Everything but the Mullet

Leon de Winter, novelist and columnist for the Netherland’s Elsevier Magazine misses the EEC. Remember that?

To me, Europe remains a geographical term for a messy bunch of land masses extending to the west of Asia. But unlike Asians, who’d never seriously contemplate forming an Asian Union, some Europeans believe in the existence of something along the lines of a European culture, which will only achieve full flower when all borders are abolished. And one day a bunch of suchlike Europeans set out to form the European Union. What ensued was precisely what people like me had foretold: that the Union couldn’t last because, apart from Europe’s political elite, nobody wants such a union, because Europe is a geographic, not a cultural term.

Let’s not forget the norther perspective in all of this: even by European standards, they’re more likely to feel that the “safety net” has mutated into a Hammock.

In northern Europe, fir trees grow and life is duller, people work harder, save more money and are generally pretty responsible in their dealings with the state. In the South, in contrast, people take a siesta and don’t sit down to supper till 10 o’clock at night, they run bulls through the streets, and cheating the authorities is a national sport. Thanks to the rules the establishment has laid down, we northerners are now being saddled with the southerners’ debts. The problem is I don’t feel any solidarity with the Greeks or Spanish. I like the Greeks and Spaniards I know a lot. But I don’t feel duty-bound to burden myself with their financial troubles.

In other words: get a job, ya bum.

The EEC was the ideal model for Europe. But our ambitious statesmen set their hearts on a project of historic proportions: to peacefully unify Europe by letting a new European bureaucracy stealthily conquer the continent. The Greek crisis now goes to show that Europe doesn’t exist. Europe is an idée fixe of Brussels bureaucrats.

As warm and lovable as the over-the-top curtainwall buildings with scale-less, soaring, improbable structural projects: utopia, in the original Klingon, means “nowhere”.

When the European constitution was being thrashed out in Brussels, I couldn’t help wondering why the architects of this edifice were not on TV all over the continent. Where were their rousing speeches? Where were their expositions of the European soul and Europe’s mission in the world? The European constitution is not the brainchild of prophetic founding fathers, but the product of technocrats, who see their big chance now that hundreds of billions in rescue packages are needed to bail out the Mediterranean countries. Brussels is going to regulate all that very nicely and lay harsh terms on the countries it is saving from bankruptcy. The first country to transfer a sizeable chunk of its autonomy to Brussels is Greece. Greece is to become the first bona fide Brussels protectorate: an old, civilised nation with its own traditions and ways of life is to be administered by supranational technocrats. I wonder how long that will work out.

Given that screwing the man and cheating on your taxes is a national sport, not long, I’d guess, and it will have the stench of colonialism that people don’t get sentimental about as they do in Malta, Cyprus, and Gibraltar.

You’ll recall that even under Nazi occupation, Greek communist partisans were just as likely to attack fellow Greek partisan opponents of the Nazis, as they were to attack the Nazis themselves. So expect them to at the very least fight for their right to party, at least on paper.

Also from Leon, is an item that inspired an old memory to reflexively pour forth: Ausweis Bitte!