EUROPEAN UNION – A BAD MISTAKE?

FOR THOSE OF US who are ignorant of all but the simplest of economic concepts – like, for instance, not introducing a single currency within several divergent economies; are now left scratching our heads in disbelief at how the continents best educated; who were ennobled with what we in this country would describe as Rolls-Royce brains; could ever have believed in such a concept as a European single currency, without first delivering  political union and managing the reality of a single currency in two stages. What possessed them? Perhaps they were literally possessed in the demonic sense? For why else would rational people behave in such an absurd, and, may well turn out to be, such a destructive manner?

            European Monetary Union (EMU) was, for a long time, the love that dare not speak its name – at least, that is, in the UK. While throughout the rest of Europe the concept carried all the force and authority of a law of nature; we in the UK were sceptical, and indeed Euro-scepticism became a term of abuse directed at any suggestion made that contradicted edicts emanating from the Brussels’ bureaucrats.

            Those unelected European commissioners; comprising appointees of national governments, were used to dispense laws like confetti; without recourse to any democratic authority. There was more accountability among the Borgia popes  than there is within the EU.

            Of course Europe has its parliament – a costly debating chamber with little of the authority that our lawmakers have at Westminster.

            Political and Monetary Union were meant to herald a Federal European Union to match that of the United States of America (what some have indeed called, a United States of Europe). But such a wet dream was badly handled from the beginning. The early, shall we dare call them (in the American sense) pioneers; were troubled by Europe’s internecine warfare that reached its tragic zenith in the 20^th century.

            Now, it appears, all that stands between us and the carnage of the previous century are the Brussels’ bureaucrats. Never before has this prosaic and dull species  been able to boast that it is they and they alone that stand between the continent’s enslavement to everlasting conflict, and the bucolic future they aspire to give us.

           

THE IDEA OF UNITING Europe both politically and monetarily after the last war, was a combination of German Romanticism and French Idealism. The EU’s construction was set in motion after centuries in which armed conflict between various European alliances had managed to tear the continent apart, long before both of the great European wars of the last century. It was, in particular, the French who, following the Second World War, tried to set the continent’s path on a more agreeable future by seeking to unify the nations of Europe – by, of course, allotting themselves (as always) the prime position within such an arrangement.

            This whole wretched adventure was mishandled from the beginning because each of the country’s leaders had to answer to their respective electorates; and therefore, progress toward the European Ideal was bound to be slow in coming.

            To bring about the United States of Europe; the first requirement should have been political union. What this would have meant was the reduction of national parliaments to state bodies similar to the USA.

            It would have meant having a central administration like Washington, where representatives from all of the ‘states’ (in the American sense) could be represented; and where national (for yes, Europe would become a mere nation under such an arrangement) financial decisions would be taken and where levels of taxation and spending would be made.

            This, of course, could only be made practicable by a single currency that would intertwine with political union. But as we now know, political union would have proven a step too far. It would mean giving up all forms of nationhood and independence. It would mean forgetting that most significant part of our culture – our nation’s history. Which is why Europe’s best brains were driven toward a single currency.

           

SO THIS IS WHY EUROPE put the cart before the horse and elected to ignite a single currency before the rational element (political union) was even considered. Such was, it seems, the idealistic drive for Federal Union, that corners were cut and the monetary union horse was put before the political union cart.

            But the monetary union horse however, turned out to be a nag. For it lacked any kind of pedigree. It however, became the only option for those idealists in Europe who wanted to see the European project ‘completed’ at any cost. 

            If this cost meant, as we see today, that the debt crises now unfolding in those countries that should never have been part of any first tier of European economic union in the first place; then they, those nations in southern Europe, should blame the naive idealism that has driven the process from the very beginning.

            Today within Europe, the southern nations of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece are almost, but not quite, dependent upon the industriousness of the German people for their solvency.

            It is Germany’s wealth that is helping pay for Greece’s deficit as well as any other southern European country that falls foul of an unmanageable national debt.

            I have written about my empathy for the German people before. But I still have to return to the sacrifice their leaders are asking them as taxpayers to make. First of all, as described above, their taxes are being used to bail out  second level (economically speaking) members of the EU. Such members should never have been allowed to fit into such a financial arrangement as the single currency in the first place.

            The German people have created a wonderful manufacturing economy, and the wealth that this economy produces should be used to help the people and the country it belongs to. I would be outraged, if I were a German, that my taxes should be used to keep a country like Greece afloat, a country  which treats corruption as an indispensible part of its culture; and where taxes are laughed at – and why not, if the rest of Europe are paying them.

            This is partly why economic union should have been treated, realistically speaking,  with more discernment by Europe’s intellectually gifted. But alas idealism vanquished, as it often does, common sense.