25/06/2007 3:56:30 pm
With Institutions Come Policies. After celebrating Midsummer in Helsingborg with a family party, I lifted off from Copenhagen at lunchtime and just landed in a sunny Brussels. I will speak at an arrangement by the European Ideas Network concerning European competitiveness and entrepreneurship. A rather suitable timing, one might say.

Anyway, the IHT today was full of supposedly inside stories about the negotiations at the EU summit. It seems to be some final efforts by Tony Blair and some energetic dito by Nicolas Sarkozy that finally wrapped up the new proposal. (It also reveals how the Polish twin leadership argued to have more votes; they said that Poland would have had a larger population had it not been for World War II. Plain stupidity.)

Many comments now point out that after this, there might finally be some more policy content in the European debate rather than the procedural and technical issues. These are however very closely related. The construction of the institutions will determine large parts of the policy content. The issue of whether free competition should be an EU aim or not illustrates precsiely that.

The final text is not yet set. That will be done by the Intergovernmental Conference from July to October. I don?t know if competition can return by then. If possible, no effort should be spared by good forces to get it back.