Yes, the EU does indeed look different depending on where you look at it from. Daniel Antal and his Greek friend sees a source of a more ‘liberal’ order, seeing Brussels as a fountain of civil rights to refresh the stagnant pools of Greek and Hungarian polity.
Well I certainly understand that. Croatian politics and aspects of civil society are just as ghastly for many of the same reasons. And thus many people in Croatia also look west to the EU and see something hopeful, something better, something more prosperous. Croatian businesses, like Hungarian businesses, salivate at the idea of getting access to the huge EU market… and like our friends in Budapest, they are just as wrong.
Just ask your Greek friend to point out how the Greek economy is going from strength to strength now that it is a member of the EU. Only it isn’t. Greece is stuck on the lower tier of the EU and is going to stay there. Countries like Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, have large ‘welfare’ states but they do so by parasitically drawing wealth out of their large wealth creating capitalist economies… Hungary and Greece do not have proper modern economies and by joining the EU they will never develop them.
Hungary will never develop a dynamic wealth generating capitalist economy because Brussels will have thrown a smothering blanket of EU regulations over it, regulations which will be welcomed with open arms by the half-wit socialists which pervade Hungarian polity. Hungarian labour costs will rapidly loose any advantage over French or German ones and even high levels of unemployment will not move them downwards because of the regulatory cost floor that will be put underneath the price of employing someone. This will have the effect of keeping the playing field tilted towards existing producers and economic structures… and the reality is those economic producers and structures are overwhelmingly in the west.
Read the small print. Unless you are an existing large business located in the west and who wants regulatory barriers to reduce the chance of new market entrants competing with you, or are a Trade Unionist working in cahoots with such a company, then the EU is not your friend. The EU is stasis incarnate. For Christ’s sake WAKE UP!
