German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Bush and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at a White House summit meeting last April where they launched the Transatlantic Economic Council

Six U.S. senators and 49 House members are advisers for a group working toward a Transatlantic Common Market between the U.S. and the European Union by 2015.

The Transatlantic Policy Network – a non-governmental organization headquartered in Washington and Brussels – is advised by the bi-partisan congressional TPN policy group, chaired by Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah.

The plan – currently being implemented by the Bush administration with the formation of the Transatlantic Economic Council in April 2007 – appears to be following a plan written in 1939 by a world-government advocate who sought to create a Transatlantic Union as an international governing body.

An economist from the World Bank has argued in print that the formation of the Transatlantic Common Market is designed to follow the blueprint of Jean Monnet, a key intellectual architect of the European Union, recognizing that economic integration must inevitably lead to political integration.

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As WND previously reported, a key step in advancing this goal was the creation of the Transatlantic Economic Council by the U.S. and the EU through an agreement signed by President Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel – the current president of the European Council – and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at a White House summit meeting last April.

Writing in the Fall 2007 issue of the Streit Council journal "Freedom and Union," Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., a member of the TPN advisory group, affirmed the target date of 2015 for the creation of a Transatlantic Common Market.

Costa said the Transatlantic Economic Council is tasked with creating the Transatlantic Common Market regulatory infrastructure. The infrastructure would not require congressional approval, like a new free-trade agreement would.

Writing in the same issue of the Streit Council publication, Bennett also confirmed that what has become known as the "Merkel initiative" would allow the Transatlantic Economic Council to integrate and harmonize administrative rules and regulations between the U.S. and the EU "in a very quiet way," without introducing a new free trade agreement to Congress.

Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah

No document on the TEC website suggests that any of the regulatory changes resulting from the process of integrating with the EU will be posted in the Federal Register or submitted to Congress as new free-trade agreements or as modifications to existing trade agreements.

In addition to Bennett, the advisers to the Transatlantic Policy Network includes the following senators: Thad Cochran, R-Miss.; Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.; Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.; Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; and Gordon Smith, R-Ore.

Among the 49 U.S. congressmen on the TPN's Congressional Group are John Boehner, R-Ohio; John Dingell, D-Mich.; Kenny Marchant, R-Texas; and F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc.

WND contacted Bennett's office for comment but received no return call by the publication deadline.

A progress report on the TEC website indicates the following U.S. government agencies are already at work integrating and harmonizing administrative rules and regulations with their EU counterparts: The Office of Management and Budget, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A step toward world government

The Streit Council is named after Clarence K. Streit, whose 1939 book "Union Now" called for the creation of a Transatlantic Union as a step toward world government. The new federation, with an international constitution, was to include the 15 democracies of U.S., UK, France, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and South Africa.

Ira Straus, the founder and U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO, a group dedicated to including Russia within NATO, credits Bennett as TPN chairperson with reviving Streit's work "seven decades later."

A globalist with leftist political leanings, Straus was a Fulbright professor of political science at Moscow State University and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations from 2001 to 2002.

The congruity of ideas between Bennett and Streit is clear when Bennett writes passages that echo precisely goals Streit stated in 1939.

One example is Bennett's claim in his Streit Council article that creating a Transatlantic Common Market would combine markets that comprise 60 percent of world Gross Domestic Product under a common regulatory standard that would become "the de facto world standard, regardless of what any other parties say."

Similarly, Streit wrote in "Union Now" that the economic power of the 15 democracies he sought to combine in a Transatlantic Union would be overwhelming in their economic power and a clear challenge to the authoritarian states then represented by Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union.

Also writing in the Fall 2007 issue of the Streit Council journal "Freedom and Union," World Bank economist Domenec Ruiz Devesa openly acknowledged that "transatlantic economic integration, though important in itself, is not the end."

"As understood by Jean Monnet," he continued, "economic integration must and will lead to political integration, since an integrated market requires common institutions producing common rules to govern it."

Transatlantic Common Market by 2015

Last February, the Transatlantic Policy Network formed a Transatlantic Market Implementation Group to put in place "a roadmap and framework" to direct the activity of the Transatlantic Economic Council to achieve the creation of the Transatlantic Common Market by 2015.

The Transatlantic Economic Council is an official international governmental body established by executive fiat in the U.S. and the EU without congressional approval or oversight. No new law or treaty was sought by the Bush administration to approve or implement the plan to create a Transatlantic Common Market.

The U.S. congressmen and senators are involved only indirectly, as advisers to the influential non-governmental organization.

In a February 2007 document entitled "Completing the Transatlantic Market," the TPN's Transatlantic Market Implementation Group writes, "The aim of this roadmap and framework would be to remove barriers to trade and investment across the Atlantic and to reduce regulatory compliance costs."

The document further acknowledged the impact the Transatlantic Common Market agenda would have on U.S. and European legislators: "The roadmap and framework will necessarily oblige legislative and regulatory authorities in both Europe and the United States to take into consideration from the outset the impact their acts may have on transatlantic economic relations and to ensure that their respective governmental bodies involved have the necessary budgetary and organizational resources to work closely with each other."

Clinton administration roots

The work to create a Transatlantic Common Market can be traced back to the Clinton administration's decision to join in the 1995 New Transatlantic Agenda with the European Commission.

Today, the website of the Transatlantic Economic Council openly proclaims the TEC is "a political body to oversee and accelerate government-to-government integration between the European Union and the United States of America."

The first meeting of the TEC was held Nov. 9 in Washington, D.C., and the next meeting is scheduled for June.

A joint statement issued at the Nov. 9 meeting specified progress was being made "in removing barriers to trade and investment and in easing regulatory burdens" in a wide range of policy areas, including drugs and disease control, the importation into the EU of U.S. poultry treated with pathogen reduction treatments, federal communication commissions allowing suppliers to create declarations of conformity for products, uniform standards for electrical products and agreements on standards for pure biofuels.

Jerome R. Corsi is a staff reporter for WND. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972 and has written many books and articles, including his latest best-seller, "The Late Great USA." Corsi co-authored with John O'Neill the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry." Other books include "Showdown with Nuclear Iran," "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil," which he co-authored with WND columnist Craig. R. Smith, and "Atomic Iran."