Wishful Thinking
Also in today’s Washington Post, David Ignatius thinks that the EU’s new Eastern members will save it from itself:
“Look East” should be the motto of this united Europe. For the 10 new members, far from being a burden, can bring a needed energy and dynamism to the union. They can blow apart the bureaucratism and welfare-state culture that still hobble much of Europe, if the core 15 will let free markets function the way they should.
When it comes to free trade, Paris thinks Washington is a sucker. When it comes to free political expression, Berlin (how odd, even now, not to say “Bonn”) compares Bush to Hitler. What makes Ignatius believe that the Franco-Prussian (er, Franco-German) cabal that runs the EU will give more weight to Warsaw or Prague or Budapest’s sensibilities than they do ours?
Slovakia won’t liberate the EU any more than Hong Kong will liberate China.
But Hong Kong has amazingly and profoundly liberated China. OK, there is still far to go… but there is a constant flow of business-wise attitudes, competitiveness and openness that comes in the hearts and minds of the Hongkongese as they are sent by their employers to every nook and cranny of China to open factories, assembly lines, restaurants, and stores. Many areas of China have sustained real growth of well over 10% per year for more than 17 of the past 20 years. Can you imagine average wealth growing 8 fold in 25 years?You can’t travel in China without seeing that Hong Kong is now the primary capital, followed by Canton, Shanghi, and Beijing in that order. Beijing still has more bikes than motorcycles!
I don’t know if you can trust those growth numbers Dave. Economic news presented by communist governments have never been exactly trustworthy. Sure, China has made great economic strides over the last twenty years, especially in the coastal cities, but there’s 50% of their industry that’s still state-owned, and a stagnant banking system supporting all the rot.
And aside from economics, Hong Kong is far from liberating China politically. Instead of the local elected legislature they had under the limeys, the’ve got technocrats calling the shots, appointed from Beijing. Not what I’d call progress.
Back to the original point of the post, the Eastern European nations won’t have any effect on common EU policy, because, in order to join, they’ll have to implement all of the EU’s pre-existing regulatory mess, thus creating the same problems for them that the existing members already face.
The only benefit I see out of eastern membership is a possible improvement of the EU-US relationship. That assummes, of course, that teh Franco-Germans give the new guys any say in foreign affairs…
The WaPo guy needs to get his facts straight.
The membership being offer the East includes no free movement of labor for 7 years. That’s a sop to German industry.
Then the sop to French agriculture–subsidies will be “normalized” to their levels. So the farmers in Eastern Europe will get screwed, and have no place to go thanks to the restriction on job movement.
Why the Eastern European countries are going along with this is a mystery to me. They’re gonna get screwed.