Rome, Italy. 7
February. It is just a golden moment. Above my Roman roof-top cappuccino a flash of
dawn radiates across a golden city which for three thousand years has
come to symbolise Europe. Every empire since from Charlemagne to the European
Union claims in some way to be the political heir of either Roman Republic or
Empire. I love this town, I love this country.
It is therefore sad to see my old Italian friend brought low, visibly
fraying at the edges. As February’s national
elections beckon the discourse is about more Brussels not less, a metaphor for
more of my Dutch taxpayer’s money so that Europe can prolong its agony in mutual
impoverishment. Italy does not need more
Brussels. Italy needs a real macro-economic
game-changer. Italy needs TAFTA, a
transatlantic free-trade agreement.
The plain truth is that
I could no more abandon Italy to a debt-drenched future than I could my own
Yorkshire kith and kin. That would be
unconscionable. However, it is also
clear that the partial and wrong-headed EU response to the Eurozone crisis will
fail Italy (and Spain and others) in its hour of need. The wrong-headedness will be evident today in
Brussels as leaders wrestle over the EU budget. The agreement they reach will
once again be to invest in Europe’s past rather than Europe’s competitive
future. TAFTA would force Europeans to
again look outward and compete.
However, for TAFTA to
work Washington must also cure itself of the fantasy that a United States of
Europe would look anything like the United States of America. Left to its own devices the appallingly
bureaucratic and hopelessly over-regulated, statist and uncompetitive European
‘USE’ would look far more like the sclerotic and ultimately doomed USSR – a
Union of Soviet European Republics.
The sad truth is that
the political unionists in Brussels Centre seek to use the crisis to extend
their fiat at the expense of legitimacy, democracy, but above all
competitiveness. Indeed, by linking
Europe’s political future to the current crisis Brussels Centre is critically preventing
the establishment of a truly pan-European recovery programme. Moreover, what will come out of Brussels
today (if anything) will not help Italy.
The leaders will talk a lot about growth but in reality do nothing to
promote Horizon 2020, the research and development fund, or help the small and
medium sized enterprises (SMEs) vital if Italy is to compete in a global economy.
My visit to Rome was to
address the excellent 58th Assembly of the Atlantic Treaty Association.
There were two great elephants in a room
full of defence wonks. The first,
naturally, was the Eurozone crisis which is the quintessential European security
challenge of this age. The other
was TAFTA. Indeed, I would go as far as
to say the future of a credible NATO depends on TAFTA and a growth-driving transatlantic single market in goods and services it would create worth
over 50% of global economic output.
Rome is merely in the
eye of the hurricane that is the Eurozone crisis. The worst is yet to come. The money and reforms Romans will need and
have to go through before stability once again dawns is perhaps a decade
away if there is no game-changer. Therefore, the mantra of more Brussels must
be pushed aside and a proper plan developed by ALL Europe’s nation-states within
the wider macro-economic context that TAFTA would provide.
As I drove past Rome’s
ancient forum below the Palatine hill where Republic and Empire tussled the
ruins of a once great civilisation lay before me. Decline and fall is now clear for all to see across Europe. Is that our shared European future? As Brussels Centre edges forward with what
one American friend calls a 'fascinating elite experiment' that she does not have
to live with will the latter day republics and kingdoms that give Europe such
cultural energy be replaced with a not so holy Brussels bureaucratic
empire? It is certainly a seductive ‘solution’
for many southern Europeans for like the Roman Empire of the first and second centuries
this new statist Europe may offer temporary stability. However, shorn of legitimacy, productivity
and competitiveness it will ultimately fail mired in its own political
decadence.
The Obama
administration says that TAFTA must be concluded quickly as the deal has to be
done, “on one tank of gas”. Sadly, the
very people charged with promoting transatlantic “regulatory convergence” are
the very Brussels Centre people who least want it. For them TAFTA is a threat to their ‘competences’.
TAFTA – for the love of
Italy!
Julian Lindley-French
