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The Adam Smith Institute
The Adam Smith Institute is the UK's leading innovator of free-market policies. Named after the great Scottish economist and author of The Wealth of Nations, its guiding principles are free markets and a free society. It researches practical ways to inject choice and competition into public services, extend personal freedom, reduce taxes, prune back regulation, and cut government waste.
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Will Brussels be the Baltics' new Moscow?
By Nick Spurrell
 Two recent referenda in the Baltics showed that the Estonian and Latvian peoples want to join the European Union - and that their countries will do so as planned. The decisions followed an earlier one in Lithuania which also endorsed EU membership. At best, all this may be seen as an embrace of West, or rather a symbolic turn away from the former Soviet East. At worst, the EU's Brussels may take on the role that Moscow had in the Soviet days: an interfering statist outsider. With a flat-tax system in Estonia that the Economist calls "stunningly simple" and "remarkably successful", replicated in Latvia, we've got to ask whether it was wise for these Baltic states to join the EU at all. In the Baltics, regulation of industry is low, and the rate of inflation is very low, although the Estonian crown is pegged to the euro. Maybe full independence from the EU would have been a good idea, but this could have simply led to a drift back towards Moscow. Perhaps Brussels is the lesser of two evils. Feedback
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Adam Smith Institute Tel +44 (0)20 7222 4995  Adam Smith (1723-1790)
Adam Smith was the great Scottish philosopher and economist best known for "The Wealth of Nations", his pioneering book on free trade and market economics.
A wide selection of material about Adam Smith is now available on the Adam Smith website. This includes the full text of his two major works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. |