The Castle

Very interesting posting by Steven Den Beste about a website set up by the EU for Europeans to register complaints about the Kafkaesque nightmare that is the ever-growing EU bureaucracy. (No word on whether there were complaints of EU citizens awaking one morning and finding themselves transformed into a giant bug.)

It's interesting to me, because I often read opinion to the effect that the EU is undemocratic, a sort of dictatorship by bureaucracy. But certainly American bureaucracy is no great shakes. Our government has constructed labyrinths of red tape, seemingly designed to baffle and intimidate ordinary people. And unquestionably, it's inefficient and wasteful. (And sometimes it looks more than a little crooked.) My own government is a bureaucratic monster, too. Is the EU that much worse?

I have a good friend, an American living in Europe, whose girlfriend is an EU bureaucrat. I'll see if I can get a comment out of one of them. Meanwhile, my imaginary readers, if any of you have experience dealing with both bureaucracies, I would appreciate your comments. I am ignorant. Educate me, please.

--JAN DEPAUW