June 12, 2003

Andrew Sullivan reflects on prior work and contemplates liberalism, Britian and the EU:

What I was trying to do .. was to distinguish between those aspects of the EU that truly do violate sovereignty in profound ways and those aspects that are, properly speaking, liberal and unobjectionable, like free trade or an independent European court. Here's the money graf:

Institutions which can directly regulate, legislate and tax citizens of member countries should be resisted. Powers to determine the ends of national policies should be blocked or opposed. There should be no strengthening of the European parliament, the European commission, or a weakening of any nation-state's veto power over communal decisions.

For those reasons, I still find the proposed U.S.E. Constitution abhorrent. But I tried to posit a way in which Britain could improve the structure of the EU, without withdrawing from it:

At the same time, however, those measures that merely determine the means by which Europeans interact--rules of trade, the rights of the citizen against the state or, indeed, the currency in which individuals trade- -are a different matter. They create an atmosphere of cooperation. They determine the rules of play, but they do not determine who wins the game. They are the mechanisms of procedure, not results.

I still believe Britain should stay in the EU as it is, help reform it in more classically liberal directions and refuse to be coopted into a more ambitious anti-American project.

Posted by Greg Ransom