In all the self congratulation about not being told what to do by the Commission on immigration – or more pointedly eviction – this little gem slipped through the net. There are plans to create a European “Oath of faithfulness.” I know that sounds absurd doesn’t it. It sounds like a Sun headline, but just read what Franco Frattini, the Italian Commissioner for Justice and Home affairs had to say at a press conference yesterday

“I am in favour of exploring the possibility of having a dialogue with representative communities of immigrants and trying to identify something whereby, as in France, you can get every immigrant to declare respect for national and EU law and the charter of fundamental rights. I feel this is worth exploring at a European level.”

The department of education of the Flanders region in Belgium has clamped down on a Jewish primary school in Antwerp, withdrawing its subsidies and its licence to deliver certificates of education to its pupils. What had the school done wrong? Was it failing to teach the kids how to read and write or do arithmetic? Was it lack of discipline, or substandard hygiene, or were there indications of child abuse?

None of these. On the contrary, in addition to the official school programme the Bais Rachel School offers ten extra hours of religious teaching every week. Some of these classes are given as a form of Sunday school, and they are not subsidised by the state. The school, however, has failed to meet some of the targets set by the government to determine whether pupils are being given adequate preparation for further education and their role in society. The school has been judged wanting because it did not encourage its pupils to watch television or listen to contemporary music, it did not take them on outings to museums, and worst of all, it was not giving its pupils sex education along the lines set down by the government.

The Left on the European continent consider Britain to be an American stooge and a Trojan horse within the European Union intent on undermining the welfare state. Their opposition to the “Anglo-Saxons” has developed into a genuine hatred of the British, as became apparent last Tuesday in a diatribe in the “left-liberal” Brussels Dutch-language newspaper De Morgen. Here is a translation from the article entitled “Waarom wij de Britten zo haten” (Why we hate the British so much):

“The Huns are back, and they speak English with a variety of invariably common accents. No other nation manages to spoil other people’s holidays so thoroughly as the British. They do that all through the summer everywhere the sun shines with their unique mixture of wantonness and arrogance, their pathetic addiction to drink, their bad taste, and actually just their ugliness and thickheaded presence. There, that is a relief.

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The “Polish plumber” – a symbol of cheap labour – became a catchphrase of French neo-Marxists campaigning for a “No” during the referendum on the EU constitution. Recently the Polish Tourist Board in Paris came up with a seductive image of a tanned athletic Polish plumber inviting the French to come to Poland. The ad was an attempt to counter negative French rhetoric about East European workers. The campaign of the French Left, however, was hurtful to many Poles, including Lech Walesa.

Exactly 25 years ago, on 31 August 1980, Walesa, an electrician at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, forced the Communist regime in Poland to recognise the independent trade union Solidarity. In December 1981 the Communists announced a state of emergency, disbanded Solidarity and imprisoned Walesa. The regime, however, could not stop the demand for freedom and democracy. Before the decade was over every Communist dictatorship in Europe had fallen. In 1990 Walesa became Poland’s President. Five years later, however, he lost the elections to the former Communist Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Oil has been “the devil’s excrement” for Russia. That is the opinion of Andrei Illarionov, the chief economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a speech at the Regional Meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Rejkavik last week Illarionov pointed out that in the 1990s, when oil prices were relatively low, Russia lowered taxation (adopting a flat tax of 13%), privatised its oil industry, stimulated economic competition and attracted foreign investments.

Since 1999 oil prices have been on the rise, multiplying five-fold. With the high oil prices “the Dutch disease” came to Russia, said Illarionov. Money has flown in, leading to a high money supply, high inflation and a rise of the ruble.

“An exacerbation of the Dutch disease promotes corruption, impairs the quality of policies, including those of an economic nature, and demoralizes essential federal and public institutions. The flow of revenues not earned through the hard labour of the government or economic entities has a degrading effect, thus encouraging the emergence of a ‘rent-oriented’ government and a ‘rent-oriented’ society. As a result, the idea of business through creative endeavors gives way to an aggressive ideology of redistribution."

The most impressive speech during the recent Regional Meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society was undoubtedly Czech President Václav Klaus’s “View from a Post-Communist Country in a Predominantly Post-Democratic Europe.” Klaus has been an MPS member since 1990 and likes to attend the MPS meetings. Though his political obligations (as Prime Minister from 1992 to 1997 and President since 2002) do not always allow him to attend, he combined his presence at the MPS meeting in Reykjavik with an official visit to the Republic of Iceland.

President Klaus spoke last Monday, warning for the new “substitute ideologies of socialism” such as “Europeanism” and “NGOism.” These “isms” are currently threatening Europe. “In the first decade of the 21st century we should not concentrate exclusively on socialism,” he said.

“There is a well-known saying that we should not fight the old, already non-existent battles. I find this point worth stressing even if I do not want to say that socialism is definitely over. There are, I believe, at least two arguments, which justify looking at other ideologies as well. The first is the difference between the hard and soft version of socialism and the second is the emergence of new ‘isms’ based on similar illiberal or antiliberal views.”

The future cannot be known in advance. Nevertheless some degree of prediction on political developments is possible. That is so because politics is based on relations. A large part of politics is determined by three basic relations: The relation between rich and poor; the relation between management and ordinary workers; and the relation between strong and weak employees. These relations are almost universal. The basic features of politics do not change with technological change and economic growth. ‘Poverty’ is historically relative; unemployment is always shifted toward higher levels of labour conditions. There will always be a political divide between rich and poor, no matter how rich the poor are. There will always be an establishment interested in stable power relations. There will always be a clash of interests between employees who can be replaced without losses and employees that are crucial for profitable activities.

In 1994 Estonia introduced a flat tax rate of 26%. The flat tax is a system with only one tax rate for all personal income and corporate profits. Almost overnight this led to a phenomenal economic expansion. Contrary to the situation in a tax system with progressive rates, people were no longer punished fiscally if they worked harder. Very soon the Estonian example was being followed by its Baltic neighbours Lithuania and Latvia. In 1997 Russia introduced a flat tax of 13%. Serbia followed suit, as did the Ukraine, Slovakia and Georgia. Romania followed in 2005.

The monster of the 20th century was the state. In the 1920s and ’30s the Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek saw the power of this Leviathan expand in his native Central Europe. Two brands of socialism – communism and national-socialism – were eradicating the freedoms of individuals and replacing the existing spontaneous order by the imposed order of the state.

In 1931 Hayek, who called himself a liberal (in the original “classical” meaning of the word as a philosophy defending freedom), left Vienna for London. Though Hitler did not annex Austria until 1938 Hayek realised that the pattern which applied to Germany also applied to his home country: “By the time Hitler came to power liberalism was to all intents and purposes dead in Germany. And it was socialism that had killed it.”

The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS),  an international organisation of classical-liberal academics, politicians, journalists, think tank people and businessmen, is currently holding a Regional Meeting in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. The Society was founded after the Second World War by the later Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek and friends such as Karl Popper, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises and others. From its modest beginnings with a small group consisting of Hayek and 35 “friends of Hayek” who convened in the Swiss resort of Mont Pelerin in 1947, the MPS today has over 500 members who convene every two years for a General Meeting (the last one was held in 2004 in Salt Lake City) and once or twice a year at Regional Meetings. The Reykjavik meeting, attended by 109 participants, started last Sunday and ends tomorrow evening.