Old Europe votes for its decline

From The Australian: ...

With Germany, France and Italy politically paralysed, European voters appear to have expressed their disapproval of the reform agenda, writes Anatole Kaletsky
October 17, 2005

AFTER last week's creation of a German government in which Angela Merkel will not even control the finance and foreign ministries, all three of the great European nations that have dominated the continent's history for 2000 years - Germany, France and Italy - are effectively leaderless.

They will almost certainly remain politically paralysed at least until the French presidential election of 2007. The power vacuum now covering the whole of continental Europe is almost unprecedented, at least since the disastrous period between the two world wars.

... the main theme of the German election, as of the French referendum campaign before it, was public rejection of an economic reform agenda that was demanded by the business and political elites. The market reforms that would supposedly make Europe the "most competitive economy in the world" had been unanimously endorsed by Europe's political leaders in their now-notorious Lisbon Declaration.

But while the business and political elites across Europe became more and more obsessed with Lisbon's promises of open markets, competition and globalisation, voters couldn't help noticing that all these reforms, instead of improving their living standards or working conditions, were making them poorer and more insecure.

... After 10 years of economic reforms, the Germans decided they had had enough... the French electorate is sending a similar message, ...A similar pattern seems to be developing in Italy... reforms have been tried for a decade and they have failed to produce the promised increase in living standards or economic growth.

..But all this is water under the bridge; the question now is whether the end of reforms should be seen as a disaster, an opportunity or a non-event. ...does the impending paralysis over reform in Europe really matter? ...

...For Euro-idealists who hoped to see the EU moving towards federation and establishing itself alongside the US and China as one of the three global powers of the 21st century, the failure of European economic initiative may seem a disaster, but for ordinary citizens, why should this matter? ... one has to acknowledge that the ageing electorates of Germany, France and Italy are entitled to vote for political paralysis, economic decline and global irrelevance. ...

The Times