Mojmir Hampl (Europe’s World 22. 10. 2015 page 115)
Europe’s integration model is running out of steam, and that’s partly because it overemphasises the idea that being different can be harmful. Cross-border differences on economic policy, wages, social conditions, agriculture or taxation are seen as problems and a threat to European integration, and we are often told that these differences imply unfair advantages and disadvantages.
But why should this be? Surely the reality is that it’s healthy for countries to compete with each other for taxpayers, investors and workers, and that competition is also a good thing within countries. This can be seen in federal and quasi-federal states; the wealthy United Arab Emirates compete economically with the rest of the Middle East and more widely, and on top of that the emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi are rivals. The result is not just one but two excellent airlines in one country, and not just one but two cities thriving side by side. The Swiss cantons also vie with one another for taxpayers, although admittedly less strongly than they used to, and the same applies to some extent in the United States.
But for many in the EU, national differences in corporate taxation are a problem. Their ideal for EU integration is often no more than sameness, identicalness. That may guarantee that no one ever beats anyone else unfairly, yet levelling the playing field for everyone and everything could be a recipe for collective stagnation rather than faster growth. Making everything the same necessarily involves trimming back the best, even though it is these that always drive society forward. And averages are dull and grey; anyone who diverges upwards is taxed and regulated, while anyone who deviates downwards has to be subsidised and supported.
We Europeans are allowing ourselves to be seduced by the myth that more integration will always mean more prosperity. But why should we believe this? A popular train metaphor has it that the more securely we couple the carriages, the faster the train will travel. In practice, though, the opposite can occur. Connecting different carriages more firmly together means that the train will need an extremely powerful locomotive if it is to move forward. Nor is it certain that all the passengers can agree on which direction to take.
Is it therefore such a surprise that the less integrated non-eurozone EU countries are showing faster long-term growth than those in the euro, and is multi-speed integration truly something to be so scared of? Oh, come on! Let the EU have ten or fifteen speeds just so long as it moves. For this to happen, we need to resuscitate the word “competition” and to stop confusing integration with the constant averaging of things ranging from bank business models and forms of company financing to sales regulations and the price of such services as roaming.
An important facet of this lack of healthy competition is the dearth of debate about the nature of the EU itself. Healthy debate is in itself a form of competition, yet discussion about the European integration project has become abnormal. Instead of a vigorous exchange of views it often features entrenched positions, with the mainstream on one side and heretics on the other. And it seems more about beliefs than about practical solutions. Mainstream advocates of integration often sink into stifling and defensive groupthink, while the heretics descend into empty and destructive extremism. The two forces make it hard to have a sensible debate about the EU, and this is aggravated by the fact that the genuine pan-European public arena is very small and fragile. Anything important is “translated” into national contexts, hampering useful debate between countries. It is yet another reason why it is vital to resuscitate competition as a guiding principle for the EU.