A lovely interlude in the Telegraph yesterday:
Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, accused Britain and other member states yesterday of betraying the historic goal of EU expansion by depriving Brussels of the money needed to make enlargement work. Mr Prodi said he was mystified as to why some countries were proposing to reduce the ceiling on payments to the EU budget when the continent was about to unite “for the first time in history”.
First time in history? How about Charlemagne? Napoleon? Hitler?
Britain and five other EU nations have challenged the Commission to reduce the maximum share of national budgets that Brussels can spend from 1.24 per cent of GDP to one per cent. How revolutionary…
This is a step in the right direction. Zero would be better. In words that will be understood in Brussels: Ecrasez l’infame.
If the EU was “really working”, a smaller percentage of a larger pie would still be a bigger slice — and there would be less need for any slices.
The point of creating middle classes is that the middle class does not the gov’t to force collect money for “benefits”. But Brussels misses that point…
Now, now. None of those three ever had all of Europe; neither Charlemagne nor Hitler had the Iberian peninsula, and Napoleon didn’t have Scandinavia.
The EU has managed something the greatest dictators in European history couldn’t. With any luck, the EU won’t avoid their fate, though.