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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MNI who wrote (15823)	1/25/2000 4:47:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

I don't think that Germany will go through an Italy-style Mane Pulite crisis.... It seems that Christian-Democrat parties throughout Europe have been destabilized. Anyway, here's a pretty good portrayal of Brussels as the Eurocracy's role-model: I Have Seen the Future of Europe And it looks a lot like bureaucratic Belgium, home of the European Union. By Gregg Easterbrook Posted Saturday, Feb. 15, 1997, at 4:30 p.m. PT The Eurocrats were thinking ahead when they made Brussels the "Capital of Europe," headquarters of the emerging European Union. Though practically unknown in the United States, the union is one of Europe's biggest stories, an important organization trying to establish itself as a sort of metagovernment for European states. Entertainingly, the European Union is perhaps the sole bureaucracy left in the world that admits that its goal is to expand. And what better place to locate this new enterprise than Brussels, which may be a living preview of the Europe to come: swathed in red tape and pomp, paralyzed by constituency politics, declining at great cost. The European Union couldn't have picked a better home. Belgian politics enjoy none of the rowdy intellectual contention of the United Kingdom, none of the nuance-loving literary polemics of France, not even a strong national identity. The primary issue in public debate is who gets what benefits, and while commerce and money are gods, neither is served particularly well. The national infrastructure is fraying, with little renewal: Belgians have a high per-capita income and spend it generously on cars and dining, but what Rousseau called the esprit social seems lacking. Crumbling, generic, enervated, debt-ridden, materialistic ... is this Europe's future? [snip] slate.msn.com