Lessons from Latin America

Saturday, 10th December 2005

Daniel Hannan on why South Americans don’t want to imitate the European Union

This approach is known in Brussels as ‘biregionalism’. And, to be fair, the EU has every right to ask for some economic harmonisation among its trading partners: it is plainly easier to sign a free trade accord with a single bloc than a whole series of bilateral treaties. But what is happening now goes well beyond commerce. The EU is, in effect, seeking to export its ideology tout entier.

Why should it want to do so? For three reasons. First — and there is no dishonour in this — many Eurocrats genuinely believe that countries are happier when they amalgamate. Second, they recognise the propaganda value of being able to claim that the world is consolidating into competing blocs: if European voters see independent states flourishing elsewhere, they might start getting ideas. Third, they calculate that a world made up of regional associations will be less easily dominated by the United States. They are delighted, for example, that Mercosur has just agreed to admit Venezuela, whose President, Hugo Ch�vez, is regarded in Washington as a second Castro. They sense that supra-national institutions will tend more closely to the EU’s social and political model than national governments which must answer directly to their voters.

They’re right. That’s the problem. Being remote from their peoples, big blocs become inefficient, self-serving and, ultimately, poor. That’s why, nowadays, micro-states tend to outperform their larger neighbours. Compare Brunei with Indonesia, or Hong Kong with China — or, for that matter, Switzerland with the EU. The tragedy is that the EU is urging on the rest of the world a 1950s model which has been made redundant by advances in communications. Never have supra-national institutions been more otiose.

What’s that? You think globalisation makes supra-nationalism more relevant? Then ponder the most spectacular example of international collaboration: airmail. You buy a stamp in one country, but you are reasonably confident that your letter will be correctly delivered in another. And here’s the thing: the international postal system needs no parliament, no standing bureaucracy; it rests on an agreement among sovereign states. Now, can you name a single EU directive that has been half so successful? Exactly.