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Five Outta Fifty Ain't Bad
Following the Independent's "Fifty reasons to love the EU" front cover yesterday, several bloggers have pointed out how some of the Indie's claims are off the mark.
The best list comes from Tim Worstall, who accepts that the EU might be responsible for five of the fifty claims the paper makes for the Union.
A half dozen or so others are down to the EU too, but as Tim asks, it isn't as if a huge, costly, obtrusive and often anti-democratic institution like the EU was needed to manage things like "making Britons less insular" and protecting wildlife in Europe.
The Independent paraphases a famous Monty Python film line: "So what has Europe ever done for us, Apart from..."
It's a great line, but a tiny irony seems to have escaped the Indie's editors in their enthusiasm to get their list to the presses: The complaining revolutionaries in Life of Brian had little cause to moan, but they were, after all, living under an occupation.
Is the Indie telling us that the EU is an Occupying Force - but that we should quit whining and learn to love it?
Well, the EU has done many good things. For example, the former EEC diffused much rancour between Britain, France and Germany, though, as Tim is correct to point out, NATO bears more responsibility for peace in Europe than the EU.
Once poor countries such as Ireland, Portugal and Greece now prosper (though plenty of non-EU countries that have embraced free trade are rich too). The 27-member EU is the world's largest trading bloc.
Thanks to the 'Schengen accords', frontier posts have been abolished between 15 nations.(But not the UK).
Employment is also an important issue: hundreds of thousands of Poles commute between Poland and Britain every day.
And let us not forget the introduction of 'pet passports'. In the old days the UK had a profound fear that animals from the Continent would bring Rabies to Blighty.
But, as always, there is a downside. THe biggest problem is economic. The latest statistics, according to the OECD, tell of a record of slow growth and high unemployment in the majority of EU nations.
The leaders who meet in the capital of Germany must, somehow, find a way to reinvigorate most of their economies, which will require painful changes, to make labour markets more flexible. And they have to properly address the question of whether Turkey will join the club. And there is the persistent debate over a new 'constitution' for Europe.
Anyway, happy birthday.
