5.4.05

A directiva Bolkestein

Europeans against freedom

Last Saturday, a few days after Lebanese people had demonstrated for freedom, some 60,000 Europeans were demonstrating in Brussels against more freedom. The target of their protest: the liberalization and deregulation of services, addressed by the European Commission in the so-called "Bolkestein directive".(...)

The funny thing is that this Bolkestein directive was unanymously approved in January 2004 by the previous "leftist" European Commission lead by Romano Prodi. But now that the new "right-wing, pro free market" commission Barroso has to implement the directive, the left is protesting. (...)

Drieu Godefridi, founder and director of the Brussels-based Hayek Institute, writes:

There is an element of truth in the sad slogans of this tired nation: The Bolkestein directive poses a direct treath to the crest of social privileges in Western Europe, which is simply unsustainable from an economic viewpoint. The creative forces of competition which will be liberated by the directive, will force Western Europe to purify its legislation, to lower its labor-parasiting taxes, and to diminish the cost of labor. The Bolkestein directive will only accelerate an evolution that can never be stopped by the incantations of Old Europe, an evolution that is called "globalization", i.e. free trade between individuals, wherever they are on the planet.


(agradecimentos ao Luís)