Dear Editor, Paul Gracey (IC 14/07/2016) writes that describing the EU as a stable and accountable body is “like passing off a broken-down old Volkswagen as a Rolls Royce”. It’s an amusing image, but even if it were fair, it doesn’t for one moment tackle how post-Brexit Britain is preparing to embark on a journey across unfamiliar territory to an uncertain destination without the aid of a map, and is most certainly not doing so in a Rolls Royce!
Not, of course, that Mr Gracey’s image is a fair one, based as it is on a litany of Euromyths, starting with the hoariest of chestnuts that is the line about “unelected and unaccountable commissioners who dictate to member states”. Commissioners are proposed by member states but are voted on by the European Parliament to which they are accountable – the parliament has the power to dismiss the entire commission.
That there are problems with the Euro is clear, but calling it a “failed common currency” goes too far, and to blame the EU for Greece’s difficulties seems perverse in light of how the EU has sought to help that country deal with its debts.
If the EU hasn’t handled the migrant crisis well it might be worth asking whether the fault lies with the EU as an institution or with individual member states. Indeed, it is worth remembering that it was individual European countries, notably the UK, that with the Iraq invasion of 2003 began a process that has destabilised the Middle East and caused the migrant crisis with which the EU is trying to deal now.
Maybe the EU car could do with some work in the garage, but it is far from broken-down!
Yours etc.,
Cathal Rafferty,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.
