The European Union (along with its predecessors – the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community, and the European Community) was supposed to ensure the continent would never repeat the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. Let’s see how its doing.
When it comes to avoid the economic sclerosis of the 1930s (Telegraph):
Remember what European Monetary Union was supposed to do? It was going to add zillions to Europe’s GDP, they said.
According to the Lisbon development plan, by 2010, the EU was going to be “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable”.
The truth is that Europe is failing badly. At a time when the rest of the world is growing, data out today shows France stagnating. Shockingly, Italy’s output is lower today than it was fourteen years ago. Even Germany is going into reverse.
Lest we forget, Germany was supposed to be the engine that kept Europe running – so much so that it has been given de facto control of European monetary policy for fifteen years (with the completely expected disaster resulting for the nations to its south).
Still, at least we have a sense of continental solidarity that was lacking in those dark times, right?
Well… (FT via Andrew Stuttaford):
A French populist-conservative politician and investor has agreed to build a historic theme park in the Russian-annexed territory of Crimea together with a patriotic Russian financier who has been linked to pro-Russian insurgents in eastern Ukraine.
The deal between Philippe de Villiers, leader of the eurosceptic Mouvement pour la France party, and Konstantin Malofeev, a key figure in Russian orthodox conservative circles who support expansionist ideologies, is certain to reignite controversy in Europe over supporting a regime the EU is trying to punish with sanctions.
The Crimean government said Mr de Villiers, Mr Malofeev and Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of the Crimean government, had signed a memorandum of understanding under which Mr de Villiers’ company Puy du Fou International and Mr Malofeev would invest at least Rbs4bn ($110m) in the park.
Legal experts in Moscow said Mr de Villiers’ planned Crimean venture constituted an open defiance of EU sanctions.
Whoops. As Stuttaford himself put it…
Those with long memories may recall that the EU was meant to reinforce the political stability of Europe. That it is now, however inadvertently, helping Putin find some sort of opening in the West is just the latest reminder of how badly matters have gone awry.
Indeed.
Still, by far the greatest problem pre-World War II Europe faced was the latent and rampant anti-Semitism that fueled the National Socialists in Germany (and elsewhere). Surely, that has not returned thanks to Europe’s new and enlightened path.
Yeah, about that path (Brendan O’Neill, Telegraph):
The kosher incident took place at the Sainsbury’s in Holborn in London. When a mob of anti-Israel protesters gathered outside the store, the manager took the extraordinary decision to take all kosher products off the shelves lest the protesters target them and smash them up. Kosher foods, of course, are Jewish not Israeli; they are part of the Jewish dietary requirement, not part of any kind of Israeli food corporatism. To shamefacedly hide away such foodstuffs in order to appease a gang of hot-headed Israel-haters is an attack on a religious people and their rights, not on the Israeli state. That in Britain in 2014 we have store managers taking kosher foods off public display should be of concern to anyone who hates prejudice and racism.
…
Such official or institutional acquiescence to anti-Semitism is now widespread in Western Europe. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard people say that the problem of anti-Semitism isn’t all that bad, because they would rather just not talk about it. Or they say anti-Semitism is an understandable if slightly wrong-headed response to Israeli aggression in Gaza, excusing this poisonous prejudice as a kind of misfired political anger. In a world in which we are supersensitive to racism, in which a politician telling a less-than-PC after-dinner joke can expect to be harangued in the press and vilified on Twitter, it is simply extraordinary that more people are not exercised by the spread of anti-Semitic sentiment in Europe, by the smashing-up of synagogues, the vandalism of Jewish stores, the attacks on Holocaust memorials. This is the only prejudice that the opinion-forming set would rather not address. And in failing to do so, they effectively collude with it, granting it a special moral authority above all other prejudices. Everyone now knows that this is the one prejudice that respectable society won’t really challenge you for holding, and in fact will allow you to hold through making life easier for you. Hate Jews? OK, we’ll just remove this kosher food for you so that you don’t have to look at such ghastly stuff. Translation: be an anti-Semite, we don’t mind.
Oh dear.
I do not mean to claim that the EU itself is the cause of all these things (although I’m fairly certain it has a lot to do with the first two); I am, however, quite certain that it has done nothing to stop them, despite all the predictions that it would slay all three.
Europe has allowed itself to slide backwards. It must reverse itself, and if necessary, leave the EU behind.
If, instead, it chooses the shackling institutions at the cost of their supposed objectives, it will merely continue its headlong fall back into darkness.
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