neither under direct government control nor purely private and profit-seeking; and that meritocratic bureaucracies can make valuable contributions in all parts of the economy. Several aspects of the European theory deserve special notice. First, it does not assume that higher GDP is a worthy goal in itself. Indeed, when Robert Schuman first proposed the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950, the French foreign minister said that he hoped a "common economic system" would be "the leaven from which may grow a wider and deeper community". Those were not idle words. The entity that was to become the EU adopted an explicit social agenda in 1960. This broad European outlook is unusual among economists; too often they forget that ever more stuff cannot make communities good or people happy. Second, the European theory combines idealism and pragmatism. It is idealistic in its expectations of citizens - that they can and with some prompting will replace enmity with co-operation - and of governments - that they can and mostly will use their economic power to promote the common good. It is pragmatic in the assumption that new practices should be introduced gradually, that compromises are usually the best way to resolve conflicts, and that the economy is too complicated to be guided by simple rules. This pragmatism has served the EU well. While the path to every economic accomplishment, from the elimination of steel tariffs to the creation of a single currency, has been crooked and slow, the achievements have been