Ppoliticians love claim credit for new ideas. But originality in policy-making is overrated. Designing laws from scratch is difficult. Understanding how a new policy will work in practice is even harder. Observing how a pattern worked elsewhere, on the other hand, is quite easy. And Europe, with around 40 countries, most of which are quite similar by global standards, offers plenty of examples to draw inspiration from. If something works well in Spain, it can also work in Bulgaria. Why innovate when you can copy and paste?
Some good ideas have indeed crossed borders. Partial unemployment schemes are an example of this. Instead of laying off workers when covid-19 crushed labor demand, many European employers cut their hours (sometimes to zero) and states compensated some of their lost wages. Thus, workers remained attached to employers and quickly returned to work when demand picked up. Germany had shown the idea worked after the 2008 financial crisis. But too often politicians think the looting is below them. They should put their pride aside. To start, here are six policies that have worked well in a country and could usefully be stolen.
Let’s start with the approach to Portugal drugs. In 2001, the government decriminalized the possession of cannabis, heroin and other narcotics. The idea is to treat addiction as a public health crisis and not a public order one. Rather than punishing users, which is unnecessary and cruel, the system focuses police resources on catching dealers. The drugs aren’t legal, but people caught with small amounts in their pockets are dealt with by commissions that include social workers and medical professionals, not just cops. Drug addicts are treated. Potential drug addicts are identified early. The result is one of the lowest drug-related death rates in Europe. Other countries now tolerate cannabis, but few have been as ambitious as Portugal for harder drugs.
Next consider the Dutch approach Bikes. Dosages of funding for bike-friendly infrastructure make cycling safer in the Netherlands. The same goes for an inventive rule, codified in 1994: in a collision between a car and a cyclist, motorists are presumed to be at fault until proven otherwise. Only really reckless cyclists are made to share the blame. Dutch motorists thus treat cyclists as if they were carriers of an infectious disease, giving them the necessary leeway. Even better, while motorists in other countries are furiously opposed to new cycle lanes, the Dutch welcome them, because segregating two-wheelers reduces the risk of a costly accident. Cycling rates in the Netherlands have risen sharply and the number of fatalities per kilometer traveled has fallen.
Belgium is rarely seen as a model of good governance; for a while, ten years ago, it had no national government at all. But last month he agreed on a thoughtful way to tackle the energy crisis. Normally, landlords are allowed to increase the rent for multi-year leases in line with inflation. As energy prices soared, it could have been a double whammy for tenants, burdened by high gas bills and the secondary inflation they caused. Thus, Belgium will allow landlords to increase rent only for properties that meet energy efficiency standards. In the short term, this protects tenants. Looking further, it’s a boost for homeowners to invest in greenery. France is doing something ostensibly similar, but as part of a plan to ban the rental of poorly insulated homes, which could push the worst homes into the black market.
Finland has virtually eliminated roaming by simply providing housing to those who need it, without conditions. In other countries, homeless people have to deal with their demons, for example drug addiction, before obtaining permanent housing. But it’s hard to untangle a chaotic life bouncing between friends’ sofas, hostels and the street. Thus, the cycle from bad to worse is never broken. Finland’s strategy is ‘housing first’: getting people into houses and then helping them deal with their other problems. Old shelters and hostels have been turned into apartments that former homeless people can call their own (having a large stock of state-owned housing aid). It turns out that it costs less to provide housing than to deal with the consequences of homelessness.
Europe can also learn from Britain, and not just from the madness of leaving the European Union. In 2018, Britain introduced wealth orders, by which a court can require that when suspicious guys buy yachts or penthouses in Knightsbridge, they must reveal where the money came from. (Australia has a similar system.) Oligarchs, drug bosses and their relatives can lose their assets if they cannot satisfactorily explain how they were paid. Enforcing this rule has been a challenge and has enriched many London lawyers. But reversing the burden of proof on questionable money makes it much more difficult to spend it.
Finally, congratulations to Ukraine. In many countries, the assets held by the public sector are used inefficiently. Many public buildings sit empty for years, for example. But selling such assets is tricky: you have to find suitable buyers, you have to discourage corruption. Ukraine’s Prozorro.Sale has been applauded for helping all levels of government monetize things they don’t need. The digital platform, run by the Ministry of Economy, helped generate 60 billion hryvnia (about $2 billion before the war) in the five years to 2021. Everything from state-owned bank assets to pipes rusty things that the local authorities no longer need, was flogged. The project is part of a larger initiative put in place in recent years to ensure that every public procurement kopiyok can be tracked in one place.
do you fly
One might think that the EU would be a good environment to disseminate the best ideas of each member. Yet often when a problem is identified, the bloc develops a single new policy that can be applied across the union. It’s cumbersome and it can mean imposing untested policies on everyone. Better to plagiarize. As Tom Lehrer noted, this is “why the good Lord made your eyes”. ■
Read more from Charlemagne, our columnist on European politics:
A new migration crisis is brewing in Europe (November 17)
How Brussels sprouted its own unique dialect (November 10)
Europe has a problem: France and Germany forgot how to argue (October 27)