Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, is calling on all “civilized and rational” people to combat anti-trade populism of the sort that is designed to whip up fear and protectionism. In an interview with The Times (London), Barroso issued what he called a wake-up call: “If the signal we give to our children is ‘Protect yourself — hide under the table because there is globalisation, resist it’ — then we are nothing.”
This week, European leaders are headed to London for a meeting designed to “forge a consensus on the way forward for Europe,” The Times said. Barroso described the populist problem as widespread, but one that was chiefly engineered by France and Germany. As the Time reported:
France has led a series of attacks on the Commission’s free-market policies, which have caused chaos in world trade. France and Italy, among others, pushed the Commission into putting up barriers to Chinese textile imports, which led to clothes being piled up at European ports recently.France, Spain and other countries tried to block talks about it because they were concerned about the Commission’s promises to cut farm subsidies. France and Germany also torpedoed an attempt to open the internal market for services in Europe. President Chirac of France denounced “neo-liberalism” as the “new communism” earlier this year.
Senhor Barroso hit back at leaders, including M Chirac, who curry support by denouncing free markets. “There is now a kind of populism from the so-called Right or Left. Because it is against the market, it is against the institutions we have created, it is against some values — of tolerance, for instance — because there is also some kind of xenophobia coming up.”
