To fully understand the authoritarianism of the EU, it is worth studying some history, especially from a British perspective. In January 2001 when, under the 30 year rule, the Public Record Office at Kew opened the files relating to Edward Heath’s application to join the Common Market in 1970, the most striking of these documents were those reflecting the Heath Government’s reaction to something called ‘the Werner Report’.
In 1969, the Council of Ministers had commissioned the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Pierre Werner, to draw up a plan to move the Common Market forward to full economic and monetary union. As luck would have it, his confidential report began circulating in Brussels in October 1970, just as Britain’s negotiations to enter the European Economic Community were getting under way.
In the British Foreign Office, as we now know, the Werner Report rang fearful alarm bells. A secret briefing note to Mr. Heath from Con O’Neill, the senior civil servant responsible for Europe, explained that, if implemented, Werner’s proposals would have enormous political repercussions. They envisaged “a process of fundamental political importance, implying progressive development towards a political union” The long-term objectives of economic and monetary union, it was made clear to Mr Heath, “are very far-reaching indeed”, going “well beyond the full establishment of a Common Market”. The Werner plan could lead to,“the ultimate creation of a European federal state, with a single currency.
Unfortunately, the treacherous Ted Heath and the Foreign Office, were not alarmed by the contents of the Werner report, but only concerned with keeping its contents from the British public, who were told that we were just joining a “Common Market” …. the rest is well documented and led eventually to the referendum of 2016.