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When society and state come into conflict, government will always choose the interests of the later. Here is some insight from Michael Wells, who sees what is happening to Gibraltar and why
After nearly 300 years, Spain is regaining control of the Rock of Gibraltar, against the wishes of nearly everyone who actually lives in Gibraltar.
The British government plans to “share sovereignty” with Spain. Until recently, Britain has insisted that any deal would have to be approved by the people of Gibraltar in a referendum, as required by Gibraltar’s constitution, but now they appear to be backing off from that position. Gibraltarians are livid, and the Gibraltar government has refused to take part in the negotiations as anything less than equal players. They’ve even made a desperate appeal to the Queen.
“Shared sovereignty” is merely a foot in the door. Spain considers anything less than full control to be an interim measure and will continue to claim full sovereignty over the territory. Spain’s foreign minister Josep Pique expressed indignation at the idea of a referendum in Gibraltar to accept or reject the agreement: “Negotiations between two sovereign states cannot be subsumed to the will of 30,000 Gibraltarians. The opinion of 30,000 people will not dictate the will of two sovereign states.” The taint of Franco endures.
Britain’s willingness to relinquish control comes partly from Gibraltar’s decreased military significance and partly from a desire to strengthen ties with Spain. According to the Telegraph, Britain wants a closer relationship with Spain to balance the power of France and Germany within the EU, a situation reminiscent of the Habsburg-Bourbon power-jockeying that created the Gibraltar situation in the first place.
But Gibraltar was probably the least significant of what Spain ceded after the War of Succession. Why are they so intent on getting it back? A peevish nationalism is certainly a large factor, but just as important is Gibraltar’s tax status. Gibraltar is exempt from the EU’s tax uniformity and, in particular, has no VAT. Pique’s belligerent ravings about smuggling and money laundering are a result of this, and echo the OECD’s criticisms of ‘harmful’ tax practices.
Gibraltar is an easy target, since it’s already part of the EU. But other European tax havens are at risk as well. Andorra, though ostensibly sovereign, is a co-principality under Spain and France. Monaco reverts to France if there is no male heir to the throne, and is dependent on France for water and electricity. As long as the EU is bent on spreading bureaucracy and high taxes throughout Europe (all EU countries are members of the OECD), the situation looks bleak for Europe’s tiny tax havens.
The British International Development Secretary Clare Short did a bit of off-message, and hence truthful, commentary by pointing out that the French state is one of the primary obstacles to Africa’s economic development due to their insistence on Europe-wide protectionist trade policies.
Now whilst I usually regard Short as a subjectivist economic ignoramus and thus part of the problem, not the solution, she is quite right in her remarks in this subject. The fact is that French policy in African being aimed at maintaining French control rather than fostering African development. My family has had quite a lot of first hand experience of doing business in Africa and I know this to be true on many levels.
Socialists have the gall to claim to be the people who care about the impoverished Third World and yet put duty on African goods which can run as high as 300% in order to protect the EU’s grotesque Common Agricultural Policy. The EU are in truth the architects of misery, poverty and starvation if Africa and France is the ring leaders of this ignominious association of the statist, regarding their preposterous concepts of Francophone prestige in Africa as being more important that African prosperity.
Clare Short is just another statist clod but she is quite right that France’s strong presence in Africa is a truly malign influence. I could have told her that 20 years ago. Who cares of people are living in abject poverty in Chad just so long as things are status quo on the Quai d’Orsay.
Can anybody think of any historically-significant cultural or technological innovation to have emerged from Continental Western Europe since World War II?
[Editor: does Catherine Deneuve count?]
[Other Editor: how about the World Wide Web?]
[Reader Ken Hagler: “How about the VAT? You didn’t say it had to be good…”]
[Reader & blogger Mark Byron: SCUBA, Velcro]
[Reader & blogger Steven Den Beste: Audio cassette, laser disc]
[Reader Aaron Dickey: ABBA] hmmmm.
Update: Of course although the World Wide Web was created in CERN (Switzerland) Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor, was an Englishman
News that elegant Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has appointed the leader of the ‘post-fascist’ National Alliance party Gianfranco Fini as his representative to the Convention on the future of Europe has me grinning from ear to ear.
This is not because I am really any fan of the numbskull statism favoured by Gianfranco Fini but rather because it will make the superstatist collectivists that will have to deal with him apoplectic. As several articles on Samizdata have pointed out, the essential difference between fascist and socialist economics is that fascists believe that what matters is control rather than ownership of the means of production. Fini is a classic advocate of that approach, wanting to regulate economic matters in order to further ‘Italian national objectives’. Of course this approach is in no way different in methodology to that practiced by most social democratic regimes with their ‘national industrial champions’ and acronymed French conglomerates.
And of course that is exactly why a man with overtly fascist links like Fini is hated so much by the ‘social democrats’ across Europe. I am sure if he wore a black shirt and called prime minister Berlusconi ‘Duce’ they would actually not mind so much, but that is not the case. They do not want to be seen standing next to him because people might start to realise that there really is no difference between any of them.
USS Clueless has a lengthy article about US unilateralism which makes some interesting points. He also makes some rather dubious ones.
We gave Europe one chance, after WWI, to dictate their own terms and the result was another bloody war. So the second time, we did call the tune — and the result was a hell of a lot better.
As for Britain and France dictating its own terms, what about Woodrow Wilson’s role in dismembering the Austro-Hungarian Empire and trashing all vestiges of the potentially stabilising old order? America shares some of the blame for the instability in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s. And the ‘second time’ was better for who? I don’t think too many Poles, Czechs and Hungarians would agree with Steven as they ended up with nearly half a century of communist rule. Does Steven think Yalta was America’s finest hour?
But that’s because we are willing to try the unconventional. For example: after WWI, France insisted that Germany, with its ruined economy, pay drastic reparations to France. The result was hyper inflation, collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of the Nazi Party.
All of which may never have happened if the US had stayed out of the Great War and a negotiated settlement had been reached in 1917 or early 1918.
And even in the recent past the Europeans have proved that their counsel sucks. That’s what we learned in Yugoslavia, something I’ve discussed here at great length. Years of dithering where the US lobbied for military action and the Europeans counseled diplomacy and sanctions, and what it got us was years of slaughter and civil war there. Finally the US issued an ultimatum; and after 6 weeks of bombing, and the war there ended. Milosevic was deposed, and the Serbs went back to democracy and ceased to be imperialistic. And it’s been reasonably peaceful there ever since.
Yeah, and they all lived happily ever after dreaming good dreams about nice Uncle Sam. That is an… interesting… analysis of the intricacies of the recent Balkan Wars. Whilst I am not fan of European diplomacy (to put it mildly), US actions in the Balkans were at best only half right and Kosovo was a rather more ambigious matter than you seem to think. Do you not think the fact the Croatian and Bosnia Armies (not the USAF) had defeated the aspirations of a Greater Serbia might have had more than a little to do with Slobo’s declining political fortunes? He was politically very vulnerable due to the fact he had lead Serbia to catastrophe, horror and defeat in Bosnia and Croatia, unemployment was running at over 30% (50% by some estimates), the currency was fast turning into toilet paper and so is it really so surprising that he collapsed after yet another military defeat, this time at the hands of the largely US strategic air offensive that resulted from the Kosovo affair?
I am afraid Steven’s analysis contains some grossly simplistic elements and seems to ascribe almost magical qualities to the application of US military force: the USAF turns up and shazam… peace breaks out all over the Balkans. It is rather more complex than that.
[Editor: Link fixed. Now goes to correct article on USS Clueless]
More bellicosity from Silvio Berslusconi
I’m not at all happy about this ‘common foreign and defence policy’ guff but, hopefully, it’s a case of one step at a time. Besides who on earth would entrust their foreign and defence policy to the French??!!
I can’t quite make my mind up about this
Undoubtedly one of the primary driving forces behind the EU has been post-war German guilt and the desire not to be Germans anymore. So perhaps this should be welcomed
On the other hand… er…
Silvio Berlusconi has been given a rough ride for his outspoken views, such as the cultural and political superiority of the West vis a vis the Islamic world and also on his remarks on matters pertaining to the EU. Okay, not quite nuanced enough for some tastes but hey, it is a massive improvement on the usual mealy-mouthed outpourings of the European political classes, not to mention our own Sainted Tony Blair.
An excellent article by Michael Gonzalez appears in Thursday’s print edition of the Wall Street Journal Europe (page 7), though I cannot find it on the online WSJ.com. Whatever one thinks of Berlusconi, he has already endeared himself to this humble scribe for ruffling the feathers of the Euro-weenies and generally upsetting their digestions. Rock on, Silvio!
Tom Burroughes
tom.burroughes@reuters.com
I went into a small café in Zürich today and inadvertently tried to pay with Euro’s rather than Swiss Francs. The woman looked at me as though I had just handed her a dead mouse, then peered at the note, holding it in two fingers with her arm fully extended as if worried she might catch something. I snatched it back and handed her some Swiss Francs. She nodded and said “Much better… Euros are so ugly”.
Twelve British and two Dutch plane-spotters languish in the dismal jails of fellow NATO member Greece, whilst what is probably the most corrupt and ineffective ‘justice’ system in the European ‘Union’ investigates them on charges of espionage. We are told by Greek government spokesmen that “the judicial system must take it’s course” as these harmless geeks sleep on concrete floors surrounded by rapists, thieves and murderers.
Yet over the last 25 years, a Greek Marxist terrorist group called November 17 has, during the course of over 150 terrorist incidents, murdered twenty four people, including a British Army brigadier, a senior CIA officer and three other US national. They have regularly attacked the offices of multinational corporations with bombs, arson and shootings.
And how many of these terrorist have been convicted or killed by the Greek Security Services in the last 25 years?
Er… none.
How many have even been arrested in the last 25 years?
None. Not a single one.
So then would it be fair to say that the Greek Security Services are perhaps the most inept in the western world? Well there is certainly some truth to that, but unfortunately the principal reason is that the November 17 terrorists are all closely linked to the Greek socialist PASOK party and have tendrils deep within the security services themselves, according to people as varied as former CIA chief Jim Wolsey and former Greek Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis.
Jim Wolsey was once quoted as saying:
When you don’t catch a single terrorist after twenty five years, that’s not a mistake… that’s a policy.
It is good to know that we have such wonderful allies within NATO. I guess if those foolish plane-spotters had not been tying up so much police time, November 17 would all be behind bars by now.
Or not.
The hapless Greek people are very ill served by their vile political establishment. Next time the half-wits in Whitehall start muttering about Britain signing up for Europe wide extradition warrants, ponder exactly what sort of judicial systems await in nations of our oh so wonderful ‘allies’.
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