnant of the Commission) would monitor the implementation of this Council's decisions. A European Arbitration Court could settle any disputes between member states.
Here, too, the à la carte nature of the federal government is emphasized, with the possibility of opting in and opting out in all areas. Examples cited include border protection, energy security, and joint research. The principle of conferral, well-known from EU law, is to apply without restriction. This is intended to more clearly delineate the powers of the EU and the member states. National constitutions would, as expected, have absolute priority over EU obligations in this system.
In their report, the authors of MCC and Ordo Iuris particularly reject the "false dichotomy that Europe can only exist as a totalitarian European superstate or forgo any possibility of cooperation." Their report attempts to open up a new path of albeit voluntary cooperation among European nations. The Hungarian-Polish plan is likely far from being directly implemented. Not even the current Polish Prime Minister (himself a former "Eurocrat") is likely to support it, but perhaps other heads of government like Giorgia Meloni might. Any possible support from across the Atlantic would likely only be very indirect and mediated. But sometimes it's important to explore and present possible ways of thinking, also to avoid ceding intellectual supremacy to the other side.
----------------------
Instead, this year we have got a gold register in the EU, and later this year we will have the EU asset register, so that the EU looters already have a treasure map of where and from whom there is how much to rob and steal. It is no coincidence that this coincides with the completion of the ECB's preparatory work for a digital euro and an EU project to push through the debt union. In addition, the gold price is soaring (in fact, the gold price has been astonishingly stable for 5,000 years; what is depreciating in comparison to it are the alternative counterfeit systems such as tin coins, dollars and euros: gold is money, banknotes are credit, they are promissory bills).
I'm afraid of what's coming next, it cna and will ruin me and millioisn of others, and turning Europe into a totalitarian surveillance and reeducation camp by Cnhiense exmaple. The debt decision in the German Bundestag is a sign of imminent (within the next 1-2 legislative periods) serious state crimes against the citizens.
Really, I have started to be really afraid. The openeness and frankness and shamelessness on display by the EU and ECB criminals is terrifying. And all people around - do not care, grin, talk nonsense. Its horrifying. Npobody wnats to listen. Nobody wnats to beleive it. Its too terrible as if anybody could believe its happening. Its so bad, it cant be true, right?