Our European Ally – The Berlin Manhattan Institute

One of the more interesting groups present at FreedomFest was the Berlin Manhattan Institute (BMI). No, the group isn’t an official outpost of the famous NY Manhattan Institute, but it shares a similar goal of influencing policy with a classical liberal touch. (The reference to Manhattan in the name is a nod to their correspondence with American and English-speaking policy groups.) As someone who studied in Berlin at Humboldt University, I can attest that they are the best libertarian thinktank in the region.

The director of BMI, Wolfgang Müller, has done a number of interesting pieces of economic research in a previous role at the IUF, the free-market predecessor of Berlin Manhattan. However, his most recent focus has been on the “Green Movement” – a faction of European politics that is commonly used to usurp state power. This example in European politics is worth taking note of by American classical liberals as a cautionary tale. Müller and his team at BMI launched “The Green Freedom Campaign” last month in an effort to inform and influence those skeptical of the “big government” answer to resolving environmental problems. I, for one, will be using it as a resource to cite the impediments in the European “environmentalist” solutions.