Fine. On the other hand, any citizen of the Union seems to have a claim on a wide range of social services wherever that person chooses to live. This will lead to either a massive movement of people to states with a higher level of social services or the harmonization of these services among the member states.
The only way to resolve this potential tension is to allow each member state to restrict access to social services on the basis of such personal conditions as the number of years of work in that state and the absence of a felony conviction. Unless that happens, the EU will become a massive, harmonized welfare state.
As in the US, the proposed EU constitution doesn't deal well with the inherent conflict between nondiscrimination and affirmative action.
The EU constitution states that the "Equality between men and women must be assured in all areas, including employment, work and pay," but this "shall not prevent the maintenance or adoption of measures providing for specific advantages in favor of the under-represented sex."
For the moment, in both the US and the EU, discrimination against people is generally illegal but discrimination in favor of some people is sometimes required. This minor madness, hopefully, will not last.
A final point: The text of the proposed EU constitution is pretentious. Many of the substantive provisions are described as if they were derived from some first principle, as if the crafting of a constitution is some form of algebra rather than the result of political negotiation and agreement.
For example, the text talks about the principles of loyal cooperation, conferral, subsidiarity, proportionality, solidarity, democratic equality, representative democracy, participatory democracy, and on and on.
Broad agreement on the substantive provisions of a constitution is necessary to its effectiveness. Broad agreement on principles is not, because many people may support the same substantive provision for quite different reasons. On these issues, I suggest that Madison is a better guide to an effective constitution than is Descartes.
Europeans should be careful about any major political structure that is presented for their approval, particularly a constitution that was originally presented as a treaty among the member states but now appears to be more like the constitution of a European nation.
Even those who favor the major provisions of the proposed constitution should be careful to ensure that the constitution limits the authority of the EU to define its own powers, because all governments seek broader powers than first authorized.
Over time, an imperfect Europe of national states -- bloodied but hopefully wiser -- may be a better protection of liberty than approving the proposed constitution in the hope for a more perfect EU.
William Niskanen is chairman of the Cato Institute, www.cato.org, in Washington.
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