Dear David, in your comment today on the Euro you wrote: "The problem, I believe, is that the EU is a political rather than economic construct. Moreover, too many EU policies are created by unelected socialist bureaucrats in Brussels.” I agree with the first sentence but I have several problems with the second one. I moved from Britain to Brussels in 1974 and left it now in 2015. For the last seven years in Belgium I came into regular contact with the civil servants working inside the EU institutions, especially at the Commission. The dominant outlook among them is strongly neo-liberal, free market. The social policy area is there in name but is hardly applied. The EU policies are set by the elected governments of the members’ states and not by the Commission. Their "social" touch comes from the Christian-Democrat -not socialist - tradition which is strongest in Germany and not in France.

David Fuller's view

I thank you for your insights and you obviously know a great deal more about Brussels / Belgium than I do.  I accept your perception and hope you are right about the dominant outlook at the Commission being “strongly neo-liberal, free market”, but where is the beef?  I may be mistaken but your description does not seem to apply to Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the EU Commission, at least not according to our far from right-wing BBC which produced this article: The real Jean-Claude Juncker.