There is no question of saying yes or no to Europe. The question is: what sort of Europe? From: CounterPunch Diary: France's Magnificent Non! By Alexander Cockburn
The entity envisaged by the German bankers who drafted the Maastrict treaty proposed a Europe where iron economic stipulations denied any member country the most modest Keynesian antidotes to recession. Deficit spending was rigidly circumscribed, reflationary tools forbidden. As usual, bankers' stipulations had a chilling effect on European economies which have mostly been feeble.
The British have fought tirelessly to prevent harmonization upward of social services. The French, which have some of the best public services in the world in health, education and transport, for example have duly noted Britain's disastrous privatization of its railways, its poor health services and its languishing schools. That kind of Europe does not appeal to them.
After more the thirty years world-wide of the rigid "free market" economics launched in the early 1970s, the popular verdicts where such are permitted are slowly coming in. Across Latin America "liberalization" (codeword for slash and burn capitalism) is a dirty word. All eyes are on Hugo Chavez and Venezuela. In India hundreds of millions of voters registered their discontent last year. In America discontent simmers, though as yet there is no vehicle for protest at the polls since both major parties are in agreement.
The French are not "anti-Europe". As one young French trade unionist told a reporter, "our generation has grown up with Europe. There is no question of saying yes or no to Europe. The question is: what sort of Europe?"
France and Holland spoke last week for the millions in Europe who have seen their social protections and their wage packets dwindle. That Non! could be the intimation of a new era, when the policies of the bankers and the financiers who have ruled for 35 years could at last be facing serious challenge.
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