I&F News
01.11.2024

Europe caught in the technocracy trap

The European Union as it is today cannot be compared to the Europe that the founding fathers once aspired to. Their vision was a confederation of free member states, that were to benefit from deregulation and a free market economy in a common internal market.

Instead, lately the Union and its members have developed towards technocratic entities characterised by a tangle of contradictory laws, bureaucratic requirements and impractical regulations. This takes place at both a national and EU level.

At the same time, opinion polls among European business leaders show that bureaucracy and regulation – which have expanded significantly over the past two decades – are the biggest obstacles to entrepreneurship, competition and innovation. Nevertheless, the political and administrative elites of many countries, as well as those parts of the economy that thrive on this system, do not recognise this. Instead, the technocratic approach is argued to be more beneficial for all, with slogans such as «for more security» or «for a fairer future».

This means that the practicability of decisions, and the factors that are needed for an innovative economy and society, are ignored. Decisions are usually made at a supranational level, in an environment that is shielded from real life and too strongly based on statistics, projections and forecasts. These decisions frequently focus on ideological prejudices and are far away from businesses and citizens.

The majority of the population tolerates a technocratic approach in the belief that it might lead to a more stable and sometimes fairer, more inclusive or more sustainable society. Henryk M. Broder, journalist and author, puts it in a nutshell in an article for the German language magazine Der Pragmaticus, when he writes that the increase in freedoms in the private sphere (for example by making claims of minorities politically decisive) goes hand in hand with a limitation of civil rights in the public sphere. We believe that what then falls by the wayside are personal responsibility and personal and entrepreneurial freedom.

Europe did not slide into technocracy overnight. Political events, social changes and financial and economic crises have repeatedly provided opportunities for parliaments, governments, and authorities to establish a close-knit set of rules. As a result, citizens' trust in the policies of traditional parties is declining. however, systems which continuously go against the interests of citizens and entrepreneurs do not tend to survive, and this will also be the case with technocracy.

Michael of Liechtenstein . Executive Chairman

Contact us:
via phone or via e-mail

Kontakt
crossmenuchevron-right