Secondly, EU has developed a great system of corrupting politicians by buying them off; - giving them huge salaries in Brussels and Strassburg, where they can sit and talk having very little influence, cashing in million-fees.

In our part of the world, EU is the spearhead for going back to the jungle society of 19th century – when most of the services, the best schools, hospitals, communications etc were private, and social disparities, poverty and malnutrition were widespread.

How then, could we rally for parliamentary, popular control of the EU? “Reclaiming EU” is a dream – a sleeping pillow.

Another European union is needed – but all the present institutions must go, may be except the Parliament in Strassburg, along with the Rome Treaty, Maastricht Agreement and the Convention, in order to build up democratic and parliamentary control. That means a complete revolution which simply will not happen within the institutions, where vested interests are in firm control, by law, but outside; by popular uprising following something like a world crash, which could involve the stock market, dollar in-confidence, soaring unemployment and the like. The only valuable thing of the EU is the idea of a political union, and for that idea Norway can operate as progressively (I’d say more) outside the corrupted institutions than within.

To give you one example:
In August 2002, the World top meeting on environment and development was held in Johannesburg, South Africa. The EU and the United States together put forward a proposition to let WTO-rules stand above local environmental laws and regulations. The concern for equal competition and free flow of capital should rule over environment and other social interests. Because of strong resistance and hard work from our government’s two youngest ministers, they succeeded, together with Switzerland and Ethiopia, in making a resolution that allowed environmental rules stand before the capitalists’. The leader of the United Nations development program, Mark Malloch Brown, then exclaimed: “Norway hindered something that could be fatal, I wish there were more countries like Norway.” The truth is, both Sweden and Denmark agreed with Norway, but they were tied up by the EU’s common policy.

If, after all, we could get some minimal influence inside the EU, should we then sacrifice our farmers, large parts of our countryside, control over our resources, fisheries, mines, hydro-power, gas, oil, and our freedom, and hand it over to a club of capitalist corporations and bureaucrats in Brussels? We have a term for that, and that is ‘economic treason’.
Prout stands for the exact opposite, namely economic democracy.

(Left out: Norway’s need for independent valuta control, and the nation’s particular egalitarian history, where free farmers carried its culture through dark centuries of union and oppression.)

Copyright The author 2004