TOO FREE?:

Rival views on EU are out in the open (Judy Dempsey, 6/20/05, International Herald Tribune)

"There are two ideas of Europe, with some countries wanting to have just a European market with a big and free trade zone and others who want an integrated Europe," said Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who led the summit meeting.

"There are those who believe a free trade area is sufficient but they do not realize it is more complicated. A politically integrated Europe would allow Europe to rise to the challenges facing it. I tried to deal with these two different views."

And in remarks clearly directed at Britain, which succeeds Luxembourg in the EU presidency on July 1, Juncker said, "Some countries were seeking failure."

Wolfgang Schüssel, chancellor of Austria, who will take over the presidency from Britain in January 2006, was just as explicit in his view over how Europe was becoming divided between two rival camps.

"It's about money. Some wanted to get more out or pay less in," Schüssel said on Germany's ARD public television. "And secondly, it's certainly the question of the concept. The British want a different Europe. They want a more market-oriented Europe, a large market but no deeper union."

However, one of the reasons many French voters voted against the EU constitution was their feeling that Europe was already becoming too oriented toward a free market in its economic policies. In Germany, those feelings are widely spread as well.

They might also be referred to as the idea that works, federalism and markets, and the one that doesn't, centralized statism.

Posted by orrinj at June 20, 2005 8:08 AM