Jurriaan Maessen
In 1970, long-time member and chairman of the Bilderberg group viscount Étienne Davignon published a report in which the ministers of Foreign Affairs of six European nations pledged to further the European agenda through mostly informal gatherings.
The report, to which the ministers of Foreign Affairs of all major European nations pledged allegiance, admits that the further integration of nations must follow a gradual, incremental path in “successive stages”.
The report, named after the viscount himself, was published in the bulletin of the European Communities in November of 1970 and details how the European power-elite has planned European integration, not by chance- or as wishful thinking on the part of the political and economic elite, but rather through “successive stages and the gradual development of the method and instruments best calculated to allow a common political course of action”, so states the Davignon Report. Here is the quote in full:
“(…) implementation of the common policies being introduced or already in force requires corresponding developments in the specifically political sphere, so as to bring nearer the day when Europe can speak with one voice. Hence the importance of Europe being built by successive stages and the gradual development of the method and instruments best calculated to allow a common political course of action.”
The minsters involved also stated that this common political course can be best achieved by setting an example in foreign policy before it can spread to a common economic calling:
“(…) foreign policy concertation should be the object of the first practical endeavours to demonstrate to all that Europe has a political vocation. The Ministers are, in fact, convinced that progress here would be calculated to promote the development of the Communities and give Europeans a keener awareness of their common responsibility.”
Furthermore, the report stresses that not so much through formal, but rather informal meetings should this incremental push be coordinated. Although the Report attempts to project the illusion of democratic oversight by stating that “Public opinion and its spokesmen must be associated with the construction of the political union”, the Report goes on to say that the “Ministers and the members of the Political Affairs Committee of the European Parliament will hold six monthly meetings to discuss questions which are the subject of consultations in the framework of foreign policy cooperation. These meetings will be informal, to ensure that the parliamentarians and Ministers can express their views freely.”
Informal, in this respect, means outside the reach of journalists- in the same way the annual Bilderberg meetings are described as informal gatherings where transnationalists can share thoughts without some irritating news person around recording their exchanges. Yes, the most significant of “informal” meetings, we have come to learn, has been chaired by none other than Mr. Davignon himself in the last decade.
In an attempt to downplay Bilderberg’s importance in setting policy, Davignontold the BBC in 2005: “It is unavoidable and it doesn’t matter. There will always be people who believe in conspiracies but things happen in a much more incoherent fashion.”
Well, not so according to the Davignon commission which he chaired back in the early 1970s, and the subsequent Davignon report which he co-wrote. In the report, Davignon and his co-conspirators outline that all these informal meetings are anything but “incoherent”. It appears Mr Davignon tells a different story in every interview. In March of 2009 Davignon bragged to the EUobserver online newspaper that the creation of the Euro was helped by the Bilderberg Group in the 1990’s:
“A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group- an informal club of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by Mr. Davignon- could also ‘improve understanding’ on future action, in the same way it helped create the Euro in the 1990s, he said.”
We now know of course that the process toward a single European currency, as well as single European “voice” has been in the making much longer than that.
In a leaked transcript from the 1955 Bilderberg meeting (chaired by prince Bernhard of the Netherlands) participants speak of the “pressing need to bring the German people, together with the other peoples of Europe, into a common market”, and the desire is expressed to “arrive in the shortest possible time at the highest degree of integration, beginning with a common European market.”
According to a scholarly 1995 paper there was indeed a common and thought-out strategy at the root of the European Union, describing Davignon’s work on utilising “transnational networks and expertise to launch the drive for a technological research programme for the EC”:
“The actions of the Commissioner for Industry in the Thorn Commission, Etienne Davignon, were a precursor of the strategies followed by the Delors Commissions. Delors presented the single market programme as a response to a changing international situation which had reduced the competitiveness of the European economy, and so posed problems for European governments.”
“Davignon”, the paper goes on to say “exploited this problem by calling into existence a policy network at the European level. He invited senior figures from Europe’s leading IT firms to meet together in the ‘Big 12 Roundtable’ to discuss how the Japanese and US challenge to Europe’s technological base might be countered.”
Through his chairmanship of the Bilderberg meetings in the last decade, Davignon continues to set policy, or at the very least influence policy-making- and he does so under the cloak of a nice, informal chat between friends.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/feature-report-bilderberg-chieftain-in-1970-further-european-integration-in-gradual-%E2%80%9Csuccessive-stages%E2%80%9D-through-informal-meetings.html
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