NEW? (via Michael Burns):

The new infantilism: Chirac, European economic reform and the ‘new communism’ (Times of London, 3/24/05)

EU summit meetings are rarely exciting affairs but can occasionally be enlightening, if depressing. The gathering that ended in Brussels yesterday falls squarely into that category. This was meant to be a showcase for major economic reform, but it instead served as the venue for the so-called Services Directive to be diluted at the insistence of Jacques Chirac on behalf of France, a stance supported by Gerhard Schröder for Germany. This innovation, which has been rightly championed by José Manuel Barroso, the relatively new President of the European Commission, is not dead but its pulse is disturbingly faint and fading.

This episode illustrates everything that is wrong about the EU as it is currently formed and why the alterations that Tony Blair often espouses will prove painfully difficult to implement. This directive would allow anyone employed in a huge range of professions — from architects to plumbers — to operate anywhere in the EU without hindrance. It is such a logical element of a single market that was supposed to have been secured more than a decade ago that it is astonishing that it has not been introduced already. Every authoritative estimate of its economic impact is that it would increase net employment and enhance the rate of growth in Europe. It is, as Americans would put it, a “no-brainer”.

Unfortunately, there appears to be a severe shortage of brainpower at the highest level in France. Even though more jobs will be created than lost, the prospect of any redundancies means the directive has been attacked by the Socialist Party and the trade unions. Not to be outdone, M Chirac has jumped on the bandwagon, seized the wheel, and chose a dinner on Tuesday to condemn liberal market principles as “the new communism of our age”.

This will be a surprise to those who had the misfortune to spend time in the labour camps. In reality, what this sad saga and his ludicrous statement illustrate is that Chiracism is the new infantilism of our era.

In what conceivable sense is European infantilization new? Unfortunately, we squandered the one chance we had to wean them when we propped up their statism with the Marshall Plan.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 24, 2005 3:34 PM