Question: In which direction did the Berlin Wall fall?
Answer: In our direction, of course!
Right - except that 16 years later, it looks like the wall fell in the other direction.  Indeed, we are more than ever faced with institutions which look like the remnants of policies and methods which we thought had terminally discredited themselves and eventually landed on the waste heap of history. For how come the EU, its Constitution and arrest warrent, the OECD and its Financial Action Task Force FATF and the IRS-lead international Anti-Tax Avoidance Task Force incarnate non-democratic bureaucratic lawmaking?  They pursue anti-market and anti-privacy policies and methods, turning upside down the EU's fundamental principle of old treaties to take precedence over any EU rule and regulation. Thereby running afoul of fundamental achievements of civilization, like the presumption of innocence and due process. Not convinced? Then project yourself two years from now, and look back. 

Imagine you're a German banker, successfully established in Annecy, a picturesque town in Haute-Savoie. It’s a beautiful summer evening in June 2007. And you finally made it to a Wagner premiere at the Bayreuth Festival. All was just perfect and greatly satisfying.

Or so it seemed. For at the Festival’s entrance security check, the electronic scanning of your driver licence produced a red alert from the Schengen Information System SIS: it signaled a European Union arrest warrant (http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexdoc!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=en&numdoc=32002F0584&model=lex), issued by a Cypriot prosecutor, against you for "laundering of the proceeds of crime." This happens to be one of 32 crimes for which you must be arrested in any other EU country and extradited to the requesting state according to special procedures, like in the case of terrorism, hostage-taking and the like. That means without bail, without the right to appeal, despite the German Constitution’s protections against extradition, without the alleged crime to have been committed in the requesting state, and without such other guarantees as the requirement of double criminality, i.e. the crime must be punishable in both the requesting and the extraditing state as well as where it was actually committed. And it all fell into place with the creeping OECD-assisted criminalization of "agressive tax avoidance", initiated in late 2004 by an international task force lead by the IRS ("IRS praises early findings of international tax [avoidance] taskforce", Andrew Parker, FT, 2/28/05).

Instead of being shown to your opera seats, you were thus whisked to prison and shipped off to Cyprus within ten days. All your friends could do was bring in a lawyer who, essentially, found himself reduced to advising you of your right to "consenting to surrender to the issuing judicial authority." (art.11.1)

Origin of these "Greetings from Guantanamo"

Adopted in the wake of 9/11 on 13 June 2002 by the Council of the European Union and published in its "Official Journal L 190 , 18/07/2002", this purely bureaucratic, yet EU-wide binding "Framework Decision" foreshadowed what the civilised world has become ashamed of under the name of "Guantanamo".

During all of 2005, not only eurosceptic British citizens and lawmakers, but similarly alert and mistrustful Frenchmen and women had contributed to put the nail into the coffin of the mislabelled, ill-advised and only-good-for-zombies European Constitution. This had allowed the new French Finance Minister Thierry Breton, to draw inspiration for reversing France’s dismal economic and social prospects from an unexpected source: old, but valid, liberal and non-bureaucratic French treaties (http://www.solami.com/commercetreaties.htm). Lacking typewriters, computers and copying machines, the authors of these texts had to be concise, comprehensive and focussed on the essentials - all wonderfully stimulating playgrounds for enterprising spirits. Moreover, art.234 (now 307) of the EU’s fundamental Treaty of Rome of 1957 provides for EU member's rights and obligations concluded prior to their accession to the EU to take precedence over any of the increasingly indigestable, costly and overburdening EU rules and regulations. And that, it appeared, applied also to commercial liberties and taxations in free zones created almost 200 years ago. The European Constitution would have abolished all that - including longstanding treaties with the United States (www.solami.com/EUUS.htm).

For decades, these treaty-based freedoms were ignored by policy-makers and paper-pushers all over Europe. And so, initially, it was felt even in far-away Paris as something akin to an administrative Tsunami when, last January 17, a principled judge at the Tribunal d’Instance in Saint-Julien (Haute-Savoie) rendered her judgement against the traditionally all-powerful French Customs Administration. For, on the basis of freedoms and rights detailed in the Treaty of Turin of 1816, all smuggling, exportation and importation charges brought against an unsuspecting cross-bordering Geneva citizen were thus thrown out.  On top of that, the French customs officials were told they could neither exercise their duties inside the zone, nor collect there such customs-like taxes as the VAT (http://www.solami.com/douane.htm).

Honed in a highly competitive French business sector, Thierry Breton was quick to cool off his taxmen’s wounded pride, reflexes and judicial revenge calls. Having learned to think and act outside of worn-out tracks, not afraid of exploring uncharted terrain, and comfortable sailing even against strong winds, he directed his subordinates instead to take a hard look into the opposite direction, and to promote French national interests as much as possible by way of the opportunities thus brought to light.

Instead of seeking judicial abrogation of the 547 km² Free Zones around Geneva, another international treaty, the 1860 Treaty concerning the annexation of Savoie to France thus was used to extend this Free Zone to a whopping total of 3508 km², including the lake of Annecy and beyond. And instead of lamenting about lost revenues, the treaty-based freedom of commerce, going back to the 1603 Treaty of Saint-Julien, was thus rediscovered and reinterpreted to mean the residents of these zones shall enjoy all asset protections available to the residents of Geneva, with no other or higher administrative burdens or constraints than those imposed on the latter. In practice, this was to turn these free zones into a tax-free administrative laboratory, allowing zonians to enjoy Geneva-level banking secrecy at their local banks, with only a simplified flat community income tax of 10% substituting all other taxes. Moreover, all Paris- or EU-originated non-ecological red-tape hindering trade with either Geneva or other parts of France were automatically set aside in as much as they were not confirmed by the zones’s specially setup Council for Enterprise.

For visionary leadership not to be frustrated by EU Ukases

For our seasoned German banker, the almost immediate world-wide commercial and investor success of the French Finance Minister’s initiative caused him to open shop in beautiful Annecy. And in this redtape-liberated new environment in the shadow of the Alps, he joined a growing stream of the world's brightest minds and most competent technicians, all working with a uniquely motivated labor force.  Moreover, he found himself liberated from his profession's disproportional and anti-enterprise compliance obsession.  Instead, he helped the most innovative industrialists and sophisticated investors to do their own thing as best as they could, successfully and to the common good.

Many things were thus again allowed – even called for – what in other parts of the European Union were still constrained or even prohibited by the penal code. So much so that one professional used to the old ways of doing things – in IRS/OECD newspeek – got an "agressively tax avoiding" Turkish automaker on his radar. In his efforts to bring this important foreign investor to set up shop in Cyprus, the Cypriot official had just lost out to the Free Zone of Haute-Savoie, provoking not only blinding jealousy but reviving deeply-rooted political gut reactions and raising the specter of Turkish mafia involvements.

Indeed, professionals helping to identfy and take advantage from "tax havens", like Breton's free zones in Northern Savoy, not only ired taxmen in high-tax EU countries, but came on the radar of many politicians and prosecutors pursuing individual agendas and chasing both tax fraudsters and mere tax avoiders. Of course, our banker was not only allowed by French law but encouraged to practice treaty-based "Geneva-level" banking standards which in no way penalized tax evasion and, moreover, recognized tax avoidance as a key pillar of the market economy. In contrast, tax evasion was in most EU countries still a crime, with some even coat-tailing on the IRS's and the OECD's myopic - and non-statutory - witchhunt against tax avoiders. Our banker in Annecy could thus easily be shaken down by way of - absurdly, yet effectively - accusing him of money laundering by fostering and benefiting from merely suspected dirty money, tax evasion or mere tax avoidance.  For the bureaucratically adopted EU arrest warrant availed itself for all that.

Thierry Breton's dreams thus were threatened from within and the outside - merely for lack of attention to some fundamentals. For those in the forefront of making his possible successes happen - not least foreign investors - needed, expected and deserved to be fully protected by French law, also against any foreign snoops.  They deserved to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor - including visiting Bayreuth without hassles.  Experience shows that foreign investors have a habit of voting with their feet if they are cheated out of their part of the bargain, be it by national or foreign taxmen and prosecutors.  Irrespective of the genuine or fabricated claims behind which hard-selling foreign competitors and bad loosers often hide.