“More Europe.” Yeah, Who Wouldn’t Want More of This?

Two stories that illustrate what a clueless monstrosity the EU is. (H/T to @libertylynx on both.) (I was about to write “has become”, but that would be wrong–it’s been this way from the beginning.)

First, “France fails to win immediate EU action on farming crisis“:

France failed to secure further relief measures for its struggling livestock farmers at a meeting of European Union agriculture ministers on Monday, as it tries to contain protests sparked by persistent low prices.

French dairy and meat farmers have been staging protests for weeks, blocking roads, dumping manure, straw and earth in front of public buildings and supermarkets.

The growing crisis had prompted President Francois Hollande last week to promise tax cuts for farmers and to call for decisions at the EU farm minister meeting.

France, the EU’s largest agricultural producer, had gone to Monday’s EU meeting with a set of proposals to regulate oversupply in the milk and pigmeat sectors, but the European Commission asked it to come back with new proposals.

From the time that the Common Agricultural Policy began in the early-1960s, European farm policy has been a special interest nightmare. Agricultural markets have never been permitted to work, and 300+ million Europeans have been held hostage by a few million (relatively inefficient) farmers, particularly (but not exclusively) in France.

Second–again from France!–“Most vulnerable industries need 100 percent free carbon–France“:

Energy intensive industries most likely to leave the European Union because of costs should get all of their EU Emissions Trading System permits free until other major blocs have a carbon price in place, France‘s economy minister said on Monday.

The European Commission is revising its rules for handing out free permits to cushion energy intensive industries, such as the steel sector and oil refiners, from the expense of offsetting emissions on the ETS.

As if this wasn’t completely predictable. Apparently the Europeans believed that the world would immediately see the error if its ways, and defer to the shining example of Europe on climate change policy.

Actually, the rest of the world–the developing world/emerging markets in particular–pretty much decided that they didn’t like being poor, and if the Europeans were going to burden their energy intensive industries with myriad restrictions in the name of battling global warming, the rest of the world was perfectly willing to seize on the opportunity.

I could go on. The immigration mess. The fact that European post-crisis financial regulation (MiFID II and EMIR) makes Frankendodd look like light touch regulation. Energy policy. The list is endless.

There’s an old joke that Arkansas exists so that Mississippians have someone to look down upon. (Or is it Mississippi exists so that Arkansans have someone to look down upon?) I often think that the EU exists so the US has someone to look down upon. As dysfunctional as we are, we ain’t got nothing on them.

What makes it worse is that Europe presumes to lecture the world on policy and governance. That, and all the navel-gazing “more Europe” crap. “More hitting myself in the head with a ball peen hammer” sounds preferable.