Europe: the lost ideal

Today, the Austrian Parliament approved on the draft treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, in short called the European “Constitution”, but in reality an insult to the word “constitution” and a total aberration of the principles on which Europe is built.

Europe is built on freedom, competition and democracy. What the European “constitution” wants to do, is to strengthen the power of the undemocratic, overregulated and sometimes corrupt institution that the EU is, without improving a lot the nature of this institution.

The EU talks about “competition”, but in reality, the core program of this bureaucratic entity, is to reduce all competition possible in Europe. The EU wants to harmonize taxes, regulations and government. What made the development of the West possible, was the existence of a lack of central authority and a competition of governments, laws and regulations.

There were a lot of disadvantages and costs to that, but at the end, it made the whole society dynamic and less suffering from abuse of power, as power wasn’t centralised.

Sure, the EU implemented some liberalisations, and still has some liberalisation projects, such as the Bolkestein directive. But the benefits of most liberalisations were made undone. The internal market barriers which have been removed, have been replaced by external barriers. And also the Bolkestein directive proposal, will at the end be transformed into a proposal imposing minimum social norms on the member states.

It is not possible to advocate at the same time economical welfare and the EU. The globalisation process seriously challenges inefficient and welfare destroying entities as the Union. The cost of pursuing such policies is increasing with the day. So even more than the referendums in France, the Netherlands, or Britain, this reality will be the biggest challenge for the EU bureaucrats.