The Blind Alleys of European Politics, by Alastair Crooke

Things are moving far too fast for hidebound EU politicians and bureaucrats to keep up. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The crises are running, faster and faster, well beyond the abilities of EU rigid structures and mindsets to respond.

The French election result has again demonstrated the hard-edged rigidities of European society which make the prospect of strong purposeful (i.e. transformative) government, of the ilk of say a de Gaulle, almost impossible to emerge today at national level. However, when such national rigidities are taken in combination with the European supra-national, ‘once size fits none’ institutional EU incapacity to respond to the specifics of complex situations, we get ‘full on’ immobilism – the impossibility to change policy in any way meaningfully, in the majority of EU states.

Europe has chugged along for a decade with its managerial ‘Merkellism’ which can be defined as an ingrained reluctance to take hard decisions; to punt problems off by spreading ‘gravy’ liberally around; and in tilting – one way or the other – to Left or Right accordingly, as the wind blows. It has been a time of easy decisions, on top of easy decisions, and little by way of solving structural problems.

This has however, taken the EU into a blind alley – precisely when it faces war in Europe, and when the fires of grave inflation already have been lit, with flames licking skywards, exposing domestic electorates to their harsh vicissitudes.

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