The EU's wrong path

Like Hollywood productions, with their two-three minute video trailers presenting the content of an expected hit movie, the leading powers in the European Union have recently managed to show us the planned future of the continent. It was demonstrated by the dramatic vote in the European Parliament on the so-called "mobility package" - which, hiding behind concern for transport workers, aims to stifle the competitive advantages of carriers from Eastern Europe. The purest form of protectionism, voted despite protests, burning trucks and attempts at resistance by Bulgarian MEPs.

How do we know that more of this awaits us in the future? First, by carefully examining what the key players in the EU are offering us and what programs they are preparing for the upcoming European elections. And second, by considering that the entire history of the EU, and specifically its deepening integration, has been driven by the same political model.

The Brussels bureaucracy, in tandem with the French political leadership, is constantly and aggressively pushing for new and more empowered supranational EU institutions. The German political class is slowly following the French leadership, often slowing down its momentum, but at the same time, it has managed to master the new levers of power created after the French pressure to a large extent. Britain vetoes when it can and breaks away when a veto is impossible, maintaining the approach imposed by Margaret Thatcher. This political model creates a certain balance, but when something in it breaks, we get sharp and dangerous swellings of power concentration in the Union, as well as fragile, ill-conceived political constructs with heavy long-term economic liabilities.

In the last thirty years, we have had two serious breakdowns in the balancing model. The first began after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as a result of which Chancellor Helmut Kohl, inspired by the successful unification of East and West Germany, was given a rare political carte blanche to lead German politics in a radical direction – he chose this direction to be the abandonment of the decades-old German skeptical position on the issue of the single European currency. This led to the emergence of the Eurozone, a major goal of French leaders for decades. To this day, the problems of the euro continue to be a key destabilizing factor in Europe.

The second break in the pattern occurred in 2016, after British citizens voted to leave the European Union. A major force that could have balanced the French (and more recently German) centripetal forces is now out of the game. Moreover, the surprise of the vote was such a slap in the face to the leading powers in the EU that, rather than leading to a rethinking of the trajectory that led to the desire to leave such a key member, it catalyzed an even more fervent pursuit of the goal of “ever closer union.” In other words, it opened the possibility of a rapid transfer of sovereignty from member states to the Paris-Berlin-Brussels axis.

With Chancellor Angela Merkel’s resignation and Britain’s departure, the Brussels bureaucracy and the extremely aggressive and proactive French leader Emmanuel Macron have rolled up their sleeves to take full advantage of the favorable situation in which the main resistance to an increasingly federal European Union is limited to the semi-vassal Eastern European regimes that are being swindled by European funds. The program is already fully deployed, we just have to listen to the speeches and read the documents.

Being representatives of a powerful bureaucratic machine, the European Commission cannot afford to be too direct and is forced, at least out of some decency, to look relatively equidistant from all the options for the future development of the Union. That is why in 2017 it published the so-called “White Paper on the Future of Europe” with five different options for what the EU would look like in the medium term (after 2025). Of course, it is ambiguously demonstrated, even in the language of the document, that the preferred option is the last fifth one, entitled – “Doing much more together”. If the given name is not enough, let us mention that it includes a common foreign and trade policy, a common industrial policy, centralization of tax, social and fiscal policy. “Decisions are taken quickly at the European level, and are imposed quickly” – vassal relationships, in bureaucratic terms.

French President Emmanuel Macron has no need for such theaters; he presents his federalist and centripetal views boldly and with aplomb to all 512 million inhabitants of the European Union. He does so, apart from numerous speeches and deeds, mainly through his letter of March 2019, entitled “For a European Renaissance” and translated into all EU languages. In it, he passes by the “moderate” vision of the European Commission as a road sign and adds to it – a set of new bureaucratic units (agencies for the protection of nature, democracy, the Internet), the dispersion of the stifling French welfare state over the entire continent, a set of new protectionist regulations and ends with a call to turn to Africa.

Okay, the plans of the key players for the development of the continent are like that, but why is this the wrong path? The problem has political and economic dimensions. The political ones are more than obvious, but only recently has there been some kind of sluggish reminder of them. Namely, the fact that a huge part of the sovereignty of independent member states is being transferred with each passing year to the Paris-Berlin-Brussels axis. Whether this happens informally, through the corrupting influence on elites and certain social strata coming from multi-billion euro EU funds, or completely formally through the Union's legislation and entry into new and new of its projects (such as the Eurozone, for example), is irrelevant. Why do we think that someone in Brussels will be interested in the interests of the Bulgarian (again, the "Mobility" package trailer)? And why are we busy celebrating Liberation, Independence, uprisings and so on, when we will exchange them for highways and a European minimum wage?

In economic terms, the French taxation and regulatory regimes have already brought the source country to the brink of social catastrophe - the yellow vests have not appeared on the streets due to prosperity. But unlike us, the French can endure 15 years in which they barely reach economic growth of 2% and the average is closer to 1% - they are already rich. We neither have their base, nor should we enter such a difficult situation of permanently growing debt. And even less, should we accept that our competitive advantages are suffocated by decrees and political interference, even if they are European. After all, the whole idea is for the Bulgarian to live better, how will this happen with the senile and retrograde economic practices of the French state, transferred to the East?

While we chant "more Europe" and "more integration", let's not turn out that we have slid down the slide with our eyes closed, and in the sandbox there are decades of stagnation waiting for us and another empire to listen to. Only, this one is of good, right, singing odes to joy, instead of facing a mortal combat. The difference is serious.

This article was originally published in the newspaper "Trud"

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