Everybody is angry at David Cameron, a purportedly self-serving British snob, who could care less about the grand ideals of European integration. There - with the likes of that other country-boy, Václav Klaus, who seems to have a simplistic and narrow view against enhancing co-operation between European States. According to the prevailing orthodoxy, every change in the European Treaties and, in particular, every further grant of sovereign powers to a centralized institution (which, of course, shall NOT be tested in a referendum), is another holy step towards the formation of a unified Europe.
For some reason, people seem to forget that Cameron and Klaus have to answer to their own electorate, not to the philosophers of the European ideals - and it is their duty to judge what is in their peoples' interest. But how could further european integration be against the interests of the British or the Czech people? How can they fail to understand the benefits of assigning more power to european bureaucrats? How can they not grasp the significance of transferring power from the uneducated masses to the chosen few?
Participating in the european integration has its benefits and its drawbacks - and these differ for each participating country. What seemed like a socialist experiment in the '80s right now looks more like an exercise in fiscal discipline; but, both then and now, the people are the ones who have the least saying in all these, although all states participating in the European Union have to be democracies and despite the presence of an elected European Parliament. Such ambivalence seems ironic especially now, in the light of all the slander against those who put their people's interests first.
