Dream the Impossible: Eradicate EU Regulation!

The EU bure­a­u­cra­cy in Brus­sels is cle­ar­ly a pre­da­tor that can­not be tamed. Wit­ness tho­u­sands of har­mo­ni­zing regu­la­ti­ons. EU is sti­fling the fre­e­dom to cho­o­se in the area rich with hete­ro­ge­ne­o­us infor­mal rules. The best evi­den­ce is that true free mar­ket intel­lec­tu­als in Euro­pe are joi­ning the Cen­tre for the New Euro­pe. Are they stu­pid, misin­for­med, or smart? It is also heart-bre­a­king to listen to Mar­ty Laar’s sto­ri­es abo­ut EU for­cing a small coun­try to give back hard won freedoms.

Here is what two free-mar­ket scho­lars had to say abo­ut EU. Ant­ho­ny O’Hear: "EU is com­mit­ted… first and fore­most to the cre­a­ti­on of itself, as a supra govern­men­tal aut­ho­ri­ty, a task of Hege­li­an pre­ten­si­on and of Sovi­e­tic pro­por­ti­ons." And a lea­ding Ame­ri­can legal scho­lar Ric­hard Epste­in said the fol­lo­wing abo­ut the pro­po­sed EU con­sti­tu­ti­on shor­tly befo­re its fia­sco in 2005: "…it will take a poli­ti­cal mirac­le for com­pe­ti­ti­on to play a power­ful role in the affa­irs of the EU. By giving rights with one hand and taking them away with the other, this pro­po­sed EU Con­sti­tu­ti­on lacks any cle­ar defi­ni­ti­on and struc­tu­re… But when the dust set­tles, the­re will be more govern­ment and less fre­e­dom for all… My recom­men­da­ti­on is the­re­fo­re this: Opt for the eco­no­mic free tra­de zone and con­sign the EU Con­sti­tu­ti­on to the dust heap."

Taking all this into con­si­de­ra­ti­on, Mon­te­ne­gro sho­uld not join the hea­vi­ly regu­la­ted EU. Brus­sels is pro­du­cing hun­dreds of regu­la­ti­ons almost dai­ly. Tho­se regu­la­ti­ons rai­se the costs of pro­duc­ti­on in Euro­pe, keep che­a­per pro­ducts out, and thus cre­a­te oppor­tu­ni­ti­es for pro­fi­ta­ble smug­gling. By sel­ling toma­to­es that are not exac­tly Roman red, cucum­bers that are too thin and bana­nas that have wrong cur­ves, Mon­te­ne­grins could earn lots of money. More­o­ver, they would also per­form an impor­tant soci­al func­ti­on of making Euro­pe­ans bet­ter off. In short, Mon­te­ne­gro has a cho­i­ce. It could beco­me a Macao of Euro­pe or sur­ren­der its sove­re­ign­ty to the likes of Pro­di, Sola­na and Soros. Is the for­mer pos­si­ble? I do not know. Howe­ver, I have lear­ned one les­son in Ame­ri­ca: it is impor­tant to dre­am the impossible.

Mr Ste­ve Pejo­vich is Prof. Eme­ri­tus at Texas A&M University.