#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Italy, UCADI #166: EU: the game of the three cantons (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 A teeming multitude of men and women moves perpetually between Brussels,

Strasbourg and Luxembourg, dividing themselves between offices they occupy on
alternate days, following the work of the community bodies. In 1992 the national
governments of the EU unanimously decided to establish in the Treaty establishing
the EU which are the official seats of the European institutions . This decision
had important consequences for the organization of Parliament's work: its
official seat and the location of most of its plenary sessions was officially
established in Strasbourg; parliamentary committees meet in Brussels; and the
Parliament's Secretariat (its staff) has its offices in Luxembourg. In 1997 this
agreement was included in the EU Treaty and any change to the current system
would require a revision of the Treaty, which requires the unanimity of all the
governments of the member states and the ratification of each of the national
parliaments.
To grasp the breadth of the people involved, it must be considered that the
European Parliament is made up of 705 deputies, of whom 76 are Italian, supported
by their own personal parliamentary assistants, hired within the limits of the
budget set by the Parliament. In 2022, the maximum monthly amount available to
cover all costs incurred in hiring personal assistants was €26,734 per month for
each Member. None of these sums were paid directly to Members, but they were able
to choose between different types of assistants: accredited assistants, who are
based in Brussels (or Luxembourg/Strasbourg) and report directly to Parliament's
administration: they enjoy the conditions of employment of non-permanent EU
staff. Furthermore, deputies can hire up to one maximum of three accredited
assistants (four under certain conditions). At least a quarter of the total
budget must be used to hire accredited assistants. Then there are the "local"
assistants, located in the respective Member States, managed at an administrative
level by qualified payers who guarantee the adequate fulfillment of the related
tax and social security obligations. A maximum of 75 % of the budget may be used
for the recruitment of these local assistants. But that's not all: in addition to
hiring accredited and local assistants, up to a quarter of the total available
budget can be used to pay for services commissioned from suppliers selected by
the MEP, such as for the creation of a specialized studio or other activities
necessary for the fulfillment of the mandate received.
This army of bureaucrats and their families give life and raison d'être to a
medium-sized city that enjoys a high per capita income and above all expectations
and lifestyles that require more, much more than the community budget allocated
arrangement and declared. The reasons are many, partly functional and largely
status-related and derive from the type of social activity that characterizes the
environment, from the sports practiced, the schools attended, the clothes worn
and the restaurants frequented. All of this requires a growing and potentially
unlimited budget.

The induced

This world teeming with experts in "community procedures" manages an immense
volume of bureaucratic work and activity, with a budget for 2022 to manage and
distribute of €167.8 billion for next year, complemented by grants of an amount
estimated EUR 143.5 billion under the Next Generation EU facility.
In fact, the community resources are distributed on the basis of projects drawn
up according to precise and articulated forms, the result of a tested technique
of work organization by successive steps and checks that allow for the evaluation
of the progress of the projects and provide for the disbursement of the loans in
relation to the different phases of the construction of the works. These
procedures tend to give guarantees on the effective implementation of the works
and on the correct use of the funds and yet they are frequently and skilfully
violated to the advantage of governments and users particularly unscrupulous,
often to the detriment of careless administrators and not equipped with the
support of that army of consultants and facilitators who have flourished
everywhere in the territory of the Union, with the possible exception of the
poorest and most inexperienced regions of southern Italy. The representatives of
the various regions and the lobbyists who operate in them are known and
registered and occupy premises in strategic positions with respect to the various
community offices.
The army of consultants fully includes the category of formers, meaning by this
to refer to those who were experts, or assistants, or parliamentarians in
Brussels and who, once they left their village or city of origin, do not intend
and cannot return in the provinces to live an anonymous life that no longer feels
his. Once the first mandate has been completed, when not the second or third, he
easily gets used to the benefits, invitations, travel, paid holidays, easy life,
which makes the frenetic swarm between the three cantons in which community
activity unfolds bearable , with frequent visits and stays in exclusive hotels,
in tropical islands for a weekend in Dubai or in other places as pleasant as they
are exclusive, supported by the many overt or hidden lobbies that operate in the
environment and that grant dream stays. Then presenting the bill in the form of
requests for favours, support, consent, telling fairy tales about supposed
progress, masking the favors granted behind large bank accounts opened in tax
havens. But those who come from the provinces also have an animal need to possess
cash, to hear it rustle in their hands to stuff bags and wardrobes, to touch and
feel it as a physical entity. Hence the indecent, almost vulgar bundles of
banknotes, the briefcases seized on the runway.

The role of lobbies

There are 12,445 organizations registered with the office responsible for
verifying the activities of lobbies in the Community, of which 49 belong to the
Religious Communities: this tells us that every interest must be protected and
gives the measure of how deeply rooted the corruption and lobbying phenomenon is
testifies to the fact that it concerns every sector of activity. The office
responsible for their control of lobbies can count on a staff of only 9
employees, each of whom should supervise about 1,800 organizations: it follows
that the controls are only formal and concern the possession of formal
accreditation requirements and updating of data. Difficult to identify anomalies,
abuses and much less illegal activities; however, it is easy to move in an
environment crowded with other subjects interested in corruption activities.
Non-governmental organizations with interest representatives based in Brussels
move and operate in the same environment. There are 667, while the declared
professionals of lobbying are about 5 thousand, with 3,634 "In-house lobbyists
and trade/business/professional associations", 334 specialized companies and 557
business and rights "consultants" who operate in support function: an army with
unlimited strengths with unthinkable ramifications and powers that go beyond
ideological and party alignments to be guided only by interests.
In the midst of this fauna, this mare magnum sailed the current suspects of
illicit relationships and bribes from Qatar and Morocco, in exchange for favors
and to restore an impossible virginity to two operators on the international
business market. They had to cover the misdeeds of the governments of the two
countries, the thousands of deaths of workers sacrificed on the altar of profit
to build Dubai's sports facilities in record time, slave labor, human
trafficking, the slavery of women and men, boys and girls, boasting of progress
in human rights, while - and in the case of Morocco - the Saharawi people are
exploited, enslaved, forced to live in the desert in makeshift camps.
The thing that hurts the most was that so-called leftists were called to this
task, people who came from the trade union movement which had by now forgotten
all origins, all moral principles, all modesty, in the name of selfishness,
profit, the exploitation of human beings. humans for their own benefit.

The moral and political degeneration of the left

One could say that the lobbyist corruption system has nothing to do with it,
proof of which is that neither the lobbyists of Qatar nor those of Morocco are
among those registered and that therefore we are dealing with "pure" corruption,
but certainly the climate, the environmental pollution in which the facts have
matured speak volumes both on the phenomenon and on the degeneration of an entire
political class or political class as one prefers to call it.
Ever since the left decided that it was necessary to live with capitalism and
that the class struggle had been won by capital, its leaders, starting with
Blaire, having abandoned their role as politicians, went into business: thus
Schröder, who became manager of Gasprom and Renzi a supporter of the Saudi
renaissance. How can we be surprised then if Pansieri - former manager of the
Milan Chamber of Labor - does not want to return to the provinces and, once his
mandate has expired, becomes a lobbyist and tries to grab millions of euros where
and how he can? The call of the golden beaches of the East, of luxury hotels, of
high class escorts , is too strong to be resisted.
The rottenness therefore comes from afar and, on paper, one would know very well
what to do: in the meantime, it turns out that the idea of limiting mandates is
not wrong, that professional politicians are harmful to others and to themselves,
that the passage from the union to the parties and from elective positions to
other elective positions is a harbinger of corruption, because it is also the
opportunity that makes men and women thieves. Being a trade unionist or a
professional politician is harmful and harmful. These are common sense
precautions, procedures and precautions that it is madness to overlook.
It is the rules and material conditions that painstakingly build, day after day,
hour after hour, honesty and correctness of purpose, beyond moral principles and
education, however much this may affect human nature.
A system of rules of conduct, continuous checks, comparisons with the realities
from which we come, allows the exercise of control and supervision of behavior, a
constant check that gives a sense of reality and helps to avoid the lure of
corruption .
The end of the political or trade union mandate must coincide with the return to
production and with the loss of any office, and no one who has not maintained a
constant relationship with his or her work must be allowed political or trade
union activity as a profession because these Mechanisms intrinsically possess the
potential to degenerate the goals of the perceived social activity. Political and
trade union assignments, as the experience of communist anarchism teaches, are
and can only be temporary, they concern a part and only a part of everyone's
life. The correctness of the role towards everyone depends on it.
The lack of political proposals, of credibility of those who stand up in defense
of class interests depends, especially today, also on these behaviors that are
independent of personal choices and concern the more direct consequences of the
material relationships that are established between delegating and delegated to a
mandate of representation.

Gianni Ledi

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/01/02/ue-il-gioco-dei-tre-cantoni/
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