| Parliamentary democracies are often deeply flawed and in need of reform. That much is obvious (in the UK at any rate). The problem with the EU is that is is even less democratic and hence less accountable than the pre-existing system of national governments. Furthermore, as this article shows, the EU makes it easier for large companies and trading blocks to pull-off greater subversions and abuses of power via lobbying and corruption, since power is concentrated in a much smaller number of people. The founders and implementors of the EU "project" used the term "ever tighter integration" in their founding documents, where they laid out their vision for a United States of Europe. They even describe how they intended to implement this via a technique called "gradualism". The idea being that big sweeping reforms would be rejected by the individual polities, but that more gradual, subtle changes spread over time could achieve the same effect without the same resitance. And we have seen this in action over the past forty years. A bit like the apochryphal boiling of a frog. The problem is that this is in some sense subversive and in another, presumptious that the EU project is desired and/or sensible. At some point the frog metaphor breaks down and people begin to realize what is happening and what has happened. And in the UK at least, finally, we are beginning to see a debate being held on the desirability of the EU being a political union (rather than the more prosaic free-trade area). |