by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com
December 31, 2004
With polls indicating that increasing numbers of Europeans do not think that the European Union (EU) is a good thing, one wonders how Europe’s largest bureaucracy can thumb its nose at Christianity.
an already one-million strong Christian coalition boosted its membership in November with the Holland murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
Even in the face of a secular fait accompli from the EU’s crystal palace in Brussels, Christians are knocking at the door.
at last count, France was still blocking the possibility for any reference to the Christian God in the EU’s constitution preamble.
Why France is blocking the move is a mystery that will have to be unraveled by the Vatican.
Pope John Paul 11, who sanctioned an official Euro for the Vatican, has repeatedly condemned the "moral drift" of secular Brussels. "One does not cut the roots to one’s birthright," he told pilgrims last summer.
In appearance, the Vatican coin looks very much like other Euro coins. But on the flip side of the coin, the image of Pope John Paul 11 faces left.
"By permitting his image on this new coin, John Paul 11 has given another symbolic and powerful stimulus to the European Union, which with the issuance of the Euro, is taking an important step towards the Universal Republic," said atila Sinke Guimarnes in Daily Catholic.
It’s religion of a different sort on display at EU headquarters, where one of its 679 seats is being kept open. The empty seat just happens to be number 666.
One would think that vacant seat No. 666 alone would provide instant recognition of the EU to the masses.
"The EU has come to a point in its development when it has to reach out and be seen not as onerous and oppressive but as positive and benign," admits Dick Roche, the Irish Europe Minister.
The EU is on a mission to try to convince jaded citizens that the EU really matters. It will try to break through the all but carved in stone image of the EU as an "officious, overcentralized bureaucracy obsessed with red tape and the curvature of bananas."
a tall order, even with the likes of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana at the helm.
Just like so many governments of the world, the EU believes in polls. Recent polls have made Solana and Company, well, queasy. Eurobarometer surveys conducted for the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, have found the percentage of European citizens who believe the EU is " a good thing" fell below 50 percent last year for the first time.
and just to think they thought they had the global gentry in the bag!
"That is catastrophic for a union based on democratic principles," Roche concludes of the polls. "The level of cynicism is growing, the level of hostility is growing."
Th European Union, like its overseas sister the United Nations, seems to be choking on its own red tape.
Even Roche admits citizens would have more respect for the EU if it cut down on the 25-cent words, the jargon and had more layman-friendly writers of laws.
It is difficult to simplify those laws when the "aqcuis communautaire", the massive body of EU legislation was built up over a half of a century.
The ponderous aC runs to over 80,000 pages.
Roche also fingers the media for leaving the impression that the EU is a cookie counter. Sensationalist stories on EU regulations to classify bananas according to their size and curvature have left an indelible imprint on the public’s memory, he said.
"all you’re going to think of when you think of the EU is straight bananas."
The United Nations, the EU’s North american counterpart, started long ago on the same path the EU is taking today, in the field of mass Public Relations.
In order to get its fuzzy blanket image over to the public, the UN became its own paper mill. Each year, a flood of UN documents--well over two billion pages--is published at a football-sized printing press beneath the north lawn of UN headquarters.
Perhaps it’s time for the EU’s Javier Solana to check in with marketing meister Kofi annan.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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