For Europe but not the EU

by Charles Gomez

In modern politics and economics where emotions and feelings turn into reality, the fear of the unknown is something to be taken very seriously indeed. Fear, like optimism, can become self-fulfilling and that is why the growing chorus of voices across Europe, clamouring for the dissolution of the EU followed by a leap into the unknown has to make us stand up and take notice.

After all, most of us had high hopes for a trading based union of half a billion citizens which would put the Old Continent on par with the United States, the Russian Empire and China.

So, when did the dream fade away and why are so many people, not just in the United Kingdom but also in Holland, France, Germany and even the new Eastern European Member States so disillusioned with the “European Project”. Of course, those who want to bring the EU to an end are not anti-European (how could they be, they are Europeans) but they are in open rebellion against the self-serving bureaucratic elites that pass for the European Institutions.

Consider this: much of the effort of the Brussels aristocracy was said to be aimed at creating a model financial services sector on which the entire continental economy would be based. Billions were spent on regulation and regulators and yet in 2008 we learnt that the whole thing was an expensive sham, a joke which allowed bankers to operate as if they were running casinos in front of the very noses of their friends in the European Commission and related entities.

The European economies all but collapsed. European tax payers had to bail out the reckless bankers who, for the most part, still occupy the position of eminence that they did before the crash. Meanwhile, their benefactors, ordinary Europeans struggle to make ends meet – as of February 2016 there were 21,000,000 unemployed people in Europe.

2008 severely jolted my previously pro-EU ideals but we looked away and pretended that nothing had happened.

Now, last year the German Chancellor invites one million Syrians to go to Germany. That seemingly noble gesture has turned out to be a disaster of proportions not seen since the Roman Empire descended into the Dark Ages as a result of massive immigration from Goths and other northern tribes.

European law allows immigrants to bring their relatives to the EU with them. The million people who have already come in will soon be entitled to bring in grandparents, parents, siblings, children and grandchildren. So who is counting? (And by the way, very many do not appear to come from Syria at all; and things are about to kick-off again in Libya)

Moreover, this is not just a German problem because Frau Merkel has been badgering her EU colleagues to shoulder the burden of her arrogance. For the most part, the EU is programmed to click its heels when this most powerful of politicians issues her orders – which have to be obeyed.

Of course, Europe must help Syria but it can only do so by first contributing militarily to its pacification and reconstruction and then creating the conditions for the ancient Syrian nation to return to and rebuild their country using the political system that suits them best and not what “we” think is best for them.

Germany itself was razed to the ground by 1945, invaded by the Allies and partitioned, but nobody at the time got the weird notion into their heads that the Germans should abandon their country forever and move elsewhere. The result was that Germany soon recovered from its massive casualties and physical destruction to become the continent’s industrial power house. How wrongheaded can the current European leadership be to want to depopulate Syria (and it seems much of the Third World) so that Europe itself collapses under the weight of having to provide for so many people?

There is nothing kindly in this open borders’ policy. On the contrary, since Frau Merkel negligently threw open the gates we have seen in Europe a rise in xenophobia to a level that we thought had been consigned to the past, and which is growing in intensity.

Even the attempts at redressing this un-confessed mother of all blunders has been an even more appalling “solution” proposed and rushed into effect by the self-styled luminaries who run the EU: Send one illegal immigrant back to Turkey in exchange for a person in the refugee camps – one for one – and offer 70,000,000 Turks visas to come to Europe for good measure (plus a multi-billion € sweetener to the rulers in Ankara).

I love Turkey, which I have visited several times, although I know the history of the Ottoman Empire and so I also respect it and I actually do have Turkish friends, but the idea of allowing free passage to so many people in a vain attempt to spare Frau Merkel’s blushes is outrageous and has set Europe on the road to perdition. Not since the Court of Louis XIV have we seen such a grotesque show of vanity.

So, if you think that the European Union is a success, you must know something that I do not. The EU is in the throes of what they pro-EU “El Pais” newspaper this Saturday called an “existential” problem.

I wish for the rapid dismantling of the European Union and its replacement by a confederation of European states who are no longer dominated by the smug elites encrusted in the system and which work for the long term good of Europeans; our children and our children’s children.

However, I am forced to acknowledge in the short term and before the EU collapses (which it will, and the longer it takes the worse it will be) Gibraltar’s interests lie in Britain remaining in the EU simply because current Spanish diplomacy is so atrophied and limp that it has given up on the world and is content to earn a living plotting against our City and threatening us.

For this reason, come the 23^rd of June I will be voting late in the day and only after taking one or two double Glenmorangies at the "Angry Friar", which is near my polling station. I know that as I vote I will need to contain my sense of revulsion but Gibraltar, even its short term interests, must always come first and I will likely be voting In.