Kevin Meagher
“When the facts change” John Maynard Keynes famously
remarked, “I change my mind”.
No such intellectual pragmatism informs the thinking of outgoing EU Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso.
He has been in valedictory mood, telling a gathering at Chatham House today that David Cameron’s wish to reform the EU’s provision for the free movement of people – partly responsible for Britain’s three million extra immigrants over the past decade or so – is “illegal”.
Moreover, an arbitrary cap on EU migrant workers coming to Britain “can never be accepted.”
Given all political change involves altering laws, he is technically correct on the legality point; but he’s also being obtuse.
For Eurocrats like Barroso, free movement is an inviolable principle and he will brook no dissent. His mind is closed to the possibility of change – and that there is even a problem to address at all.
(Although I dare say it helps that he comes from a country like Portugal, not particularly noted as an economic powerhouse sucking in migrant workers).
It certainly used to be a benign enough principle, in the days when it meant handfuls of Belgian architects could go and work on French hydro-electric projects.
It was an affordable sop to Euro-integrationists in a union of 12 or 15 countries with economies that, while different, were not wildly so.
Not to the point where millions of people used to up-sticks and move countries to better their lot.
But in a union of 28 states, including many former Iron Curtain basket cases, the right to move and work anywhere within the EU is a cast-iron guarantee that millions will abandon the cold, prospect-less East and move West for a better life.
They can’t be blamed for doing so, especially when they get to access free healthcare, housing and social security payments, far beyond the standards of their countries of origin.
But Western Europe is now dealing with the consequences of failing to understand and respond to this overwhelming demand for self-improvement.
And Britain is more impacted than most.
Our (too) liberal economy, (over) generous welfare system and (relative) lack of racism – certainly compared to pretty much anywhere else in the EU – sees us bear the brunt of a policy now disastrously out of control.
Just like US gun nuts defending their “right to bear arms,” there is a qualitative difference between the original intention and the modern manifestation of this “freedom”.
Just as a single-shot musket is not the same thing as an automatic assault rifle, the pace and volume of migration in the EU over the last decade is not what the signatories of the Treaty of Rome and the Single European Act intended, or envisioned ever happening.
Our EU partners need to be reminded of this and David Cameron is absolutely right to seek to do so.
And a Labour government will face exactly the same dilemmas, so there is little for Ed Miliband to gain by seeing Cameron fail in his bid to restore some sanity to the free movement regime.
Of course, Cameron may be motivated because he feels Nigel Farage’s beery breath on his neck, but Labour should be concerned about defending the contributory principle on which our welfare state is based and about free movement underpinning a neo-liberal labour market that uses migrant workers to undercut our own.
Perhaps Senhor Barroso’s remaining time at the Commission would be better spent urging other Member States to improve the lot of their own people and offer them something more than life as a cheap export?
No such intellectual pragmatism informs the thinking of outgoing EU Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso.
He has been in valedictory mood, telling a gathering at Chatham House today that David Cameron’s wish to reform the EU’s provision for the free movement of people – partly responsible for Britain’s three million extra immigrants over the past decade or so – is “illegal”.
Moreover, an arbitrary cap on EU migrant workers coming to Britain “can never be accepted.”
Given all political change involves altering laws, he is technically correct on the legality point; but he’s also being obtuse.
For Eurocrats like Barroso, free movement is an inviolable principle and he will brook no dissent. His mind is closed to the possibility of change – and that there is even a problem to address at all.
(Although I dare say it helps that he comes from a country like Portugal, not particularly noted as an economic powerhouse sucking in migrant workers).
It certainly used to be a benign enough principle, in the days when it meant handfuls of Belgian architects could go and work on French hydro-electric projects.
It was an affordable sop to Euro-integrationists in a union of 12 or 15 countries with economies that, while different, were not wildly so.
Not to the point where millions of people used to up-sticks and move countries to better their lot.
But in a union of 28 states, including many former Iron Curtain basket cases, the right to move and work anywhere within the EU is a cast-iron guarantee that millions will abandon the cold, prospect-less East and move West for a better life.
They can’t be blamed for doing so, especially when they get to access free healthcare, housing and social security payments, far beyond the standards of their countries of origin.
But Western Europe is now dealing with the consequences of failing to understand and respond to this overwhelming demand for self-improvement.
And Britain is more impacted than most.
Our (too) liberal economy, (over) generous welfare system and (relative) lack of racism – certainly compared to pretty much anywhere else in the EU – sees us bear the brunt of a policy now disastrously out of control.
Just like US gun nuts defending their “right to bear arms,” there is a qualitative difference between the original intention and the modern manifestation of this “freedom”.
Just as a single-shot musket is not the same thing as an automatic assault rifle, the pace and volume of migration in the EU over the last decade is not what the signatories of the Treaty of Rome and the Single European Act intended, or envisioned ever happening.
Our EU partners need to be reminded of this and David Cameron is absolutely right to seek to do so.
And a Labour government will face exactly the same dilemmas, so there is little for Ed Miliband to gain by seeing Cameron fail in his bid to restore some sanity to the free movement regime.
Of course, Cameron may be motivated because he feels Nigel Farage’s beery breath on his neck, but Labour should be concerned about defending the contributory principle on which our welfare state is based and about free movement underpinning a neo-liberal labour market that uses migrant workers to undercut our own.
Perhaps Senhor Barroso’s remaining time at the Commission would be better spent urging other Member States to improve the lot of their own people and offer them something more than life as a cheap export?
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