Tsunami-hit Thais told: Buy six [Airbus] planes or face EU tariffs

Tsunami-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.

While millions of Europeans are sending aid to Thailand to help its recovery, trade authorities in Brussels are demanding that Thai Airlines, its national carrier, pays 1.3 billion [pounds, about $2.4 billion] to buy its double-decker aircraft.

[snip]

As the world's largest producer of prawns, Thailand has become so efficient that its wares are half the price of those caught by Norway, the main producer of prawns for the EU.

To ensure the Thais cannot compete, EU officials five years ago removed its shrimp industry from the EU's generalised system of preferential tariffs - designed to share Western wealth with developing countries by trade.

The EU has instead slapped a tariff of 12 per cent on its fish - three times that imposed on prawns from Malaysia, its neighbour.

Catch that? The (ahem) stinginess of threatening Thailand with tariffs at this tragic moment in history aside: the eurocrats are saying, "Buy the bloated, unproven, un-market-driven, airport-incompatible flying Renault made by our predatory tax-subsidized consortium cobbled-together from failed companies driven into the ground by poor engineering, chronic market disconnection, inept management, underproductive labor and dismal quality, or we'll use the police force of government to undermine your fabulously efficient agricultural industry, against whom we retrograde Gauloises-puffers can't compete."

Is there any doubt now that the Brussels ubergovernment is a deeply socialist institution designed to stamp out innovation and feather the nests of eurocrats and strap-hangers?

Just ...unbelievable.