Matt of Blackfive is carrying a story from the International Herald Tribune about a somewhat "unilateral" meeting of European Leaders.
BERLIN Plans by the German, French and British leaders to discuss joint political and economic initiatives here drew outrage Tuesday from Italy's prime minister, who raised fears on the eve of the meeting that the big three were out to dominate Europe.
As the goal of the European Union seems to be an effort to replicate the success of the USA, I have a leetle tip for them. Just because you are the bigger countries in the Union, doesn't mean that you can get together and exclude all the others as if they didn't exist.
For an example (because I know you might need something concrete to make it penetrate into your brains), you have never seen the governors of California, New York, and Texas get together and try to make rules for the entire USA. It just doesn't happen - EVER! That is why you elect people from your state to go to Washington DC to represent your state's interests. Everyone gets a representative. Oh yeah there are lots of power plays in DC and seniority gets you lots of stuff. But the deal is that the governors run the state, the elected officials go to DC and work for their state nationally.
That's why your EU is going to fail - you've got the heads of each country representing their own interests, and now you have a splinter group going off on their own to decide what's best for all. The other "lowly" states are left out of these high level discussions like poor step children.
If you want to make all the other representative countries angry, this is a terrific way to go about it. If you want it all to fall apart - keep on working things (to your supposed advantage) in this manner. We'll see how long this lasts. And Americans will be on the sidelines shaking their heads in wonder.
Oh and while you're at it - stop calling us arrogant!
Actually, I'm not shaking my head in wonder so much as I am making that "snrk... snrkkk" sound of a person trying hard not to bust out laughing, because that would be rude :-)
Posted by: Harvey | February 19, 2004 at 10:01 AM