mr president the best thing we could do for the balkan and caucasian republics is to admit them unconditionally into a customs union to open our markets to their products
those are countries ideally placed to price themselves into the market
they have educated and industrious workforces but they have relatively cheap costs and therefore competitive exports
instead of doing that we are freezing out their produce in a number of key areas and then to salve our consciences we are giving them government to government financial assistance
in doing so we of course make them dependencies we make them satrapies
it is not only the russians who think of these countries as their near abroad
this is a phrase that also seems to apply sometimes in brussels
we drag their politicians and their decision makers into a system of the massive redistribution of wealth and we thereby europeanise them in advance because they are learning what we in this house know all too well which is that the primary function of the european union these days is to act as a massive device to take money away from taxpayers and give it to the people lucky enough to be working inside the system
