Gość: mirmat
IP: 64.7.146.*
01.05.04, 18:31
Ciesze sie, ze moge kupowac w Toronto dziennik, ktory pisze prawde:
A bigger, scarier EU
National Post, May 1, 2004
With the addition of 10 new members, the European Union will today expand to
25 members. It is a historic day. From the tribal squabbles of the Bronze age
to the industrial butchery of Nazi Germany, Europe has been wracked by war
for millennia. As recently as the 1980s, thousands of tanks and missiles were
arrayed on either side of the Iron Curtain in anticipation of yet another
apocalyptic conflict. The idea that these nations might be joined in common
purpose would have then seemed a fantasy. But today, it is a political
reality.
And yet, it is not a reality most on this side of the Atlantic would embrace.
Here in North America, the brief media reports about EU enlargement typically
focus on its symbolic and historical ramifications. Less discussed is the
intrusive manner by which the EU will impose its writ on the economic,
cultural and social life of member states. The EU being an essentially
utopian enterprise, its architects are disproportionately drawn from the
continent's left-leaning bureaucratic and intellectual classes. As a result,
the Union has developed an ambitious set of dirigiste human-rights norms and
labour standards. It has also created a new level of government without
removing existing layers, thereby expanding the cost of governance for the
people of Europe.
As Theodore Dalrymple argued on these pages last Tuesday, the new EU
Constitution would grant yet more powers to Brussels. If accepted by members,
it would create what is essentially a federated superstate, complete with a
common foreign policy that members would be required to follow "actively and
unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity." And since the new
members are relatively poor, the union will also become a tool of
redistributionist economics, with billions flowing East from Paris and London
to Warsaw and Riga. This is a generous gesture on the part of Western Europe.
But we doubt it is how most rank-and-file European citizens want their tax
money being spent.
Indeed, there is something fundamentally undemocratic about the European
Union project. While the EU legislature is elected, the body's activities are
so obscure that few Europeans bother voting, or even understand its
functions. Moreover, in many cases, the most intrusive decisions
