Photo: Rex Features

Remember what European Monetary Union was supposed to do? It was going to add zillions to Europe’s GDP, they said.

According to the Lisbon development plan, by 2010, the EU was going to be “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable”.

The truth is that Europe is failing badly. At a time when the rest of the world is growing, data out today shows France stagnating. Shockingly, Italy’s output is lower today than it was fourteen years ago. Even Germany is going into reverse.

Economic Europe is paying the price of ever more political Europe. Introducing layer upon layer of rules, regulations and directive is starting to ossify. Europe’s economy has consistently performed worse than expected as a result of decades of dirigisme.

Here in Britain we have nothing to be complacent about. To be sure, cheap credit is stimulating output. Combined with welfare reforms, this is driving a spectacular jobs boom. But beware.

We might be outside the euro – and therefore free to engage in our own monetary stimulus. We are not outside the single market regulatory sclerosis. The deadweight of all those directives presses down on us every bit as much as on the Eurozone. Strip away the easy money stimulus, and we’re not that much better off.

For years, politicos have told us we need to be inside the European single market to prosper. So why is wealth now being created almost everywhere but inside the highly regulated single market? Those parts of the world that are flourishing somehow don’t seem to struggle to sell either inside or outside Europe.

It is not only European monetary union we ought to steer clear from.

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