For 30 years Bill Cash has been derided for tirelessly warning the EU was a corrupt superstate dominated by Germany. As events prove him right, this is his case against the Brussels behemoth

FOR more than three decades, SIR BILL CASH, a senior Tory MP has warned — with magnificent indefatigability — of the dangers of the European Project. For his pains, he has too often been belittled as a deluded Eurosceptic. But in the past two decades, much of what he has warned about has come all too true. Read this extract from his new book and see if you agree with him . . .

THE British people are facing their biggest democratic decision for generations. The coming referendum compares to other great watersheds in British history: from the Civil War and the Restoration, to the 1867 Reform Act and the development of our modern parliamentary democracy.

The issue of Irish home rule, World War I, then appeasement and World War II dominated the first half of the 20th century. The evolution of an integrated Europe followed, leading to our joining the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973.

These are the historic landmarks against which this referendum takes place. But what is at the heart of the issue is simple: who governs us, and how, just as it was with these previous landmarks. on our democracy, all else depends. The debate so far has failed to take proper account of the forces that have influenced our journey since the Forties: from within the United States and Europe, and from Germany in particular, which under the cover of the European Union is now pursuing a policy of assertive economic nationalism.

The consequences for us have been severe. We have lost control of our borders. Jobs have been taken away from the working class. Food prices have been driven up. And our businesses are being choked by EU red tape — 105,000 pages of regulations that companies ignore at their peril.

The European Union itself is riddled with fraud, and is anti-democratic to its very foundations. our own democracy is diminished by it. If we do not leave, where will it all end?

We already know: in ever-closer union, with a superstate dominated by Germany.

GERMANY’S DOMINANCE

SINCE the end of World War II, Britain’s leaders (except for Margaret Thatcher) have consistently acquiesced in — even appeased — Germany’s quest for European integration.

In 1988, before German reunification, I wrote a memorandum to Thatcher warning her of the dangers of ‘creeping federalism’ to Britain and of West Germany’s growing desire to achieve permanent pre-eminence in the EEC.

Less than two months later, she delivered her Bruges speech against ‘a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels’.

The ‘German Europe’ I have warned about for more than 30 years now prevails.

Before the signing of the Maastricht Treaty on February 7, 1992, John Major asked me what I would do if I were in his situation. ‘You will have to veto the Treaty,’ I said. ‘Why?’ asked Major. I replied: ‘It will be a German Europe. Just look at what’s going on in relation to interest rates and who is setting them.’

‘Well if that’s the case,’ Major said, ‘I will have to enter into an alliance with the French.’ The conversation went no further — nor did any alliance with the French.

My concerns about Germany’s political dominance have been matched by my concerns about a federal Europe founded on economic and monetary union.

In my 1991 book Against A Federal Europe, published at the time of the Maastricht rebellion among Conservative MPs, I predicted this German- created ‘ European Government’ would culminate in protests and riots on the continent, massive unemployment and waves of immigration from Central and Eastern Europe.

In 1993, I wrote that there would be ‘massive political and commercial instability throughout Europe’ — and that it would be ‘compounded by waves of immigration . . . recession and lawlessness’.

In the mid-Nineties, former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt asked to see me in the Hamburg office of the newspaper Die Zeit, of which he was a publisher. He told me he had read the chapter in my book entitled A European Germany And A German Europe. He said I was right.

He added that my group of friends in the House of Commons and otherwise were ‘ the only ones, apart from Russia [from where he had just returned] who are not afraid of Germany’.

He suggested ours was an admirable stand but that it would not work. He regretted ‘the emergence of German predominance’.

Germany’s strength, as I predicted then, has now been reinforced by saturating Eastern, Central and Mediterranean Europe with its exports.

We in the United Kingdom, although outside the eurozone, are profoundly affected by being within the framework of the EU as a whole, both politically and economically.

We have been relegated into the second tier of a two-tier Europe dominated by Germany.

This is precisely what the British government sought to avoid in the post-war settlement, but is now becoming a reality.

SEX IN STRASBOURG, FIDDLES AND FRAUD

HoW many people are on the EU payroll? You’d think it would be easy to find out — after all, we’re all paying for them through our taxes.

But no — the EU doesn’t think that the public is entitled to this information.

The most widely accepted estimate is that it directly employs 85,000 people. This is about the same as the entire British Army — though EU perks would make our soldiers more than slightly envious.

Let’s start with the officials. At one time, those who went on regular trips got their own MasterCard with a memo informing them ‘this card is totally free and may also be used for private purposes’.

That meant any cash withdrawals outside the EU — to a maximum of ¤5,000 (£3,930) a month — were paid for by the European Parliament. Not bad, particularly as they didn’t have to account for what they were spending the money on.

What about Members of the European Parliament? They now get a salary of around £77,700.

However, those who have been in the European Parliament since before 2009 can still use the old payments system, whereby their basic salaries are fixed at the level of MPs in their home country — so a British MEP would take home

£ 74,962, while an Italian ( the best paid) would get more than £127,000.

What gives the job its real appeal though is its amazing expenses, as MEPs can claim £48,721 a year as a ‘subsistence allowance’.

And, no, they don’t have to provide any receipts and, yes, it’s all tax-free. British MEPs have nicknamed this perk SOSO: Sign On and Sod Off.

MEPs and civil servants are also some of the best clients of the Eastern European prostitutes who make it to Strasbourg. They tend to live in the German half of the city, where prostitution is legal (unlike the French side).

So widespread is the use of prostitutes that a group of Northern European MEPs tried to stop some of the most obvious abuses.

They put forward a proposal that EU staff should stay only at hotels that don’t allow prostitution. Not particularly contentious, you may think — but they didn’t succeed.

In 2008, an official report uncovered ‘ widespread abuse’ of the EU allowance system for MEPs’ assistants.

Parliamentary authorities sought to prevent taxpayers being allowed to see the report.

It was duly deposited in a room protected by biometric locks and security guards.

Independent studies claim EU fraud is now sucking up at least 10 per cent of its annual budget.

Petty fraud in the offices of senior personnel is rife.

Car rental procedures are routinely abused. Building contracts have been awarded to relatives of senior officials.

As for whistle-blowers, they’ve been accused of being mentally ill — an old Soviet trick.

‘DEMOCRACY’ IN ACTION

UNlIkE our own democracy, the EU thrashes out the vast majority of its decisions in secretive committees that are closed to the public.

No minutes are taken. And by the time a motion reaches the parliamentary chamber, it’s often a done deal.

The truth is that there’s hardly any debate among the MEPs — not surprising as each of them must apply for a speaking slot in advance and will usually be granted only a minute on their feet. Every four weeks, the Parliament meets in Strasbourg for a monthly voting frenzy that usually amounts to little more than rubber-stamping.

There, MEPs sometimes spend entire days pressing YES/ NO/ ABSTAIN buttons every few seconds. How do they decide? Their party leaders sit at the front, instructing them how to vote with a thumb-up or thumb-down motion.

SO WHO ARE THEY?

THE European Commission: the most powerful body in Europe. Consists of 28 unelected people — one from each country — who meet in secret to decide on EU policies. No one takes minutes.

THE Council of Ministers: meets in secret and votes on EU legislation. Who sits on it depends on what policy is being discussed.

In practice, before the voting stage members have usually already decided among themselves how to vote. Britain has only 8.4 per cent of the votes.

A recent report from the Uk’s European Scrutiny Committee highlighted the lack of transparency in the decision-making process.

The roughly 55 per cent of our laws made through the EU are frequently decided by officials and nodded through by ministers.

THE European Parliament: 751 MEPs, of which 73 are British. Unlike our own MPs, they can’t draft laws — only the Commission can do that. The Parliament can sometimes delay or block legislation. Often, however, it’s simply ignored by the commission.

THE Court of Auditors: the official EU-funded body that monitors how EU money is spent. Significantly, it has failed to give a clean bill of health for almost all the EU’s accounts for the past two decades.

THE European Court of Justice: its judgments are binding and there’s no right of appeal. Any member state or institution can be taken before the court for breaking any of the EU’s 30,000-plus laws.

HOW AMERICA BULLIED US...

THE end of World War II brought the Allies victory over Germany but did not bring security. The shadow of the Soviet Union and the threat of communism loomed large over the continent.

It was at this moment that a sense of community began to arise in Western Europe.

No one was more supportive of this than Winston Churchill. He saw a united Europe as one of ‘four pillars’ essential for world peace — alongside the United States, the Soviet Union and the British Empire and Commonwealth.

But as he told his constituency chairman in 1947, he ‘would never contemplate the diminution of the Commonwealth’, adding: ‘Nor do we intend to be merged into a Federal European System.’

In the United States that same year, Congress passed a resolution ‘for the creation of a United States of Europe’.

Meanwhile the French foreign minister, Robert Schuman, was preparing a plan of his own, entirely in secret and without consultation with london.

The Schuman Plan proposed total European integration — political, economic and military.

At the same time, America began secretly providing millions of dollars to the European Movement, an international body in favour of integration whose chairman was Winston Churchill’s son- in- law, Duncan Sandys.

In 1948, a small group of senior American intelligence figures organised a coordination centre named the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE).

Its main purpose was to fund groups working for European unity — and its funding came from the CIA. The European Movement was a leading beneficiary of its generosity.

In the early stages, control over this money was given to Sandys. But by July 1950 he had become disillusioned and abandoned the leadership and the movement. A