EU Interior Ministers Ominous Group of Six Meetings

The 'raison d'etre' of this secretive group of the EU's most powerful men (they alone have some realistic possibility of full access to the mass of digital data we all accumulate on a daily basis) is set out by its driving force Nicolas Sarkozy, present front-runner as next French President, in this summer's book "Témoignage" The House of Lords has earlier warned of the dangers, linked here. Para 15 of this report states the following: 15. Inter-governmental groupings of this type, which lack the basic democratic requirements of accountability and transparency, have in the past led to the Schengen agreement and the Schengen Convention. Neither EU citizens, nor their representatives, nor indeed those Member States that were not originally part of the Schengen group, had any say on these policies of fundamental importance. They were presented with a fait accompli. I believe a meeting of the Interior Ministers of this Group of Six is presently underway in Stratford-upon-Avon. Ironic n'est pas? My rough translation of Sarkozy's reasoning as set out in his book (pages 71 and 72), is as follows: "To tell the truth, the meetings of the Council of <> of the Justice and Interior Ministers had become unbearable for me due to the strength of the never-ending discussion on minor technicalities which interested nobody and which could never clear the way towards an operational decision. I told myself that at least the five large countries had the same problems to overcome and the same urgency with which they had to be faced. The Diplomacy of our meetings as 25 made me) greatly prefer the pragmatism of our meetings as five" That may well be so! We must never forget, however, that administrative convenience of those in power - coupled with ease of decision-taking - is ever the enemy of democracy and individual liberties. To quote the opening of House of Lords report linked above:

1. Of the twenty-five Member States of the EU, the six largest account for three quarters of its population.[1] Collective decisions of their ministers on major aspects of EU policy in the field of justice and home affairs, while not necessarily conclusive, will inevitably have a major impact on the future direction of that policy. One would therefore expect that meetings of those ministers, and decisions taken at their meetings, would attract wide interest from the media, from the European Parliament and national parliaments, from interested non-governmental organisations, and from academics and others.

2. This was not the case when the ministers of the interior of those Member States—the G6—met at the German Baltic resort of Heiligendamm on 22 and 23 March 2006.......... We shall see what reports, if any, emerge on the decisions taken at Stratford, by those six individuals responsible for law enforcement in the six largest ex-nations of the EU.