Three Cheers for Slovakia!

President Andrew Jackson is believed to have said that "One man with courage makes a majority." Well, let's hope this statement also applies to women. The incoming Prime Minister of Slovakia, Ms. Iveta Radicova, has the power to stop the corrupt and misguided European bailout scheme. At one point, Irish voters had the power to stop more centralization, bureaucratization, and harmonization in Brussels. Then the President of the Czech Republic had the opportunity to derail the movement to a socialist superstate in Brussels. In both cases, the forces of statism eventually prevailed. The bailout is a different issue, but the underlying issues are the same. Should nations have both the sovereign right to determine their own policies and should they also have the responsibility of dealing with the consequences of those actions? Here's a blurb from the EU Observer about whether Slovakia will save Europe from the political elites:

The emerging new leadership in Slovakia has said the country will not contribute its share of the €110 billion rescue package for Greece. In addition, Bratislava is likely not to add its signature to the €750 billion eurozone support mechanism - something that could put the entire project on ice. ..."It would be a serious blow to the EFSF and the euro area's ability to stand behind its members [if a member does not sign]," a senior eurozone official told this website. He explained that all 16 signatures on the document - which specifies provisions on how to issue loan guarantees if necessary - are required to bring the emergency mechanism to life. ...Conservative politician Iveta Radicova, the likely next prime minister, described the bloc's €750 billion rescue fund during the pre-election debates as "bad, dangerous and [the] worst possible solution." On Tuesday (15 June), Ms Radicova also re-iterated that she is against Slovakia providing any financial support to Greece.

Dan Mitchell Gets Results...Again

Faithful readers will remember that my recent speaking tour of Europe for the Free Market Road Show featured stops in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

As part of a venerable Washington tradition of taking credit for things (even when your role is too small to even measure), I'm delighted to report that my speeches must have had a big impact. The parties sympathetic to free-markets and limited government prevailed in the recent Czech elections. Then, just this past weekend, the pro-market parties won a majority in the Slovak elections. When Dan Mitchell speaks, people listen.

On a more serious note, the Slovak elections are particularly important since the victorious parties include some remarkably good people such as Ivan Miklos, Richard Sulik, and Martin Chren. Here's a blurb from an election summary in the Wall Street Journal:

Preliminary results showed the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union, or SDKU, with 15.4% of the vote, followed by the liberal Freedom and Solidarity Party, or SaS, with 12.1%, the Christian Democratic Movement KDH with 8.5%, and the Hungarian minority party Most-HID with 8.1%. Final election results are expected late Sunday. The new parliament will thus be dominated by right-of-center parties led by the Christian Democratic SDKU, and the Hungarian minority party Most-HID. This coalition of four that will also include the Christian Democratic KDH and the liberal Freedom and Solidarity Party, and will hold a total of 79 parliament seats, compared with 62 seats to be held by Smer. The remaining nine mandates will be in the hands of the extremist Slovak Nationalist Party, or SNS. The Freedom and Solidarity Party was formed last year by Richard Sulik, an economist who designed the flat-rate tax system introduced by the previous SDKU-led governments that ruled in 1998-2006.

Greetings from Slovakia

I'm in Bratislava, where I spoke at the first stop of the Hayek Institut's seven-nations Free Market Road Show. Slovakia is one of my favorite nations because it has both a flat tax and personal retirement accounts. A new wave of reform may be possible, depending on the outcome of the June 12 elections.

A new liberal (classical liberal, meaning free market) party has been launched, and their campaign's message focuses on representing future generations. Here is the billboard that ones sees in Slovakia. Not sure how it would fly in America, but I certainly wish the party well.

Greetings from Brussels

I'm in Belgium to speak at the 6th annual International Leaders Summit, which will be held in the European Parliament (a.k.a., belly of the beast) on Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm giving two speeches, including one that will focus on European reforms - including transparency and accountability. A key theme of my remarks will be that centralization is the enemy of good government. Unfortunately, the European Union has been morphing from a free-trade pact into a centralized and bureaucratized super-state. I will explain why this is a bad thing, both from an economic perspective and a civic-virtue perspective, but I'm not overly optimistic of altering Europe's drift to statism.

On a more positive note, I'm looking forward to hearing some of the other speakers. Dan Hannan, an MEP from the UK is famous on youtube for his damning indictment of Gordon Brown, and he will be with me on the first panel. In the afternoon, I'll be joined by the former Finance Minister of Slovakia, who is responsible for an amazing set of free-market reforms, including the flat tax and personal Social Security retirement accounts.