Despair over the EU in the FT

The article is linked here, it is by Leif Pagrotsky, the vice-chairman of the Bank of Sweden and former Swedish trade and industry minister, A disproportionate share of the EU’s ­decision-making capacity has been spent on projects that do nothing to reverse its relative economic decline. The distance between Europe and the leading countries is bigger today than 15 years ago. The establishment of the euro has not yet paid off in terms of growth and prosperity. The EU still spends more on subsidising declining sectors than preparing for the future; we have failed to ensure that research funding is allocated solely on scientific merit; and the takeover directive has not been modernised to facilitate cross-border mergers to build world champions. Flexibility is still impeded by old-fashioned corporate-based benefits that lock in workers. No new treaty would speed up the process that has taken 20 years to agree the rules of a single market in products such as chocolate and marmalade, or 40 years to fail al­together to create a European patent. In times of growing international competition, we cannot afford to be this careless about our economic base.