Non, nee never no more? Ten ways for the thinking classes to come to grips with the predicament facing the European Union. ‘Wild rovers’ should look away now… 

Last week’s ’no’ (non/nee) votes in France and Holland will not kill the European Union, but they will serve to put in perspective.

Pro-Europeans are chastened:
“I'll go home to my parents, confess what I've done,
And I'll ask them to pardon their prodigal son.
And if they caress me as oft times before,
Then I never will play the wild rover no more!”

To be sure, Europe’s more prodigal offspring and their acolytes are in retreat. But here are ten prismatic points through which to view the current morass. Oddly, some of the most salient (see the last three) are more to do with the United States than Europe.

• 1) both sides of the European debate, those in favour and those against, are arguing that the French and Dutch votes against strengthening the constitutional basis upon which the EU is founded are signs of a weakening of support for centralism. One side invokes the ‘no to Europe’ ostrich posture and claims that Europe is in abeyance if not retreat; the other side feigns despair in what would, were this a silent movie, be captioned ‘Stop! You are hurting me.’ Both views are misguided. It’s too early to write the EU’s obituary, whether from the viewpoint of angst or schadenfreude (Q: what would anglophone anti-Europeans do without the word ‘schadenfreude’? A: they would be even more monosyllabic than usual.)

• 2) in pure ICT terms, the EU has a nearly unblemished track record. It came late in the day to the power of mobile services and has played constant ‘catch-up’ in terms of the Internet. But from 1987 it slew the monopolies, a David against a Goliath if ever there was such a match-up

• 3) someone of importance once summed up the European Commission thusly: “it’s crap, but it’s well meaning crap and it tends to be effective crap..” Think on it. Europe versus Microsoft. Europe versus its own monopoly telcos. The competition rules applied by Brussels have produced some surprising ‘horizontal heavyweights’.If you are a consumer you must sing the praises of that.

• 4) the European Union can conjure up whole lexicons of idiomatic idiocy: ‘Lisbon’, ‘e-Europe’ and lately ‘i2010’ are the type of witless initiatives that only a eurocracy can create. Try to imagine how many emails were sent around Brussels and to the furthest outposts of the EU in order to formulate ‘i2010’’, the basic message of which is “use the telephone more and let’s keep it cheap.’”

• 5) Europe has issues around the mobile business and will need to challenge rip-off roaming and top-up termination charges. Think about it, not least if you live in France or the Netherlands. National regulators, cowed by governments in dirigiste countries like these, cannot cope with these challenges. Regulatory default at national level invariably favours the incumbent at the expense of the consumer. The only protection from the coterie of apparatchiks and soi-disant ‘independent’ regulators comes from the middle. American companies in ICT used to argue, with justification, that Europe was a protectionist bastion. Now it is the US that is a statist ‘fortress’ and, without European intervention, its posture will get worse.

• 6) if we didn’t have Europe, we wouldn’t have Viviane Reding. Rest case, allow judge to sum up.

• 7) bigger might be better. The character of the EU has gone a long way from the first six nations to the 12, and then the 15 and now the 25. Maybe the non/nee votes are valuable in delimiting the scale of enlargement and the scope of what Brussels can do, where (and if) there is a will.

8) in political terms, the federation of 25 countries with a combined population of more than 400mn has, for the first time, made the US look like a midget in scale. Do not forget that the US has tried to place a crowbar between the countries of CEE and Europe, or as it was dubbed, ‘Old Europe’. And the only reason it did not impose democracy in the way it saw fit to do in other parts of the world is that it knew a more-or-less united Europe was there and was watching. Hence Georgia is not Iraq.

• 9) in global trade terms, the world needs a counter-balance to American might. Fast-growing emerging economies such as India and China are undermining the hegemony of both the US and Europe, but are not yet credible trade bargaining players when up against the US. Europe’s tacit and not-so-tacit support for these growing economies, albeit in the very grimmest corners of economic development such as arms, keeps America honest. Anything that can do that should be applauded.

• 10) in global economic terms, interest has focused on the weakness of the Euro on currency markets during and after the uncertainty created by negative sentiments and referenda. The US dollar would appear to be the winner. Good news for America? No, disaster. The fragile economies of the ‘dollar-zone’, which comprises not only the Americas but much of the Far East as well, are seeing the values of their exports to the ‘Euro-zone’, which by proxy extends to much of the non-dollar-denominated Third World, slashed.

Europe is a mixture of opportunism and opportunity, which makes it quite a good thing.
“I took from my pocket ten sovereigns bright,
And the landlady's eyes opened wide with delight,
She said, "I have whiskeys and wines of the best,
And I'll take you upstairs, and then show you the rest”."

The best of the rest is yet to come, upstairs or down, as far as Europe is concerned.

Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg (hi Viviane, another name check!), Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, UK. It would be unwise to ignore them and stupid or wishful thinking to suggest that they are falling apart. But hey! You can make up own mind.
Jim Chalmers