By Frank O'Collins (June 2006)
 
  The European Union- that vision of a common Europe, a common market, a union of prosperity that represented so much hope for Europeans at the end of the Twentieth Century has now turned into an administrative and over governed nightmare.
  
  Racked with special clauses, special interests, special deals, wasteful subsidies, unaccountable bureaucracy and snail pace of reform, many people throughout Europe now see much of what the European Union stands for as a complete failure.
  
  Yes, the common currency has introduced efficiencies of exchange, but far from cutting costs and promoting jobs for Europe, many respect economists now see the red tape and over governance of the Union as a hindrance to jobs growth- to be by-passed if any nation is to stand a chance of breaking the seemingly permanent water mark of 10% + unemployment.
  
  Problem? What problem?  
  To gauge the state of the problems with the European Union, one only has to briefly view the response by Union bureaucrats to the complete failure of the referendums to ratify the proposed new constitution of the Union- a monster document full of edicts, policies and even more special clauses and deals than the Maastricht Treaty of 1992.
  
  “There is no problem”, is frequently the response, which only goes to highlight how dangerous the present situation is. For when people become so deluded as to ignore the warning signs of impending danger, they risk total collapse of one Europe.
  
  The catalyst is almost certainly to be the cost of the Union, its moral ambivalence to rampant corruption and incompetence at being able to promote jobs growth. Simply, nation states will no longer be able to support the increasing bills to prop up the Union while whole cities and suburbs of people are unemployed. The spark will be the next generation of political leaders born from these depressed areas, who representing their constituency will simply call upon the popular voice of the nation to with draw themselves from the European Union altogether and use the billions saved directly on industry and jobs growth.
  
  Recent riots in Paris and other cities throughout France is only a taste of the future for “One Europe”. People, largely forgotten and unemployed, have become fed up with the nihilist existence and future that their states offers. The same can be said of those generations born out of the squalid refugee camps of Palestine against a future of being “non-persons” in the Arab-Israel conflict. All that heavy handed law and order control does is accelerate the politicization of these slums into recognizing that without revolution they face no future whatsoever.
 
  Across Europe such slums of permanently unemployed exist throughout every industrialized nation. It is not just that unemployment remains high, but that entire communities have now been without adequate jobs for years. The riots are over for the time being. But their return are inevitable.
  
  Could this happen? On the present course of events of deluded, corrupt and incompetent bureaucratic leadership of the European Union it is as certain as night follows day. When will it happen? Five, ten years from now, or it could even happen as soon as a few years from now. When it does, it will cause a landslide revolt at the grass roots of France, Germany, England and others that will be virtually impossible to stop the end of the Union.
  
  How do you fix the problems of the European Union
  
  If by some miracle the leaders of Europe and the Union were to recognize their present predicament, it is then an entirely different set of problems to convince them of the real and structural factors that are the root cause of the malaise.
  
  Non –European nations point almost immediately to the extravagant agricultural subsidies and waste that has become the hallmark of One Europe policy. Others rightly point to the billions unaccounted for and simply “lost” by the bureaucracy in its inability to present a balanced budget- a scandal that makes Enron and WorldCom in the United States look like a petty grocery heist.
 
  But these subsidies and financial incompetence are merely an output of much deeper issues that go to the very heart of how the Union has been formed in the first place- its constitution.
  
  When Maastricht was finally rolled out, it represented not only a hideously long set of rules and protocols, but it also represented a seemingly endless list of special dispensations to the various states on their agreement to cede greater powers to the Union. In effect such agreements sealed the fate of the present Union way back in 1992.
  
  Science teaches us that complexity resolves itself into simplistic issues, while simple systems are able to adapt to seemingly infinite variance. In other words, if you make something too complicated, it breaks down, or at the very least fails in the simplest of ways.
  
  A case in point is the ideal of the present European Union architects to seek to enshrine the rights of the individual within the revised constitution along with numerous socially active policies. When in simple fact, the right to have a meaningful job remains as elusive for millions of Europeans today as it did ten years ago.
  
  It is one thing to desire to try and “architect” the perfect world, it is another to create such a bureaucratic entanglement that nothing works effectively at all. This is the present mess that Europe finds itself. Choking in good intentions. Drowning in enlightenment.
  
  Why would a revised constitution fix anything?
  
  Why then would the Euro Constitution, the proposed revised constitution of the European Union (click here), do anything to help?
  
  Firstly, because it is a document that has taken the hundreds and hundreds of pages of complex rules and “good intentions” of the latest failed European Union Constitution and boiled it down into 144 super-effective articles.
  
  Secondly, because it addresses the essential and missing elements of the Maastricht Treaty and the failed European Constitution:
- a clear set of principles that still give governments policy flexibility
- a clear structure of authority that supports nation states, rather than duplicates bureaucracy
- a clear cabinet structure and set of systems capable of transforming policy- beyond simple committees and bloated commissions
- a set of financial management accountability guidelines
- industry and standards able to cut red tape and help promote jobs growth
  
  Thirdly, because it does not contain the litany of special clauses and special compromise deals that spelt the beginning of the end of previous documents.
  
  Will European Leaders take notice of the Euro Constitution proposal?
  
  Will present European leaders take notice of the Euro Constitution proposal? Probably not. They have invested too much of their credibility and desired legacy into the failed proposals of the present system to consider anything else.
 
  That is fine, for the people who matter are the new leaders emerging from the slums and depressed cities of Europe looking for change. Instead of simply pulling down One Europe, it is hoped they will see the value in supporting a better model, a better aspiration than what exists today.
  
  Sadly, it is part of the human nature of those in power that they simply refuse to see alternatives until the fires are burning all around them. One day soon, Europe will face such major challenges. It is hoped that the constitution for the Euro Union will help people choose a positive path towards rebirth and regrowth rather than the dark path of nationalism and socialism that so ravaged the world sixty years ago.
  
     

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