European Document/A First Class Eurocrat
Brooks, David
A First Class Eurocrat by David Brooks Brussels ou probably won't get to meet an y official of the European Community unless you get bumped to first class on a transatlantic flight....
...If the Belgians are not competent enough to organize a twentieth-century phone service, you wonder, how could they organize a conspiracy to dominate Europe...
...He is not offended...
...He assures you that the new European architecture is not an affair that can be summarized in black and white...
...On the continent social etiquette governs political discussion...
...It all runs smoothly...
...Everyone knew this was just fine-sounding goo, on the level of "Have a nice day," but the Belgians and the Germans—it was Adenauer who observed that "Germans are merely Belgians with megalomania"—took it literally...
...The lessons wouldn't take...
...ou try to make conversation, and Yask him how this business of creating a United States of Europe is going...
...A massive peace corps effort, say on the order of the Marshall Plan, might be able to instill some measure of democratic values in Europeans...
...The Eurocrat smiles at your naïvet...
...This idea of inevitability dominates public discussion, giving birth to a million transport metaphors...
...He pulls out a silver mechanical pencil and makes tiny checkmarks, one centimeter each, next to each paragraph as he reads...
...Anybody who dared to ask where the train was headed or why a continent had to be a ship was treated as a hidebound reactionary...
...Winston Churchill said that a United States of Europe was a noble vision...
...Everybody knows the answer to that: "A shapeless man passing out his life in an environment prearranged for his comfort, sunk in a stupor caused by beer and well-regulated food products, passively going to work in some bureaucratic postfor-life, and never troubling himself with things about which he has no expertise, such as self-government...
...At the summit, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont asked some of his fellow finance ministers why they were so eager to sign away their currencies without giving their parliaments a chance to approve...
...You keep reading about free-market endeavors sponsored by the EC...
...you ask...
...According to Lamont, they told him their parliaments would probably reject the deal, so must not be given the chance...
...Europe prospers...
...You'll recognize the Eurocrat by his featureless brow, his colorless hair, his look of habitual contentedness...
...But," you say in closing, "I still can't believe that a group of repugnant technocrats such as yourself can be anything other than evil...
...In fact, seeing a dull flight in front of him, he decides to let you in on the secret, the real force that drives European unification...
...And that's why we've got to keep them out of the EC...
...I just hope my Discretion Officer doesn't hear about this," he says...
...You want to be frank...
...Already, the Eurocrat continues, the burden of self-government has been largely removed from the shoulders of European citizens...
...West Europeans are so comfortable," the Eurocrat says...
...We're efficient...
...You mean the way the collapse of capitalism was inevitable, the way a world government was inevitable...
...You know," you finally blurt out, "there are agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington that try to export democratic ideals to other parts of the world...
...You keep reading that the EC bureaucracy is trying to limit state subsidies to coddled European industries...
...A week before Francois Mitterrand went to Maastricht and advocated signing away a thousand years of French sovereignty, a Paris daily dispatched a pollster to ask the citizenry what they thought of the moves...
...He has about him the cultivated smell of one who is particular about his toilet...
...How did the Belgians do it...
...Remind you of anyone...
...She returns with a bottle, which the Eurocrat inspects over his glasses...
...And in the same way, European history will end up with European unity," the Eurocrat said...
...71 The American Spectator March 1992 47...
...The French, who take nothing literally, saw an advantage in having other Europeans believe it...
...Being anti-Europe is like saying you prefer bowling to tennis, or wearing polyester instead of natural fibers...
...But even in Great Britain,the Eurocrat boasts, the mob is permitted little voice in policy...
...Schools perform European unification dances, and children recite odes to European cooperation...
...Of the over 600 members of Parliament, only about fifteen share the views of the majority on Europe...
...Not troubling himself with popular opinion, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl went to the Dutch city of Maastricht on December 8, 1991, and proceeded to sign away the deutsche mark in favor of the ECU...
...Last November Kohl compared it to the Rhine, which, no matter how it is blocked, inevitably flows into the sea...
...European unification is not a German racket as some British conservatives think, he explains...
...He is above the crude cut and thrust of argument and dispute...
...It is nuanced, complex...
...They just grasped the ridiculous and took it seriously...
...The Maastricht treaty would be a conveyor belt to unification...
...In the end, there is no debate," your Eurocrat friend concludes, "and we are left to run the European government...
...We keep it technocratic enough so that nobody...
...He summons the flight attendant and asks, "Which whites do you have...
...Meanwhile, leading German officials lamented the "psychological factors" among the populace that had led them astray, as if being against the submersion of the deutsche mark was a sign of mental illness...
...In December the most popular German daily surveyed its members on whether they thought the deutsche mark should be folded into the European currency unit (ECU...
...They enjoy government by commission...
...Britons are used to having some say in their affairs, and continually tell pollsters by margins of about 60-to-40 that they oppose European monetary and political union...
...When European unity is achieved under the aegis of the Eurocracy, what sort of European citizen will have been created...
...In public speeches a ritualistic series of phrases developed, for example: "If we don't want to have a Germanicized Europe, we must have a Europeanized Germany...
...You have been to Brussels...
...He lets out a sigh to indicate the gut-wrenching pain such a vintage will cause him...
...Nor is it a pretext for French domination...
...Now the east is another matter...
...He meticulously fastens his seatbelt, opens his briefcase, and removes a document entitled "The Budgetary Implications of the DG IV VAT Harmonization White Paper: An IGC Perspective...
...our man asks...
...The French government didn't bother to disturb its subjects with topics they couldn't be expected to understand...
...In reality the unity process is a tool of Belgian cultural hegemony...
...could possibly understand or be interested in our activities...
...You know that David Brooks is an editorial page editor at the Wall Street Journal Europe...
...Belgium's policy toward Europe was not an issue in the campaign, and one is stared at rudely for suggesting that perhaps the most important political event of the decade should play a role in a campaign or two...
...We are experts...
...the idea of bringing down trade barriers is a noble one...
...they'd said no...
...Seventy-five percent of Frenchmen had either never heard of the summit or didn't know what its purpose was...
...One of them, who happens to be the former prime minister, actually suggested a popular referendum on surrendering monetary sovereignty, since none of the major parties were representing the views of the majority...
...To oppose the growing power of thc, Brussels bureaucracy was to be labeled anti-European, which carries the social stigma of being anti-environment...
...Helmut Kohl, the Eurocrat continued, his voice down to an impressive whisper, then added another wrinkle, that European unity was inevitable...
...He sets his Loewe briefcase on the seat next to you, and then folds his suit jacket in a practiced four-step maneuver, so that it won't crease even if the plane should go down in a ball of flames...
...Europe used to be a place you could visit or live in, but it turned into an idea that you were either pro- or anti...
...Like the environmentalists, the Europeanists do their most effective work brainwashing the young...
...The Belgians held a national election just days before the summit, at the very time when policies toward unification were being formed...
...The Eurocrat smiles...
...As he approaches, you notice the buttery complexion of his cheeks, the mark of a diet rich in subtle sauces...
...46 The American Spectator March 1992 You feel a shiver up your spine...
...This idea was roundly dismissed as the notion of someone who had lost touch with the times...
...Of the millions of readers, 96.6 percent were opposed to the idea...
...These fifteen are considered lunatics and fruitcakes by their parliamentary colleagues...
...The ship is leaving the port...
...The British, for example, are told to get on the train to unity...
...For years, statesmen had been rounding off their speeches with pap on the virtues of European unity...
...That's where the real danger lies...
...I hear the people in Eastern Europe are interested in democratic self-government...
...Then there is the influence of peer pressure...
...You know how these Germans like to think history is flowing in one direction or another...
...All right, if that's all you have...
...It was easy...
...You suppose the idea would frighten him, but no way...
...In Switzerland, after all, there had been a popular vote on whether that nation should join the drive to continental union, and the people had voted wrong...
...In 1957 Dwight Eisenhower called a united Europe "a necessity for the prosperity of Europeans and for the whole world...
Vol. 25 • March 1992 • No. 3
