Žygimantas Mauricas on European fishers without fishing rods

The EU's structural policy is completely flawed in its approach, which is why it has failed to achieve its most important objective, writes Žygimantas Mauricas, an economist with the Nordea Bank Lietuva, in the monthly magazine Valstybė: "An old Chinese proverb goes: 'Give a man a fish and he has food for a day. Give him a fishing rod and he will always have a full stomach.' … But the EU bureaucrats came up with something better: We'll give the man a ship, kit him out with brand new fishing gear and give him a few fish as well, so the whole thing looks a bit more authentic. And then they are face to face with a real European fisherman! But the problem is that they forgot the fishing rod. … The most important goal of EU structural funds is to reduce the economic gap between the richest and the poorest regions of the EU. It was conceived as a kind of second phase of the Marshall Plan. … But EU support has in many cases actually prevented the poorer countries from catching up with Europe's forerunners, because their inhabitants are not using their creativity and energy to develop industry, but rather to compete with each other to use (or appropriate) EU structural funds."

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