Napier, Wednesday 6 July 2016 - In an address in Wellington in February economist Dr Oliver Hartwich publicly and unreservedly forecast that the European Union during 2016 would “cease to exist as we know it.”

Dr Hartwich speaking (above) at a seminar at the headquarters of the New Zealand Initiative said that the imminent demise of the EU “project,” as he described it, was due to the decision by its leadership after the fall of the Berlin Wall to embark upon an expansionist phase.

This took two perilous forms, he noted, the currency union and the quest for new members. History proved that instead there should have followed a period of “consolidation.”

The revolving door series of crises detonated by these two expansionary schemes had the effect of eroding the structure of the EU to the point at which it had the capacity only to focus on its “own survival.”

The unexpected explosion of populism and nationalism now also proceeded also to gnaw at its foundations.

These structural problems now became further camouflaged by the EU’s high profile preoccupation with member financial bail-outs, which in turn now also served to hide the rise of radical politics in members such as Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Immigration he identified as simply representing one crisis too far for the beleaguered EU.

The EU’s true condition he said that evening in February was “under wraps” instead of being “under control.”

The New Zealand Initiative sprang from a number of independent enterprise policy groups , notably the Business Roundtable.

Dr Hartwich, a German-trained lawyer and economist was appointed executive director of the freshly re-cast New Zealand Initiative at its inception, following a tour with Sydney’s Centre for Independent Studies, and as chief economist at London’s Policy Exchange.

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