From Open Europe news summary of September 11, 2013 (my highlights):
In his ‘state of the Union’ speech in Strasbourg this morning, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said, “Not everything needs a solution at European level. Europe must focus on where it can add most value. Where this is not the case, it should not meddle.” However, he also said, “Let me say to all those…who rejoice in Europe’s difficulties and who want to roll back our integration and go back to isolation: the pre-integrated Europe of the divisions, the war, the trenches, is not what people desire and deserve…I believe a political union needs to be our horizon.”
What is now called the European Union started as the European Coal and Steel Community in the early 1950’s. Its purpose was simplicity itself: free trade in coal and steel, the foundation of the modern industrial state at the time, to remove the necessity of war to acquire these goods for the autarkic, warfare state. The Europeans had finally learned Frederic Bastiat’s dictum that when goods do not cross borders armies will. Later the idea of free trade was expanded to include almost all goods plus services. Then it was expanded to allow the free flow of capital and people. None of this requires a European state. The people of Europe want freedom, not another layer of parasites taxing and regulating them into poverty. There is nothing that the European Union can offer that cannot be obtained from unilateral free trade. Barroso is disingenuous to equate the building a European super state as the only alternative to war. Patrick Barron
