By George
Monbiot
"If
people did not sometimes do silly things," Wittgenstein observed, "nothing
intelligent would ever get done." In a world in which intelligence is banned
from public life, baring our buttocks at George Bush is one of the few means we
possess of expressing our dissent. We are forced, as protesters, to talk through
our bums.
But
behind the bottoms lies a profound and complex understanding of some of the
dangers the world now faces. The protesters’ concerns about climate change, the
expansion of NATO and Bush’s plans to scrap the anti-ballistic missile treaty
are now well-understood. But nearly all commentators and political leaders
remain baffled by their opposition to the expansion and better integration of
the European Union.
The
enemies of the European project are supposed to be little Englanders and
polluting industries. Why on earth should people who describes themselves as
radicals, who want to protect the environment, distribute wealth and defend
workers’ rights, seek to oppose the world’s most successful social democratic
project? Tragically, though 25,000 peaceful campaigners gathered in Gothenburg
for the European summit, their message was killed in the crossfire between a
handful of moronic rock-throwers and a thuggish and disorganised police force.
Tony Blair was able to dismiss the entire anti-European protest as "an
anarchists’ travelling circus that goes from summit to summit with the sole
purpose of causing as much mayhem as possible."
It is easy for people of my generation to forget what an
extraordinary achievement the establishment of the European Union was. We
struggle to understand that until 56 years ago
Europe, like the Balkans
today, had been engaged in centuries of almost perpetual war. But nearly all the
radicals I know are well aware that the union has shifted wealth from its richer
to its poorer members, that it has fought discrimination, promoted fairness at
work, raised environmental standards and infuriated the rightwing press by
regulating companies. So why are so many of them now fighting what has, by and
large, been a force for good? They perceive that the great European dream, of
mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, has been subverted. Integration is
giving way to colonisation.
If,
like Tony Blair, you believe this claim is groundless, then take a look at a
document produced by the the union’s most powerful lobby group, the European
Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). It’s called "The East-West Win-Win Business
Experience", but the title is a little misleading. All the winners appear to
live in the west.
European enlargement, the document reveals, provides an opportunity to solve the
"problems" faced by the ERT’s members in central and eastern Europe. New member
states can be forced to reduce their taxes, prevent "delays in the privatisation
process", remove the "restrictions on the purchasing of land by foreign
companies" and combat the "dominance of national players" ("national players"
are local companies). Nations seeking to join the union must "ensure that
programmes to privatise and liberalise local infrastructure continue without
delay".
As an
example of how the businesses it represents can prosper in eastern Europe, the
ERT cites the case of British American Tobacco, which has "invested" in
Hungary. BAT’s problem,
the document reports, was that "demand for cigarettes in Western Europe, the USA
and other developed markets is highly mature. Competition is intense and margins
are tight. Growth in profitability and shareholder value must therefore come
from other, developing markets. … With the collapse of Communism and the
gradual emergence of a free market economy, Central and Eastern Europe
represents a major growth opportunity for BAT." By buying a cigarette factory in
Hungary, BAT was able "to gain access to new growth markets, both in Hungary and
in other Central and Eastern European countries" and "grow the value of the
company."
The
European Round Table is no ordinary lobby group. It has little need to call on
governments, for governments call on the round table. For the past 17 years it
has been the principal architect of European integration and expansion.
In
April 1983 the chief executive of Volvo brought together the heads of 15 other
corporations, among them ICI, Unilever, Nestle, Philips and Fiat, to see if they
could find a way of "harmonising" trade rules in western Europe. This, they
noted, would allow their companies to reach "the scale necessary to resist
pressure from non-European competitors." In January 1985, the ERT presented its
proposal to the European Commission. Two months later, the European Council
commissioned Lord Cockfield to produce the white paper on which the Single
European Act would be based. It was precisely what the lobbyists ordered. The
round table became the act’s enforcer, working closely with the commission to
ensure that the single European market was completed in 1992. The ERT, Jacques
Delors later noted, was "one of the main driving forces behind the Single
Market."
In
1984, the round table published a paper demanding a tunnel under the English
Channel, a roadbridge connecting Denmark to Sweden, a European high speed train
system and a new, Europe-wide roadbuilding programme. It got everything it
wanted. In 1987, it started proposing some of the key components of European
monetary union. The schedule for enlargement agreed at the European summit in
Helsinki in 1999 precisely mirrors the sequence suggested by the ERT a few years
before.
In
Nice last year, European leaders agreed, as the ERT had requested, to bypass
their national parliaments by handing international treaty-making powers to the
European Commission. Future trade agreements will be negotiated not by the
member states, but principally by the trade commissioner Pascal Lamy. Mr Lamy is
a corporation in human form.
Now
the lobby group is seeking what it calls "a minimal regulatory system with the
maximum of flexibility". Having harmonised European regulations so that the same
big companies can sell the same goods and services everywhere, its new task is
to diminish those common rules, to allow these firms to dump their costs onto
the environment and other people. It appears to be winning. According to its
website, "every six months the ERT makes contact with the government that holds
the EU presidency to discuss priorities." Its former secretary-general boasted
about phoning European leaders whenever he wanted policy changes.
All
this has been accompanied by the effective abandonment of future social
democratic reforms. Thanks in part to Tony Blair’s efforts, the EU’s proposed
"fundamental charter on human rights" appears to have been scuppered. There’s
now no realistic prospect of harmonising corporate taxes to prevent companies
from threatening to move to another part of Europe if their host nation doesn’t
reduce its rates. While the EU still enforces the progressive measures it has
adopted in the past, its new legislative programme is, in effect, confined to
helping big business to get bigger.
In
Gothenburg Tony Blair insisted that protesters "must not and will not disrupt
the proper workings of democratic organisations." That role has been reserved
for corporations.