> http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/speeches_articles/spla57_en.htm
>
> trade to play its role in the most beneficial way possible. Trade is
> and remains the most powerful motor available to us for building
> prosperity.
Ah, the Eurobourgeoisie. They really do make the American ruling class look like the predatory, debt-addicted, energy-profligate, heavily armed bunch of cheap thugs they indeed are. The good news is, the Eurobourgies are obviously worried that Millau and Prague are harbingers of things to come, which of course they are, so they're scurrying for cover. Lamy is not only good at saying soothing things about how social equity is a good thing, he's also smart enough *not* to mention embarrassing facts like the meltdown of Turkey under the umpteenth IMF-managed, packaged and administered policy deforms; the hamstringing of the Maghreb region via free trade agreements which open up huge pools of cheap labor for Eurobiz, and the ongoing deregulation of public services throughout the EU, which has driven the transformation of reasonably well-run public utilities into profit-hungry corporate monsters like Vivendi and Suez Lyonnais des Eaux. Still, there are intriguing moments where the veil of neoliberal orthodoxy lifts and the silicon teeth of the Eurolizard gleam:
> In the trade and economic area, we have a set of relatively
> well-functioning governance mechanisms or institutions. The WTO is one
> of them, but the Bretton Woods institutions are another example. These
> institutions, no matter how well they function, and no matter how far
> we can push their operation along the road of the reforms and
> improvement that are currently under discussion, can nonetheless not
> do all that is expected from international governance to make
> sustainable development work.
This is pretty blunt talk for an EU politician; basically, he's saying that Bretton Woods is dead, that US-style Bubble neoliberalism is a crock, and that a whole new set of institutions is needed for the 21st century -- a welcome sign that the Euroleft (and, by extension, the class project of the multinational proletariat) is beginning to become a force to be reckoned with.
-- Dennis