madam president have you noticed that the harmonisation of policy always happens in the same direction
more integration invariably means more intervention
or let us put that the other way around pluralism guarantees competitiveness
if you have competing states with different tax levels then you can only raise your tax to a certain level before your money starts going abroad
if you have competing states with different employment policies and different social policies you can regulate your employment market only to a certain degree before the jobs start crossing your borders
now during the good years the european union was able to disregard these verities and was able to construct behind its walls a highly regulated and centralised market
but those good years have come to an end
we now risk cutting ourselves off from more dynamic economies and becoming more penurious and more irrelevant and ultimately like tolkien's eldar going into the west and fading
