I Have Seen the Future of Europe
The Eurocrats were thinking
ahead when they made Brussels the "Capital of Europe," headquarters of the
emerging European Union. Though practically unknown in the United States, the
union is one of Europe's biggest stories, an important organization trying to
establish itself as a sort of metagovernment for European states.
Entertainingly, the European Union is perhaps the sole bureaucracy left in the
world that admits that its goal is to expand. And what better place to locate
this new enterprise than Brussels, which may be a living preview of the Europe
to come: swathed in red tape and pomp, paralyzed by constituency politics,
declining at great cost. The European Union couldn't have picked a better
home.
Belgian
politics enjoy none of the rowdy intellectual contention of the United Kingdom,
none of the nuance-loving literary polemics of France, not even a strong
national identity. The primary issue in public debate is who gets what
benefits, and while commerce and money are gods, neither is served particularly
well. The national infrastructure is fraying, with little renewal: Belgians
have a high per-capita income and spend it generously on cars and dining, but
what Rousseau called the esprit social seems lacking. Crumbling,
generic, enervated, debt-ridden, materialistic ... is this Europe's future?
Brussels is a place where you can take your dog into a
restaurant, but not your kids. Where a best-selling product, in an ostensibly
Catholic country, is Judas beer. (My proposed slogan: "Taste you can trust.")
Where there's no such thing as takeout coffee with lids. Anyone who wants
coffee must sit languidly in a cafe, gradually feeling overcome with lethargy
and despair.
Other European atmospherics:
lobster bisque for sale from sidewalk vendors; excellent public transportation;
monumental traffic jams of expensive cars crowding small streets; bare breasts
common in advertisements and at beaches, miniskirts being considered acceptable
attire for professional women (when, oh when will these enlightened
attitudes reach the United States?); notably more pollution than in the United
States; notably more government, running higher deficits; lots of
well-cared-for historic buildings, such as the
built-in-the-14 th -century church I attend with my family; prices far
too high, except for wine and flowers, which are cheap (European staples, you
know); large cemeteries, where thousands of U.S. soldiers rest beneath uniform
stone markers; and ubiquitous fresh bread and great chocolates.
Many
tongues are spoken here, but multilingualism serves mainly to delineate
constituent groups, not to facilitate communication. Southern Belgium, called
Wallonia, is French; the northern portion, Flanders, is Dutch. The civic sphere
is entirely bilingual, down to abbreviations: Buses and trams are brightly
labeled MIVB/STIB, the transit-agency acronyms in French and Flemish. But
bilingualism doesn't seem to do much to bring people together. In the Flemish
parts of town, most people would rather hear English than French, and in the
French sections, Flemish is rarely welcome. Until recently, Belgian politics
were dominated by an aging Francophone aristocracy, whose wealth was secured by
Wallonian mines. But mining is a dying industry throughout Europe, and Wallonia
now produces only 13 percent of Belgium's exports, vs. 68 percent for Flanders.
The Flemish have jumped into electronics, trading, and other growth sectors,
while the Walloons have stagnated, devoting their energies to demanding more
benefits. Their economic power on the rise, the Flemish have pressured for a
dominant position in politics. The result is an uneasy compromise giving
Flanders and Wallonia semiautonomy.
Public strikes, particularly ones blocking
traffic and commerce, are a regular event here, making it somewhat of a mystery
how Belgium maintains its high living standard. In the past year, teachers,
students, firefighters, civil servants, airline workers, and others have closed
off large sections of Brussels to chant for higher benefits. Ground crews for
Sabena, the national flag carrier, ran amok during a 1996 strike day at the
airport, smashing the terminal's glass walls and doing millions of francs worth
of damage, then demanding more money from the very government that was going to
have to pay for the repairs.
What are the protesters
striking about? Typical working conditions in Belgium include retirement at 60
or younger, full pay for 32 hours of work, six weeks' paid vacation, and
essentially unlimited sick days. Much more than high wages (which a profitable
enterprise can bear), such work rules are what stymie the continent's
economies, with overall Western European unemployment now at 10.9 percent,
double the U.S. figure.
Yet,
sympathy is usually with strikers, and cowed politicians give in to almost all
demands from almost all quarters. Polls repeatedly show that majorities think
government should give the workers more, a legacy of the European class system.
Europe is plagued by families that have been filthy rich for generations--based
on no useful contribution to society. And a residue of estates reminds voters
of the landed gentry's historic role as parasites. But the link between
government giving the workers more, and taxes and public debt rising, does not
seem to have sunk in on this side of the Atlantic, except perhaps in the United
Kingdom, where, perhaps not coincidentally, unemployment is relatively low.
As in most of Europe, state-sanctioned monopolies drag down
Belgian economic activity, and government barriers to entrepreneurs are much
worse than anywhere in America. Sabena loses money even though it has
government-protected air routes, a high percentage of business flyers, and the
highest seat-mile prices in Europe.
The ossified state of
European telecom monopolies would stun American Webheads. One reason Slate is
not a national obsession in Europe (as, of course, it is in the United States)
is that Internet use remains a luxury here. The phone monopolies have priced
out 800 access. Belgacom charges 5 cents per minute for connections to any
Internet service provider, making the connection more expensive than the
provider's service. Ten years ago Robert Reich, having seen the French Minitel
experiment, warned that Europe would beat the United States to the next
communication revolution--instead, U.S. Web entrepreneurs left Europe in the
dust. Now European telecoms and communication bureaucrats spend their energies
on blocking innovation and searching for ways to monopolize a new enterprise
whose entire soul is decentralization.
These
rapacious European phone monopolies have given birth to independent call-back
services. Once registered, you dial a number in the United States, where a
computer with caller-ID recognizes you after one ring. You hang up to avoid a
Belgacom charge, and the computer calls you back, providing you with a
stateside dial tone so you can dial as if you were in the United States.
Call-back services allow me to call the United States for 70 cents a minute,
vs. the $2.60-per-minute Belgacom charge, and make it cheaper to call
Antwerp--just 40 miles away--via California than directly. Naturally, European
governments want to tax call-back services out of existence. Supposedly, the
European telecom market will deregulate in 1999, and in anticipation of being
phaser-blasted by true competition, Belgacom just sold 45 percent of itself to
a consortium led by Ameritech. Foreign managers will now be blamed for cutting
the deadwood.
In a sense, all European governments are
angling to shift the blame for financial reality onto someone else via the
euro. In theory, national currencies such as the pound, mark, and lira will all
disappear, replaced by one universal tender. A unified currency makes economic
sense, but trade efficiency is only one motive for many governments.
Participation in the new currency requires nations to cut their national debt
below 3 percent of GDP. A dirty little secret of Western Europe is that it has
gone further into hock than the United States. U.S. public debt was down to 1.4
percent of GDP in 1996, and may drop below 1 percent this fiscal year. Germany,
France, and Belgium all are running public debts at 3 percent or more, and
Italy is at 7.4 percent. European national leaders know they've got to tackle
their deficits, but none of them wants the heat for cutting featherbedding or
generous social-payment systems. So the euro plan allows them to blame foreign
interests for required reductions.
But will
the spooky level of Belgian corruption rub off on the euro? Observers consider
Belgium the second-most corrupt European state, trailing only Italy. Last year,
the Belgian secretary-general of NATO had to quit over charges that his Flemish
Socialist Party accepted $50 million in bribes from a defense contractor.
Police recently arrested two other top politicians and raided the headquarters
of the French Socialist Party in connection with bribes from another defense
firm.
The European Union's Eurocrats have worthy ideas, such as
persuading the continent's governments to agree on harmonious environmental and
immigration policies. But the real overriding goal of the union and its
executive arm, the European Commission (there's also a European Parliament
here, but we can skip that), is self-aggrandizement. In conversations,
Eurocrats are frank about their maneuvering for more money and empire: to wrest
"competence," or jurisdiction, away from national governments and vest it in
Brussels is the open objective.
The
union's command center is a cathedral to bureaucratic power, the only
diplomatic structure I've ever been in that actually looks the way Hollywood
depicts diplomatic life. At State Department headquarters in Foggy Bottom,
paint is peeling in the halls and people with titles like "deputy director"
work in chintzy little Dilbert cubicles. At the marble-clad European Union
headquarters, even midlevel Eurocrats have large, plush suites with leather
chairs and original artwork on the walls. Ranks of big black-glass BMWs and
Mercedes limos are parked at the structure's circular drive, motors wastefully
idling. Landing a job in the Brussels Eurocracy has become the career goal of
many of Europe's best graduates.
The European Union's behavior synchs with its
opulent circumstances. Meetings are held in secret, and few public-disclosure
regulations apply. This is the future of European government? Just how
competent the new organization may be is on display at Berlaymont, the first
European Commission headquarters. Forerunner of the current sumptuous building,
this vast skyscraper now sits near the center of Brussels unoccupied, its
entire outer structure swathed in heavy tarpaulin. Berlaymont has been closed
for nine years after an asbestos scare and a botched cleanup: European
taxpayers have paid $50 million so far merely to keep the building closed, with
air pumps running around the clock to prevent any fibers from wafting out. A
mountain of scientific studies has shown that asbestos in walls is almost never
dangerous: The only dangerous thing is trying to rip it out because that causes
fibers to become airborne--exactly what has happened at Berlaymont. And if the
European Union can't manage its continent any better than it manages its own
buildings ...
Fortunately, Berlaymont
isn't in my neighborhood, but a patisserie is. Bakeries are easier to find than
gas stations in Brussels, and the neon bakery sign I can see from my office
window often calls out to me the way signs for cocktail lounges once called out
to earlier generations of writers. Think I'll answer now.
