Bill Mitchell — The EU is neoliberal to its core and captured by corporate interests

The aptly named – Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) – “is a research and campaign group working to expose and challenge the privileged access and influence enjoyed by corporations and their lobby groups in EU policy making”. It is relentless in exposing the corporate scams that result in European Union laws being biased towards corporations at the expense of the well-being of the broader population. The research results they publish are diametrically opposed to the claims by the Europhile Left, especially those from Britain, that posit that the EU is the exemplar of global organisation, defending workers’ rights and all manner of good things, and with just a few reforms here and there is the hope for a progressive future. CEO’s most recent report (February 6, 2019) – Captured states: when EU governments are a channel for corporate interests – allow us to see how the EU machinery has turned the Member States into a “channel for corporate interests” – “middlemen for corporate interests”. My position is that CEO has it right and the Europhiles a dreaming....

The distinguishing factor between classical economic liberalism and neoliberalism is that the former is based on isolating government from economic influence with the later is based on government capture by the ownership class as an analog to the aristocracies and gentries under feudalism Neoliberalism is better characterized as neo-feudalism than a new form of liberalism.

Both classical economic liberalism and neoliberalism are supposedly manifestations of "capitalism." Classical economic liberalism is such as an ideal system but realistically it is no possible to either abolish the nation state or to limit the state to the role of "night watchman." Pure capitalism is based on perfect competition such that the operation of "free markets" eliminates economic rent as unearned gai. But this requires social liberalism in the sense of absence privileged entities and networks and political liberalism is the sense of absence of political power wielded by special interest.

Neoliberals realized this and set about capturing governments through representative democracies in which outcomes are determined largely by monied interests competing with each other factionally, but cooperating against the marks from whom economic rent is extracted. The result nationally is corporate statism and internationally in the attempt of transnationals to gain leverage over national governments through agreements and treaties that favor special interest rent-seeking globally.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The EU is neoliberal to its core and captured by corporate interests
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia