SaxoBank CEO: "We Must Re-Evaluate The European Union"

thenews 2013.04.23 16:48

I have been interested in politics since I was a kid. That is why I remember Denmark’s European Economic Community (EEC) referendum, although I was only nine years old. Election nights were always exciting and I was allowed to stay up a little longer than I otherwise would be allowed to in our home in Loegstrup, outside of the town of Viborg in the western part of Denmark. Here, we had supper at 5pm, I then did my homework and went to bed at a proper time. It was a bourgeois home; my father was, by most accounts, conservative, but voted for The Liberal Party, as did most people in the countryside.

I remember the referendum on October 2, 1972, in a positive light. Denmark stepped onto the main stage and the support of the people was absolutely clear. Voter turnout was over 90 percent and almost two out of three Danes voted for Denmark’s entry into the EEC.

Confidence in European project slowly destroyed

The EEC was perceived as something positive in our home, as it was in most of bourgeois Denmark. I stayed unconditionally positive for many years to come. Even in the Young Conservatives, we were supporters of a European union and some of us even wore blue and yellow EU socks as a symbol of this attractive, long-term plan. But despite this very positive starting point for our view of the EU, I must confess that, over time, this support and optimism evaporated. Massive central bureaucracy, European arrogance and lack of respect for the independence, history and culture of the national states slowly destroyed confidence in the project.

When I look back, I must admit that it took me too long to recognise what the European project really was. But I also have to state that this recognition came much later to many others and some of our career politicians obviously still do not get it. But the Danes, the citizens, the people have smelled the rat. From this point on, it will just be more and more uphill for the EU supporters when new measures need to be adopted, although there is no reason to believe that they will not be trying over and over again.

Why did it go so wrong for the EU?

Václav Klaus, the former Czech President, has tried to answer this question in his book Europe - The Shattering of Illusions. President Klaus - at the end of his presidential period - writes about the European co-operation's development and possible collapse. He analyses the different phases of Europe's economic and political integration from the European Economic Area (EEA) to the European Community (EC) and to the European Union (EU) - and tells it straight in a blunt criticism of our era of uncritical "eurocracy". In the Danish version of the book, Europa - Integration uden illusioner, I wrote a postscript, of which this post is an extract.