Patrick L Young is CEO of niche crowdfunding platform HanzaTrade and an advisor to fund managers throughout the world. Born in Ireland, he is an active investor in the “New Europe” amongst other emerging markets and is an active Co Founder of grassroots startup group " Mission ToRun.

Patrick L Young is CEO of niche crowdfunding platform HanzaTrade and an advisor to fund managers throughout the world. Born in Ireland, he is an active investor in the “New Europe” amongst other emerging markets and is an active Co Founder of grassroots startup group " Mission ToRun.

Vested interests want the EU to ban something you have never heard of. The problem? It’s a key element of the future Brussels is turning its back on...

Before we delve into the uber-complexity of a compound which sounds a bit like a Turkish football team and can do all sorts of wondrous things to help solar power and more… let’s consider a little piece of Irish linguistic idiom: “Cutting off your nose to spite your face” is the act of doing something which actually harms you but provides an appearance of advantage.

Meanwhile, you have probably never heard of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs). Indeed if the EU has its way, you won’t, meaning no chance of its transformative powers helping Europe’s economy re-grow the various limbs lopped off as a result of the euro crisis and concomitant banker-government nexus excess. Like all failing systems, the EU remains unapologetic for the economic distress it has visited upon citizens through euro hubris. Thus empires move from core utility to a position of abject absurdity as they overstretch their influence. Large, flaccid and lumbering empires reach a point where pragmatism gives way to the ludicrous and suffer systemic collapse. While citizens await liberation from their shackles, they endure seemingly endless European diktats and the demented precept that more regulation is better regulation.

One of the most egregious politically correct phrases in the EU phrasebook remains the “Single Market.” Once upon a time this did indeed involve breaking down barriers (according to recent electoral publicity: so wannabe MEPs could enjoy cross-border pornography frictionlessly). Certainly it is a delight to travel from Portugal to Poland seamlessly without border controls. Likewise, Europeans throughout the EU can enjoy a bottle of wine posted from anywhere within it (more than can be said about the, er, “United” States of America). So far, so good. Borders are open, booze can be posted: the basics of ‘panem et circenses’ politics have been achieved...

Core precepts are often best left unadorned: less regulation means more growth. Regulatory minimalism works. Here the Europhile urge for “more Europe” clearly undermines the Union’s prosperity. Too much ice cream clogs the arteries (enjoyable as the early scoops may be!) just as too much regulation stifles economic growth.

Signaling the latest wave of economically destructive over-regulation, in recent weeks MEPs endured vigorous sessions of “Brussels Aerobics:” endless arm raising votes to approve vast new swathes of rules which under the guise of a “Single Market” provide another explicitly regressive layer of protectionism to stifle innovation, throttle growth prospects and reduce social mobility. As British MP Douglas Carswell notes, “the single market today is about the steady drip-drip of protectionism.” The EU feels everything must have a regulatory framework before it can be commercially produced: imagine Christopher Columbus being forced to do a health and safety audit while providing a clear plan with aims of his journey before heading off into the unknown seeking a new route to the Indes. Didn’t make sense then, doesn’t make sense in today’s globally competitive world either.

Europe needs to remove the insidious toxic corporate socialist relationship of cosseted big government politicians and large multinationals that spend fortunes lobbying the Brussels machine. The system has failed to deliver the prerequisite for dynamic bottom up growth: a simple lightly regulated free trade zone...which brings us back to GaAs. Next time you are in transit awaiting an important message and your phone delivers the low charge "cheep of death," you may be a victim of the EU “Single Market.” GaAs enable magnificent innovations in computer chips and solar power applications. It is a key component in technology which vastly accelerates battery charging. However (French) multinational vested interests building legacy chips want the EU to ban GaAs via “Single Market” restrictions. Thus free trade is stifled from the top down by large multinationals... Europe will eventually be driven backwards to a new dark age while Asia leaps forward.

For a thriving prosperous Europe to re-emerge, we must dismember Brussels’ crumbling edifice of centralized insanity and micromanagement. The EU needs to fuel free trade with a vast reduction in the top down red tape preventing innovation. Otherwise the league of self-interested multinationals and misguided big government will create a new Ming dynasty. Mandarins over-regulated China into regressive tyranny. The EU’s Ming dynasty have produced so many stifling regulations, even their pottery isn’t as memorable as medieval China.

GaAs demonstrate how Europe is “cutting off its nose to spite its face.”

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.