Prof. Guarino: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Lisbon Treaty

September 24, 2009 LaRouche — Prof. Giuseppe Guarino was a featured speaker at a meeting organized by a think-tank called Astrid in Rome on Sept. 21, and made a powerful intervention against the Lisbon Treaty, polarizing the audience. He was interviewed by Euronews. The seminar was entitled "The Finding of the German Constitutional Court and Its Effects on the Construction of the European Union."

In his speech, which he sent to EIR, but is not yet meant for publication, Prof. Guarino attacked those experts of constitutional law who have given up their duty of questioning the direction of new constitutional laws. "You cannot limit yourself to interpret and apply [constitutional law]. You must look beneath the surface, go back to the underlying causes and try to understand where institutions are pushing us." The current EU structure is the wrong answer to a financial development that started in the 1960s, when national monetary creation was replaced by international private centers. We did that by giving up monetary sovereignty, which was "replaced with a technical management entrusted to an organ with a non-political character, the European Central Bank." Under the Stability Pact, Europe declined because debt creation for investments was blocked. The EU has no policy in the current crisis, except suggestions to cut the budget or increase taxes. "In both cases, no liquidity is added to the economy," and "ultimately, families are hit who generate liquidity.... [I]f you curtail family budget, you get social reactions whose damage would be greater than the benefit you want to achieve."

And yet, the possibility to generate a recovery is there. "We refer to the results one could achieve, by aggregating large volumes of capital ... to pursue extraordinary innovative targets (nuclear energy, space exploration, computer development) or grandiose infrastructural works (river deviations, great hydroelectric power plants, irrigation and cultivation of entire regions, etc.). The large projects of transformation and innovation have precious and large spin-offs on scientific and cultural development and in general on the life of the community."

All this could be financed through debt created by the state. This is not possible in the EU. "To politically manage a currency is an extreme form of political activity. It involves decisions which political authorities would not themselves produce without participation of central banks," and "which no central banker, even when empowered with assessing employment and development needs, can produce without consent of the highest political authorities.... The essence of the economic policy of a country is exactly this." Such decisions "In a democratic regime, involve necessarily the existence of central organs which originate directly or indirectly from an electoral body which is unitary expression of the European people taken in its unity." This means to completely change the form of the European Union, and make it become a federal state. If nothing changes, Europe is doomed to decline.

"If Lisbon is implemented, abandon any hope."

The system of power of the European Union is not democratic. This will be worse with the Lisbon Treaty. "The largest quotient of power in the Union is concentrated in the Commission, whose powers are larger than any other organ. They include nerve centers. However, the Commission lacks democracy. "It accumulates legislative and executive power, in an open violation of the principle of the division of powers."

Guarino calls for a debate among all law experts in order to change the treaty. "We have the duty of going outside of the protected enclosure of interpreting the law. Using our knowledge, we have the mission and the obligation to warn about what will happen. Nobody owns absolute truth, we might make mistakes in elaborating and forecasting, But in the end, a debate will bring clarity on the goals to achieve."