The EU should join the Swiss

Now the Swiss are in the firing line. Brussels is furious about the fact that some cantons are offering "illicit state aid" to EU companies, and thereby prejudicing the single market.

What form does this "state aid" take? You guessed it: lower taxes. The fact that some EU companies prefer Switzerland's fiscal regime to their own is seen, not as an argument for cutting taxes in the EU, but as deliberate provocation by Berne.

Eurocrats should ask themselves why Switzerland is so much richer and happier than the EU. Allow me to suggest a reason. Switzerland is founded on what one might call the Jeffersonian principle: the notion that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. The EU, by