While I am not against European unity in se, I abhor the current form of the EU, and the line of thought that forms it.
In itīs current form, it is nothing more than neo-liberal agenda being forced down the throats of national governments, even if those arenīt (neo)- liberal at all.
It is forcing governments to make massive budget cuts, whereas in this time of crisis, we would be much better off with investment.
Brussel makes laws and regulations based on treaties that they call democratic. They seem to forget that a lot of countries had a referendum against the 'European Constitution', a few years back. This European Constitution did not pass popular vote, mainly because people saw that it was nothing more than a fancy document that advantages big companies and multinationals, while neglecting, or even actively making it harder for countries to spend budget on social issues. The Constitution was redirected to the trash bin, simply because the people in too many countries said "NO!". A year later, the European lobbyers had come up with this new treaty. They were smart, and did not call it a Constitution this time, so no referendum was called. However, if you look at what's in the treaty, it's 99% similar to the dejected Constitution, that nobody wants. It passed without anyone objecting, because people weren't made aware of it's importance this time. So now we are pretty screwed with all kinds of discretional power and legislation forced down upon us from Brussels, unaffected by our democratic vote.
There is ofcourse the European parliament, formed from democratically chosen members from the various states. They are meant to safeguard the democratic processes during policy-making, and represent the interests of all European citizens. But they lack the power to actually influence descision making. I guess that's where the history of European wars and division still shines through.
This leaves all power of descision making to a rather small group of not-so-democratically appointed lobbyers, of whom a vast majority have a strict neo-liberal agenda. Even though neo-liberalism is becoming less favoured by a lot of national democracies. This has had, and will have catastrophic consequences for the ordinary man. Greece's citizens are it's first victim. (Although I must admit, there's a lot that gone wrong internally in Greece, even before that). Next up is the destruction of social security by force of 'budgetary discipline'. I hope this monster falls apart soon, even though it does not directly hurt me (yet), living in relative, yet comfortable safety in the wealthy Netherlands.
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Topic: The United States of Europe (Read 16932 times)