Realising Our European Potential

The rulings of the European Court of Human Rights are increasingly influenced by political interests, applications are blocked in advance and others are not processed in a timely manner or pushed back and forth on the desks of insiders. The Court of Justice often accuses countries of slow processing, but often takes more than 12 years to carry out an initial evaluation itself. At the same time the Federal Republic of Germany has already been reprimanded more than 55 times for excessively long court proceedings - yet the proceedings are still getting longer. Many judges have dubious backgrounds, conflicts of interest, are nominated for political loyalty or promoted after favourable judgments, and are not even prosecuted in obvious acts suspected of corruption. There is a complete lack of transparency, consistency and future orientation.

The European Human Rights Convention is on everyone's lips, but in fact its content is largely unknown and even less respected in its implementation. In 2017, the Federal Republic of Germany committed the same number of human rights violations as 12 other EU countries combined. As an experienced human rights activist and lawyer in the USA, the EU, and also in Eastern Europe since 1990, I am committed to greater compliance with the Convention and to reducing the often easily visible structural state corruption, the majority of which is the cause of the violations.

The misguided health policy of recent years is not in line with technical capabilities. The socialist system of lump sums prevents comprehensive prevention and care.  Hospitals are profit centers instead of health facilities. Performance-oriented and willing doctors, midwives, nurses and nursing staff have considerably better working conditions elsewhere, while the Federal Republic of Germany is implementing neo-colonialist efforts that are causing a disastrous brain drain in other countries and alienating its own population. Delivery rooms are closed, wards are overcrowded; doctors have to decide whose lives to save and whom to let die due to lack of staff.

The EU has an incredible and unrivalled potential that cannot be matched by any other heterogeneous country due to internal differences. Nationalistic thinking, de facto obstacles to integration and freedom of movement, bureaucratic harassment in the education system and political short-sightedness to maintain one's own power cause disadvantages for all. 

Germany and other EU countries need a management- and result-oriented reboot. Reducing the number of staff working for each other by an estimated 50% from local to EU administration reduces costs, increases efficiency and concentrates resources on real needs. Consistent use of IT, cross-linking, reduction of senseless duplicate bureaucracy, conversion from cumbersome documentation to video and audio documentation, automated or computer-controlled self-administration, also multilingual with speech recognition and interactivity, help to bring the 50 years outdated administrative effort into the present and future, as well as to save costs and taxes. Objective, documented, traceable processes are thus subject to less corruption, personal discretion and legal uncertainty.