LONDON -- Yet another disappointing European summit, this time in Barcelona, has left more and more people asking whether this is the right way to proceed with the European project. Is the existing European model the right one? The goal is supposed to be for a liberalized Europe to catch up with the United States and Japan on technology. But instead the Europeans are still falling behind and liberalization is faltering. What has gone wrong?
Of course, these are the big questions that the new convention on the future shape of Europe, under former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing's stately chairmanship, is supposed to address, But even before the convention really gets going, the answers from that quarter are looking predictable -- more power to the central EU institutions, more top-down plans for integration, more "Europe" -- in short, more of the same.
So where do good Europeans, dismayed by all the deadlocks and dead thinking, turn for some better insights and illumination?
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