Romania Takes Over Presidency of Council of EU, Despite Corruption

3 Days Before Romania Took Over Presidency of Council of EU:

"I believe that the government in Bucharest [Romania] has not yet fully understood what it means to preside over EU countries,"

- EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, 29 Dec 2018

“corruption-related offences, violent crimes and organised criminality”

Official EU report on Romania, 13 Nov 2018

On Tuesday 01 January 2019 a new presidency assumed power in Brussels

Now, unelected presidencies are not exactly an endangered species in the EU. The place has more than you can shake a stick at, from EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, to Council President Donald Tusk, to President of the Eurogroup Mário Centeno, and more besides.

One thing all the EU’s presidencies have in common is that none of them were ever voted for by popular mandate. Romania’s presidency is no exception.

WHAT DOES THIS ‘PRESIDENCY’ DO?

According to the EU:

“The presidency is responsible for driving forward the Council's work on EU legislation, ensuring the continuity of the EU agenda, orderly legislative processes and cooperation among member states. To do this, the presidency must act as an honest and neutral broker.”

Romania’s Presidency will last for six months. As readers look at the information below, we suggest that “orderly legislative processes” and “honest broker” may be useful phrases to hold in mind.

WHAT DOES PRESIDENT JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER THINK OF ROMANIA?

On Saturday 29 December 2018, just three days before Romania assumed the Presidency, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag in an interview:

"I believe, however, that the government in Bucharest has not yet fully understood what it means to preside over EU countries."

"Thoughtful acting also requires a willingness to listen to others and the firm will to put one's own concerns at the end of the queue. With that in mind, I have some doubts."

INSTITUTIONALISED CORRUPTION & AN UNFIT LEGAL SYSTEM

12 years ago on 01 January 2007 Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, despite being under monitoring by the EU Commission for not being fully prepared for membership.

To get around Romania’s failure to meet the EU’s eligibility criteria, the EU imposed something called a ‘Cooperation and Verification Mechanism’ (CVM) on the country.

Here is the EU Commission’s own description of the ‘CVM’ :-

“When they joined the EU in 2007, Romania and Bulgaria still had progress to make … The Commission set up the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) as a transitional measure to assist the two countries to remedy these shortcomings.”

MONITORING

Just ahead of Romania’s accession on 01 January 2007, the EU issued a set of benchmarks against which it was going to judge Romania as it started to address all the issues which were incompatible with EU membership. In the intervening years since then, the Commission has issued regular CVM reports, looking at any progress being made.

From the conclusions of the EU Commission 2018:

· Romania STILL doesn’t meet EU standards for membership
· It is actually going backwards
· Despite this it remains a full member and
· Today it holds the EU presidency for the next six months

THE LATEST REPORT – ROMANIA IS GOING BACKWARDS

The latest CVM report issued on 13 November 2018 – which it was originally hoped would give Romania a clean bill of health before its presidency – did not make pretty reading.

When a report talks of “corruption-related offences, violent crimes and organised criminality”, this highlights the hypocrisy of the EU talking about itself as a “rules-based organisation”

According to the EU’s report, not only has Romania failed to meet the standards required by the EU, it has actually gone backwards in the last 12 months.

Despite the above, Romania continues to be a full member of the EU.

Readers can view the latest report on Romania from the EU here.

Observations

Here is a country that doesn’t meet – and never has met – the eligibility requirements for membership of the EU. Despite all the efforts of the EU and all the money it threw at Romania in the ‘pre-accession’ phase, the country remained ineligible.

In its assessments in the years running up to 2007, in effect the EU was saying that Romania was ineligible for EU membership because it needed to reform its legal system, it needed to stop the corruption endemic in all aspects of Romanian life from the top down, and it needed to tackle the influence of organised crime in the country.

However, never an organisation to let facts get in the way of a good story, the EU let Romania join anyway.

Since then, for year after year the EU has assessed Romania and has found it wanting. The country does not meet EU standards.

And yet here we are today, 12 years after Romania joined, and it now has the Presidency of the EU Council.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR BREXIT

If an EU official utters some nonsense about Brexit and what is or isn’t possible, this is held up by Remainers as the gospel itself. It must be true and it must be according to the law, because someone in Brussels has said it.

Intelligent people who voted Remain are starting to see the true nature of the EU, and they are certainly seeing that Project Fear was indeed a pack of lies which was used to indoctrinate people into voting for the Establishment’s choice.

When it comes to Romania, we hope the official information we have given you above will further demonstrate the hypocrisy and corruption which lies at the heart of this institutionalised deception called the European Union.

The EU only uses its ‘rules’ when it suits it. If the UK Government had acted on this fundamental truth when negotiating with the EU over the past two and a half years, it could have wrapped things up long ago.

As it is, the “GO WTO” option is now by far the best method of extracting ourselves from this shambles.

Something to say about this? Scroll down for reader comments

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Reader Comments 1

1. Catherine, Dollar, Scotland , Saturday, January 05, 2019, 10:56:

Thank you. BBC Scotland last year (Sam Poling, May 2017) covered one area where we in the UK are directly affected by Romanian gangs and organised crime, exploiting the EU, in particular freedom of movement. People trafficking. To quote from the BBC article: "people were now the second most lucrative criminal commodity after drugs, with labour and sexual exploitation the most common reasons for trafficking to Scotland. Scottish human trafficking expert Jim Laird told the BBC there was a "clear link" between Eastern European crime gangs and Asian organised crime in Glasgow."
"victims ..encouraged to leave poverty .. in countries such as Romania .. the prospect of a well-paid job in Scotland.
".. upon arrival that they are told there is no work ..and they have to be engaged in marriages with Pakistani men," [who can then apply for residency]
"After the marriage, the women are kept under control by the traffickers and are exploited as domestic service by the husband but also raped and sexually exploited by fellow nationals of the traffickers,"
Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/...
The numbers estimated in Sam Poling's investigation are in the thousands up here in Scotland. One whole street in Glasgow is dominated by this.

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