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- iHaveNet.com: Europe
Outcome of the European Parliament Elections
by William Pfaff
The outcome of the recently concluded European Parliament elections is described in press and political circles in Europe and North America as a shock or crisis, but the actual reaction is better named hysteria, as if "Europe" is all over, and the rise of the right in these elections resembles the rise of fascism in the 1930s -- all of which is sheer nonsense.
What this vote has done is contribute 150 anti-"European" members to a parliamentary body numbering 751 seats in total, which has very little power over the functions of the
Furthermore, while some of the extremist national parties -- Golden Dawn in Greece,
Jobbik in Hungary, DF in Denmark, PVV in the Netherlands,
Sovereignty was the most important theme in the vote over-all. This was an anti-
The main object of voter resentment or resistance today is the economic and banking crises provoked in the southern tier of EU member-states by the "neo-liberal" or monetarist austerity policies imposed by the
The vote, accordingly, was against the Euro currency, adopted in defiance of the EU nations' lack of a common budget, common fiscal condition and tax policies, and shared lender of last resort (the last-named vetoed by Germany, as were other measures that might have been adopted as lessons learned from the experience of the Great Depression).
The vote was also against the Schengen policy of free passage within the nineteen treaty-members' frontiers of everyone with valid EU papers, and against existing EU immigration policies which victimize the Mediterranean states which rescue would-be immigrants by the thousands and are forced to harbor them because they are the nations of "first arrival" and the northern EU states do not wish to have the migrants passed on to them -- even though they endorse the EU's generous migrant and asylum policies that draw the immigrants.
It was, finally, a vote against technocratic and bureaucratic meddling in Brussels to regulate and impose conformity in minor matters that common sense says should be left to individual state responsibility, at the same time that international agreements on trade and international regulatory matters are made with little or no public debate (the pending Transatlantic trade pact with the U.S., about which next to nothing has been revealed to the public, only to lobbyists, is an example).
The fundamental problem still unresolved is what this European association is ultimately to become. It was political in the beginning (the coal and steel community) because a German-French industrial merger was expected to make war impossible.
The same logic of economic reform producing political change was pursued in further treaties until the present situation was reached, when economic reforms (the Euro and the
It would seem to me, as a concerned outsider, that it is time to return to a model of international alliance among sovereign European nations, accompanied by pragmatic treaties of cooperation, mutual consultation, cooperation and support. The United States was the original model upon which the postwar Europeans set out to build a European Nation. The original model is today very close to becoming a failed nation, destroyed by over-ambition, over-extension and the breakdown of its governing institutions. Europe is a civilization, not a nation, and that civilization needs to be defended.
Available at Amazon.com:
The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs"
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Article: Copyright © Tribune Content Agency
"Outcome of the European Parliament Elections"