HOW WOULD EUROPE BE WITHOUT THE EU?
27 August 2007

Probably sounds like a an easy question for eurosceptics: Better! A Europe without the EU would, to them, mean less bureacracy, more efficiency and money to the people who need it rather than to rich eurocrats living jet-set lives in Brussels.

I love Europe! Europe's history and what we have learnt from it. Europe's diversity and what we can learn from eachother. Europe's cultural differences and languages through which we can understand and view life from different angles. Europe's strive forwards and to improve itself and to develop. Europe's passion for fairness and human rights.

Of course if we want to channel our objectives and dreams of a better future, someone needs to work on it, so a bureacracy is necessary. EU's civil service is actually smaller than the one of Whitehall, UK.

I just love walking to work in the morning here in Brussels. Well, we are all parts of a large wheel, the EU wheel - call us boring Eurocrats if you like! But you very rarely meet someone here who has a boring job. Almost everyone has exciting jobs, in areas which they enjoy and which are of importance to people all across the continent, and sometimes even in the wider world. Walking to work, seeing all these people and knowing that we all, overall, work for the same purpose - we are burning for a better future - is a strong and a very satisfying feeling. And most eurocrats do not at all live jet-set lives - Brussels is just a fascinating melting pot of people with a strong belief in a better Europe.

Call me idealistic, but a prosperous European continent without a European Union is not an alternative. It would mean national bureacracies overlapping eachother's work and wasting money on un-coordinated policies.