2005/03/27 - Gabriel Calzada - Libertad Digital

New Victims Of The European Social Model

The project was one of the few good things to come out of the interventionist and bureaucratic capital of Europe. Its essence was to break down barriers to providing any type of service in member states different from the country of origin or residence.

Socialist conservativism, that asphyxiating typically French (although now incorporated into most of the European left) ideological tide, has returned to its favourite pastime, strangulation. As almost always, the main victims are France’s poor and the poor French, but European society will also pay for this latest triumph of social-conservative groupthink.

I am talking about the withdrawal of the directive to liberalize services in Europe. The European Commission’s proposal, which appeared to have wide support, consisted of freeing economic goods supplied by architects, economists, engineers, plumbers and other service oriented professions from aggressive regulations in the different member states´ territories.

The project was one of the few good things to come out of the interventionist and bureaucratic capital of Europe. Its essence was to break down barriers to providing any type of service in member states different from the country of origin or residence. This would provide an important stimulus to the division of labor and knowledge in Europe. It meant a qualitative improvement to the European market just as it spreads to the Central and Eastern regions of the continent and would have significantly increased the average worker’s productivity, especially the unskilled.

Those best able to provide certain services would have been able to specialize in them. The resulting boost in productivity to whomever finally won European consumers´ favor would have benefited the least skilled among workers not only in their role as consumers but also as members of a more productive society thanks to the greater value their cooperation would acquire in the new and improved production processes.

This is the marvel of the free market: spreading free and peaceful exchange benefits the entire society through the division of labor, including the unskilled or those that have done the least to improve their skills. Opening new markets to a great architect or doctor not only pushes less qualified architects and doctors to specialize in those areas they know best, but the best will be willing to pay more to whomever is able to help them fold up architectural plans or clean medical instruments.

French politicians, social aggression professionals –a service against which no one has thought to set up a few healthy barriers– have charged the project is incompatible with the “European social model” to demand its withdrawal. Reading between the lines we see the closeness of France’s European Constitution referendum and, in this context, a possible kowtow of French conservatives to French social conservatives to hide the happy consequences of economic freedom.