October 23, 2007 8:30AM # European Politicians Seeking to Export Big Government By [Daniel J. Mitchell](https://www.cato.org/people/daniel-mitchell) --- SHARE The ideal trade policy is unilateral openness, which hopefully would be copied by other nations. But some argue that trade negotiations are a wise strategy, since one nation’s liberalization can be a carrot to obtain liberalization in other nations. Unfortunately, European politicians want to turn this strategy upside down by using liberalization as a stick to encourage other nations to adopt onerous European-style regulatory burdens. The *EU Observer* [reports ](http://euobserver.com/9/25008/?rk=1)on this statist French-led gambit: > According to the European Commission, the EU should…“shape” globalisation. …Speaking at the EU summit Friday (19 October), French president Nicolas Sarkozy proved to be the strongest advocate of such a principle. “Let’s not be naive, we must demand a reciprocity”, he said, complaining about the severe environmental and social requirements placed upon EU businesses, but not followed by their non-European competitors. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).