When reading these quotes remember that all this time UK politicians have insisted that there is no intention of creating a United States of Europe. Are they liars or just stupid?

*********************************************************************************************************************** "The single currency is the greatest abandonment of sovereignty since the foundation of the European Community... It is a decision of an essentially political character... We need this united Europe... We must never forget that the euro is an instrument for this project"
Felipe Gonzalez, Spanish Prime Minister May 1998
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"It doesn't matter - the House has no power to overturn the Maastricht Treaty"
Douglas Hurd At the time the Conservative government was defeated on a Maastricht vote
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"A European Army and a European police force lie at the end of the road to European Union... The Maastricht Treaty introduces a new and decisive stage in the process of European Union, which within a few years will lead to the creation of the United States of Europe... We want the political unification of Europe. If there is no monetary union, then there cannot be political union, and vice-versa."
Helmut Kohl, speaking as German Chancellor 1992
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"I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account."
Raymond Barre, former French Prime Minister
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"The Europe of Maastricht could only have been created in the absence of democracy."
Clause Cheysson, former French Foreign Secretary
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"Monetary Union is the motor of European integration ......."
Jean-Luc Dehaene, Prime Minister of Belgium
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"The process of monetary union goes hand in hand, must go hand in hand, with political integration and ultimately political union. EMU is, and always was meant to be, a stepping stone on the way to a united Europe".
Wim Duisenburg, President of the European Central Bank
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"........ EMU looks likely to begin on schedule because economic issues are secondary to political aspirations."
"The Maastricht Treaty that created the EMU calls for a European political union with broad domestic and international responsibilities. Moreover, since no significant country existsor has ever existed - without its own currency, the shift to a single currency for the EMU members is a giant step toward such a European state."
Professor Martin Feldstein, TIME magazine 19/01/98
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"On 1 January 1999 with the introduction of the Euro ... an important part of national sovereignty, to wit monetary sovereignty, was passed over to a European institution ... The introduction of a common currency is not primarily an economic, but rather a sovereign and thus eminently political act...political union must be our lodestar from now on: it is the logical follow-on from Economic and Monetary Union."
Joshka Fischer in a speech to the European Parliament, January 1999
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"The creation of a single European state bound by one European constitution is 'the decisive task of our time'"
Joshka Fischer - Daily Telegraph 27/11/98
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"The top priority (is) to turn the EU into a single political state"
Joshka Fischer - The Times 26/11/98
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"........ Europe exemplifies a situation unfavourable to a common currency. It is composed of separate nations, speaking different languages, with different customs, and having citizens feeling far greater loyalty and attachment to their own country than to a common market or to the idea of "Europe".
Professor Milton Friedman The Times 19/11/97
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"We should create an 'own resource' for the Union in the form of a direct income tax, independent of nationality"
Jose Maria Gil-Robels, President of the European Parliament, Daily Telegraph 25/10/98
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"The finance of the country is ultimately associated with the liberties of the country. It is a powerful leverage by which the English liberty has been gradually acquired. If the House of Commons by any possibility loses the power of control of the grants of public money, depend upon it, your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison."
Gladstone, House of Commons, 1891
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Monetary union is to be seen "as the last step in a process of integration that began only a few years after the Second World War".
Dr Helmut Hesse, Director, Bundesbank
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"Any nation which gives up its freedom in pursuit of economic advantage deserves to lose both".
Thomas Jefferson, US President - almost 200 years ago
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"I can envisage a directive "to harmonise EU business tax rates within two years."
Jean-Claude Juncker, President, Ecofin Council
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"A signal must be sent ... that a single market and a single currency is not the end of the EU journey."
Viktor Klima, Chancellor of Austria, 24/10/98
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"The future will belong to the Germans....when we build the house of Europe. In the next two years, we will make the process of European integration irreversible. This is a really big battle but it is worth the fight...We want the political unification of Europe. If there is no monetary union, then there cannot be political union, and vice versa."
Chancellor Kohl
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"Economic and monetary union is the central part of the project for European unification. It is of course, the highest and purest form of integration."
Karl Lamers, Chancellor Kohl's Spokesman
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"A single currency is about the politics of Europe. It is about a Federal Europe by the back door."
John Major, November 1996
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Monetary union is to be seen "as the last step in a process of integration that began only a few years after the Second World War".
Dr Helmut Hesse, Director, Bundesbank
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"Any nation which gives up its freedom in pursuit of economic advantage deserves to lose both".
Thomas Jefferson, US President - almost 200 years ago
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"I can envisage a directive "to harmonise EU business tax rates within two years."
Jean-Claude Juncker, President, Ecofin Council
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"A single currency will oblige Britain to become a member of the European Central Bank, the executives of which will be appointed for eight years. No matter what damage they inflict on us no-one will be able to remove them. People will have the right to vote, but that vote will be a gesture or charade because the parties and government for whom they vote will no longer have the powers to rectify the wrongs inflicted upon them".
Llew Smith (MP Labour), 18 November 1996
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"Of course the risks will remain, especially if we don't follow up the bold step that led to a single currency with further bold steps towards political integration".
Gerhard Schroder, German Chancellor
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"There is a tendency to underestimate the fiscal powers and therefore the political powers available to the Council. The Council will have more power over the budgets of member states than the central federal institutions have in either Germany or the United States..... Yes, there is an element of political union involved, since fiscal decisions are necessarily political..... What remains true is that the political union enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty in the economic field has no equivalent today in other fields: diplomacy, internal and external security."
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"Germany, as the biggest and most powerful economic member state, will be the leader, whether we like it or not."
Theo Waigel, German Minister of Finance
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"There was a threat to employment from the movement to Economic and Monetary Union...(with) fixed exchange rates, restricting industrial growth and so putting jobs at risk. This threat has been removed."
Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the 1975 Referendum.
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"There is no example in history of a lasting monetary union that was not linked to one State."
Otmar Issuing, Chief Economist, German Bundesbank Council 1991
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"A European currency will lead to member-nations transferring their sovereignty over financial and wage policies as well as in monetary affairs... It is an illusion to think that States can hold on to their autonomy over taxation policies."
Hans Tietmeyer, Bundesbank President 1991
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"We argue about fish, about potatoes, about milk, on the periphery. But what is Europe really for? Because the countries of Europe, none of them anything but second-rate powers by themselves, can, if they get together, be a power in the world, an economic power, a power in foreign policy, a power in defence equal to either of the other superpowers. We are in the position of the Greek city states: they fought one another and they fell victim to Alexander the Great and then to the Romans. Europe united could still, by not haggling about the size of lorries but by having a single foreign policy, a single defence policy and a single economic policy, be equal to the great superpowers"
Hraold MacMillian, British Prime Minister The Listener, 8th February 1979
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"On the basis of repeated meetings with him and of an attentive observation of his actions, I think that if in his own way W Hallstein (first president of the European Commission) is a sincere "European", this is only because he is first of all an ambitious German. For the Europe that he would like to see would contain a framework within which his country would find once again and without cost the respectability and equality of rights that Hitler's frenzy and defeat caused it to lose; then acquire the overwhelming weight that will follow from its economic capacity; and, finally, achieve a siuation in which its quarrels concerning its boundaries and its unification will be assumed by a powerful coalition."
Charles de Gaulle, President of France Memoirs of Hope, 1970
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"The fusion of economic functions would compel nations to fuse their sovereignty into that of a single European State"
Jean Monnet, founder of the European Movement 3rd April 1952
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"It is as well to state this at the outset - no government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifices which any adequate plan for European Union must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked, in advance of having received any of the benefits which will accrue to them from the plan, to make changes of which they may not at first recognize the advantage to themselves as well as to the rest of the world. No satisfactory economic plan for Europe can be devised without sacrifice of sovereignty by the nations concerned."
'Design for Freedom' committee, chaired by Peter Thorneycroft MP June 1947
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In the House of Commons in 1990 a resolution was passed that no Minister of the Crown "should give agreement to EEC legislation until the Select Committee had examined it".
This resolution was and still is ignored.
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"The finance of the country is ultimately associated with the liberties of the country. It is a powerful leverage by which the English liberty has been gradually acquired.
If the House of Commons by any possibility loses the power of control of the grants of public money, depend upon it, your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison"
Gladstone, House of Commons, 1891
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