Now is the time (cleppe)

Now is the time to drop the European Union. We have to get rid of it. In an astonishing article in the English newspaper “The business”, a magnificent analysis is made of the current state of the world, from a British perspective. It leads no doubt that this analysis also can be applied for all the beautiful European countries, such as Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Spain, all the others, and certainly not to forget the Eastern European economic tigers.

The European summit made clear that the Union is a waste of time, having silly discussions on a European budget and trying not to give up the project after citizens made very clear their discontent. Not admitting that the centralising “constitution” is dead, what is very undemocratic, and can not be justified at all.

This article makes clear that the big issue of present day is global competition. In the US, Australia and Japan, the talk of the town isn’t the European Union. It’s BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and certainly China.

One should be aware that the European Union centralises decision making, sets up redistributive systems such as the CAP and the subsidies for poor regions. All this is highly unfit to a competitive environment.

Some say Europe needs to be centralised in order to be able to face global competition. When one reads the economic figures of the global competition that is so blesfull for the development of the world, there is only one conclusion to made: The European Union can survive with protectionism, but not one memberstate, if it were independent, would be able to close its borders without having grave damages in terms of wealth. With the Union, protectionism would stop development. Without the Union, the absence of protectionism would produce a florishing region of small nations.

Britain needs to get out first, to form a precedent. After, the others have to follow.

Some excerpts:

“But what the last few days have confirmed is that the entire EU project has become a giant and unaffordable distraction for Britain and all other forward-looking European countries, especially those in the post-communist East.”

"A British Prime Minister with his eye on the future should be devoting most of his time trying to forge closer economic and cultural ties with coming Asia, not wasting his time arguing with dinosaurs such as President Chirac or Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany."

"Far too much of Britains intellectual capital and time is being diverted and squandered into dealing with European matters, including the 100,000 or so pages of the acquis communautaire; it should be redeployed to addressing international developments which matter. The best and brightest in government, civil service, think-tanks, universities, law firms and businesses are still unhealthily obsessed with what has become, over the past 20 years, a profoundly defective and destructive set of European institutions."

"At the end of the 19th century, the thinking classes were so preoccupied with some of the more obscure outposts of the British Empire that they failed to notice and respond to the emergence of the United States a superpower; in the early 21st century, their backward-looking obsession with European integration blinds them to the rise of Asia. And what a rise it will be."

"In dollar terms, the Chinese economy will overtake Germany in the next four years, Japan by 2015 and the US by 2039. Indias economy could be larger than all but the US and China in 30 years. Of the current G6 (America, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain) only the US and Japan are likely to be among the six largest economies in US dollar terms in 2050."

"The euro zone is expected to grow by just 1.4% this year, compared with 3.5% for the US and close to 10% for China. While the populations of America, India and China are projected to grow, Europes population will decline by almost 10% over the next few decades."

"Demographers believe Europes population will shrink from about 1/4 of the worlds population after the second world war (and about 1/6 now), to about 1/10 by 2050. By 2007, deaths will exceed births in the euro zone and a massive pension crisis is on the cards."

"While the UK formally retains control and, as Iraq demonstrated, can still strike ad hoc alliances with the US if it wishes, many other aspects of its relations with the rest of the world are now run through Brussels and hence influenced by its inward-looking, antediluvian mindset. For years now, Britain has not had a trade policy; negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are conducted by the EU."

"Though ratification of the European Constitution was formally put on ice last week, the EU is nevertheless forging ahead with a European diplomatic service, with EU embassies and ambassadors in every country to project EU foreign policy and issue EU visas."

"A proper internationalist future for Britain in the 21st century cannot conceivably lie in ever greater integration with a European continent in inexorable economic, social, cultural and geopolitical decline."

"A cultural revolution will be necessary, involving a reorientation of British foreign policy towards Asia and Latin America; free trade; a radical programme to liberalise the British economy and to inject choice and competition into the public sector; a renewed emphasis on education, including the rescue of British universities from the dead hand of the state and the creation of a UK Ivy League; and constitutional change to repair the damage brought about by membership of the EU and the hyper-centralisation of recent years to ensure that Britain remains an open and accountable society."

"It is now clear that disentangling Britain from the European morass is the essential first step towards a truly internationalist perspective for the 21st century."

Article via http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2005/06/little-europeans.html