Why Americans distrust the EU and are growing more Eurosceptic

[Valin]

The Telegraph:

Nile Gardiner

4/20/12

 

I’ve just returned to Washington from the Midwestern state of Minnesota, where I gave a talk to conservative academics, businessmen and students from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, on the decline of the European Project. The audience, I’m pleased to say, was deeply Eurosceptic, and horrified at the prospect of the European social model crossing the Atlantic. After all, the United States is built upon the foundations of individual liberty, economic freedom and democratic accountability – everything the EU is not.

 

The European Union’s big-government approach hasn’t worked in Europe, and it certainly won’t work in America. The Minnesota audience had a view of the EU that would not have looked out of place at a meeting of grassroots Tory activists in Buckinghamshire or Surrey. When it comes to attitudes towards Europe, Middle America increasingly resembles Middle England.

 

The Minnesotans I talked to are representative of a growing number of Americans who are wary of the United States going down the same route as the EU, which many on this side of the Atlantic see as an economic basket case. This is an important development. For decades, US administrations have backed the process of "ever-closer" union, with Washington supporting economic and political integration in Europe. The Obama administration has entrenched this approach, with a distinctly Eurofederalist mindset on European issues. In the words of Louis Susman, US Ambassador to London: “all key issues must run through Europe.”

 

(Snip)