​EU elections: DINOsaurs duck first meteorite

With the EU in economic decline, voters have demonstrated broad anger at the institutions and their aloof, incompetent stewards, ‘Democrats in Name Only’ (DINOs).

However, rest assured, mere voters are not worthy of consideration when the Brussels elite knows better.

Back in the good old days, the West used to look smugly at the gerontocracy in the Warsaw pact, where old men did everything within their powers to control an increasingly restive population. Times have changed.

In the past decade it has become increasingly clear that the Brussels apparatus seeks not to endorse liberty but rather propagate an outmoded form of centralized control. Private enterprise is being strangled unless it can afford to comply with an ever multiplying quantity of rules, regulations and red tape which create a distorted protectionist zone. As the world economy pivots east, Europe is being left behind.

The votes have been cast and the polls counted. The verdict is in: a mixture of damning indictment of EU failings married with a collective apathy towards the Brussels bubble.

However, this collective distaste for ‘more Europe’ will not trifle the mass ranks of presidents, commissioners and apparatchiks. Hypocrisy thrives at the epicenter of Brussels: democracy is essential for others, but unnecessary for an EU where the ‘great unwashed’ have an annoying habit of voting against the treaties the Eurocrats desire. Thus the EU developed a remarkable habit of insisting that referenda are rerun until the ‘right’ result is occasioned.

The Lisbon Treaty was an even greater sleight of hand. When Dutch and French voters rejected a European constitution in 2005, a ‘new’ treaty was rammed through, regardless of the will of the people. Thanks to this democratic deficit and lack of accountability at EU level, Europe is now rooted in long-term economic decline. Meanwhile the euro currency is held together by duct tape and the sheer bloody mindedness of an elite valuing deluded dogma above the economic welfare of the people.

No ‘more Europe’

The latest European elections ought to mark a turning point in the increasingly unaccountable European project but outgoing President Van Rompuy has already made it clear the misgivings of the Euroskeptic minority will be ignored. Thus the two faces of the EU are apparent - democratic platitudes on one side while on the other: dictating an outmoded big government top down approach (which is clearly failing the people).

The EU is now the preserve of the 21st century’s DINOsaurs: Brussels’ oligarchs who are ‘Democrats in Name Only’, with a distinctly archaic approach to growth, as demonstrated by their desire to expand the ‘empire’ east (into Ukraine and beyond), despite being unable to deliver coherent prosperity in their own back yard.

Thus the European People’s Party (EPP) alongside the Socialist and Democrat (S&D) parties will maintain their longstanding grand coalition agreement despite the upsurge in Euroskeptic votes. Their ‘grand coalition’ is a variant of electoral dictatorship: ramming through more regulations and above all, ‘more Europe’, at every turn.

That the people of Europe are clearly losing their enthusiasm for the EU is irrelevant to the rather archaic structure of the European politburo, busy dictating daft centralized approaches to tractor production while competing economies are driven by high tech innovation. (In a marvelously absurd outburst last week at a Brussels conference, President Barroso gave a speech on the topic of developing a more entrepreneurial Europe, wondering aloud why so many Europeans emigrants are developing new technology in silicon valley, without bothering to consider that his Jurassic Park of central planning cannot replicate the dynamic freedom from bottom up technological innovation dominant around Palo Alto.)

Adding insult to injury in their contempt for European voters’ concerns, the DINOsaurs will soon further endorse their self-imposed democratic deficit. After lavish dinners’ at taxpayers’ expense, EU leaders’ summits will fudge candidates for the various presidencies and commissioner posts. Voters will, as always, be an afterthought in a process where only those pledging blind allegiance to the Europhile mania can be considered for high office.

Welcome to business as usual in the European Union. A once-mighty continent is regulating itself into irrelevance, demoting a once proud trading bloc to being a global also ran. Europe is stagnating under the thumb of a blind dictatorship of dinosaurs. Extremist politics the EU promised to expunge are returning. While the 2014 electoral meteorite has not rendered Europhile dinosaurs extinct, another five years blithely treating voters with contempt will seriously endanger the European project.

It is time for no ‘more Europe’.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.