Nosemonkey's EUtopia | In search of a European identity

July 14, 2012
by Nosemonkey
26 Comments

Why the UK’s “audit” of EU law is a waste of time

So, supposedly in a bid to allow any future in-out referendum on UK membership of the EU to be based on facts rather than ideology (fat chance), Foreign Secretary William Hague has announced an “audit” of the influence of EU law on the UK.

The promised audit has, of course, got a lot of anti-EU types rather excited, as they’re all convinced that any such study will show the EU to be the pernicious, all-pervading menace they’ve always claimed it to be.

Leaping to their own conclusions, no matter what the real conclusions may be

See posterboy for the Tory anti-EU right Dan Hannan on his Telegraph blog for a prime case in point, in a post that reads almost like a parody:

“In 1973, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign democracy. EU law has primacy over British law, and we are largely ruled by unelected Euro-functionaries”

He has some good points to make in places (I’m no fan of the Common Agricultural Policy or Common Fisheries Policy either), but as he so often does, mixes up assertion with opinion with unreferenced “facts” like the claim that:

“on the EU’s own figures, the costs of regulation outweigh the benefits of the single market by five to one (€600 billion versus €120 billion)”

Actual numbers, Mr Hannan? Why thank you! Let’s see how justifiable those are, shall we?

With a bit of digging, it turns out (surprise surprise) not to be quite that simple, and that the figures dear Mr Hannan has chosen are not what he presents them as being. By which I mean that Mr Hannan is either ignorant about the figures he’s quoting to illustrate his point, which is surprising for a man so keen to portray himself as a great intellect, or is deliberately misleading his audience. (i.e. Lying.)

Thanks to the Tory MEP defector to UKIP Roger Helmer for asking the question and receiving a reply that points out that the €120 billion figure dates from 1992 (when the EU had 15 members), the €600 billion figure from 2006 (when it had 27), and therefore the two are not fair comparisons (even without mentioning inflation).

Thanks in turn to Open Europe for tracking down the details surrounding the €600 billion figure, which Hannan and others attribute to former Commissioner Günter Verheugen. The explanation can be found in a footnote on page 12 of this (PDF) Open Europe study, Out of Control? Measuring a decade of EU regulation:

“this figure has been widely misunderstood, as it has been described as the total cost of EU regulation. In fact, this estimate captures the administrative burden stemming from EU regulations and domestic regulations combined. Furthermore, on 10 October 2006, the Financial Times wrote “The bureaucratic cost to business of complying with European legislation could be up to €600bn a year – almost twice the original estimates – the European Union’s Enterprise Commissioner admitted on Monday.” However, what Gunter Verheugen – the Commissioner in question – actually said in the interview about reducing regulation, was that “I’ve said that in my view it must be possible to get a 25 percent reduction, and that means a productivity gain of €150bn.” The journalist took this to mean that €150bn represented 25% of the total cost of regulation. However, Verheugen’s office has subsequently confirmed that the €150bn figure referred to the extra benefits that would be generated (as opposed to saved) by a 25% cut in the administrative burden of EU and domestic regulations combined.”

And so we see, once again, that Hannan’s numbers are far from accurate. If his own opinions about the EU’s malign influence are based on such misunderstandings, it’s understandable for him to be hostile. But it also means he’s wrong.

Misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and selective quotation

If it’s that hard to track down the source and true meaning of just *one* cost/benefit estimate, how much harder is it to track down the costs and benefits of the many thousands of pieces of legislation and regulations that have come out of the EU over the years?

And, more to the point, if misunderstandings like the one above are so simple, what are the chances of anyone actually understanding what the findings actually mean?

Another case in point, the House of Commons Library’s 2010 study (PDF) into the percentage of UK laws that stem from the EU concluded – with provisos – that the true figure was likely somewhere near 15%.

At least, that’s how I read it (partially because this tallies with the figure I’d come to, a figure that has since been backed up by a German study that came up with 15.5% for the UK).

But if you’re of a eurosceptic bent, you’ll argue – as did, for example, the Telegraph – that the actual conclusion was that up to 50% of laws come from Brussels. How is this possible? Simple – in *some* areas, EU law has far more influence than others, so for *some* government departments, around 50% of laws really do come from the EU.)

The HoC Library study itself actually concluded that “All measurements have their problems… The answer in numerical terms lies somewhere in between the two approaches, and it is possible to justify any measure between 15% and 50%”. So those of us who tend to the pro- side look low, those who tend to the anti- side look high, and both can feel justified.

What’s wrong with facts?

Of course, no one in their right mind could object to basing arguments on facts – and facts have long been in short supply when it comes to working out the EU’s influence and impact. Hague himself, after all, ran a general election campaign back in 2001 based largely on EU scaremongering, and his old euroscepticism can be revealed in his own assumptions of what such an exercise might achieve as he anounced this audit on Thursday:

“less cost, less bureaucracy and less meddling in the issues that belong to nation states”

If this audit really could get proper facts on the EU’s influence, I’d be all for it.

The trouble is, there have been plenty of similar studies conducted in recent years (most of which I’ve now rounded up in my old “What percentage of laws come from the EU?” post). And the most rigorous and respectable of them have all concluded the same things:

1) It’s practically impossible to work out the impact of EU laws, per se, due to:

a) the wild variation in the way they can be implemented
- directives vs regulations etc. etc.

b) the interconnectedness of policy areas
- knock-on effects of legislating in area A on areas B, C and D, both in terms of dilution of impact and exacerbation, are extremely hard to track (to put it mildly)

c) the tendency towards gold-plating
- UK officials and politicians adding additional clauses onto EU-originated laws that weren’t required by Brussels

d) the cumulative impact of almost 40 years of EEC/EU membership
- which British-originated rules/laws/regulations have been influenced by previous EEC/EU rules/laws/regulations
- has UK legal/legislative culture changed as a result of EU membership, leading to laws that are more “European” than they would have been without membership?

e) the incredibly obtuse methods by which most laws enter the statute books in the UK
- statutory instruments, which bypass parliament, can be used for both UK and EU law. There have been an average of c.1,800 of these passed per year since 1987 (and, incidentally, there’s been a huge spike in the number since the Coalition came to power: 2010 and 2011 the two highest numbers ever)
- there’s no “track changes” function on legislation, so it’s often extremely hard to tell precisely where a law originated (you basically need to cross-reference all UK laws/regulations with all EU directives/laws and try to spot similarities – but just because there are similarities doesn’t mean that there’s necessarily a causal relationship, so this method will result in a lot of false positives)

f) the impossibility, in most cases, of tracking down the origin of the *idea* of a law
- was it actually from the EU? (it’s often impossible to tell, as in point e)
- was the EU itself the original source (laws that stem from the EU are, after all, almost always first proposed by EU member states – including the UK)
- what percentage of EU laws/regualtions applied in the UK were proposed to the EU by the UK, and what difference (if any) does that make to our perception of them?

g) which EU-originated rules *replaced* existing British ones more or less 1:1?
- the whole point of legislating at EU level is to harmonise laws and regulations between EU member states; it’s very rare for the EU to legislate in a new area, as EU legislation and regulations are almost always designed to replace existing rules in the member states
- most important, this, if you’re trying to work out how much the EU costs/saves its member states – because there is a strong case to be made that a law/regulation set at EU level by definition saves money, as otherwise it would have been introduced in 27 different ways by the 27 member states (not to mention in other countries, like Norway and Switzerland, that abide by EU law in numerous areas despite not being members) – this is why it’s possible to argue that legislating and regulating at EU level is almost always a good thing

h) which would the UK have introduced anyway?
- again, EU rules, regulations and legislation are (in principle) always guided (more or less) by the needs of the member states; the UK may have chosen slightly different forms for many EU-originated rules had she been left to her own devices, but if she really weren’t happy about a majority of them, she would have left ages ago.
- this is, of course, impossible to tell without an alternate universe in which the UK didn’t join…

i) which would the UK have to maintain if she were outside the EU?
- with estimates of the EU’s importance to the UK’s external trade varying between 40 and 60% (infinitely more detail here), to continue trading with the EU as a non-member would require a certain level of compliance with EU rules and regulations. What would the cost of this be to UK businesses, and would the cost saving advantages outweigh the disadvantages of no longer having any input into those rules and regulations in the first place?

2) A cost-benefit analysis of EU membership is pretty much impossible

a) we have no control group by which to measure the relative economic benefits/downsides
- no way to tell what would have happened to the UK (or any other member state) had they *not* joined
- no way to tell how each member state would have fared had the EEC/EU not existed

b) the whole point of the EU is its interconnectedness, so to understand its true impact you need to analyse the entire EU economy, not just that of one member state
- Britain, for example, imports from other EU states more than it exports (something eurosceptics are always fond of bringing up) – what impact has the EU had on the pricing structure of those imports due to the changes it has brought about in those other member states?

c) the sheer volume of laws tells you nothing about their impact
- the EU tends towards tiny trade regulations to maintain consistent product standards, which tends to push up their volume; how many pieces of regulation about the permissible ingredients in fruit jelly would it take to have a similar impact to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 or Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (for example)?

d) there remains a considerable degree of policy area overlap between EU and national law
- even if it were possible to definitively identify a law as originating from the EU, there may be other, non-EU-derived national laws operating in the same general policy area
- how is it possible to tell the impact of law x over law y or law z when they’re all about more or less the same thing, and will all be interconnected?

e) the impact of laws and regulations goes far further than simple cash cost/benefit
- is it possible to put a monetary value on the benefits/disadvantages of the reduced stress of travelling that’s come thanks to the right to free movement between EU member states? Or of the pleasure that’s been brought by European cultural organisations more easily being able to travel the continent to entertain? Or the more ready availability of more interesting and varied foodstuffs from around the continent due to the (supposed) reduction in cost of trading between EU member states? Or of the granting of a recourse to law that’s beyond the power of the nation, giving ordinary citizens that little bit more security in their freedom (even if they don’t even realise this)?

And all that’s just off the top of my head on a lazy Saturday, after only half a cup of coffee.

Selective quotation, ignoring the inconvenient, and ideological blind spots

But this is the problem with any EU audit or cost-benefit analysis: there are infinite ways to poke holes in any figures that are derived at, both from the anti- and the pro-EU sides. Because the EU is simply too complex to divide up into costs and benefits. Not least because what may count as a benefit to some (personally I *like* having more European immigrants around the place, and feel that the increased diversity of experience and attitude such immigrants bring is a benefit to the economy and society at large) will be a bitter cost to others (not just xenophobes, but also UK citizens who may end up competing for jobs with those immigrants – or even just *feel* that they’re competing).

And then there’s the added issue that *everyone* suspects the current government’s motives for this audit, meaning that left, right, centre, pro-EU and anti-EU will *all* be looking to pick holes in it as soon as it appears. And if any of them don’t like the result, they’ll simply pick a number from a study they *do* like – which is why dear old Dan Hannan keeps on using the utterly discredited claim that 84% of laws come from the EU, old Nigel Farage of UKIP keeps using the 75% of laws come from the EU line, which has been equally rubbished on numerous occasions.

Why do Hannan and Farage keep using discredited figures, and ignoring studies they don’t like the results of? Because neither of them are actually interested in the truth – and I suspect that the government aren’t either. This smacks strongly as yet another excuse to delay the resumption of hostilities between the Conservative party and the eurosceptic fringe that would kick off as soon as a referendum campaign is started. Because even former arch-eurosceptic William Hague has come to realise that although the EU is far from perfect, the UK’s other options are even less appealing – and in the process has started to come under attack as an EU stooge from some of the more excitable (and delusional) quarters of the anti-EU crowd.

And herein lies the glorious irony – it’s taken the EU’s worst crisis in its history, with the entire organisation standing on the brink of potential collapse, to convince some of the UK’s most vocal opponents of European integration of the EU’s benefits. Hell, even long-time eurosceptic campaigners Open Europe are starting to come out to argue the benefits of membership.

But many hardcore eurosceptics will never be convinced. For them, costs and benefits are irrelevant. This is not about money or trade or economics – this is about idealogy, sovereignty, independence. Better to be a poor free man than a rich slave and all that. No amount of audits or numbers will ever convince them that allowing a bunch of foreigners to have any say in the way we run our country can be right – even if we get a say in how they run *their* countries in exchange. It is the psychological cost of this perceived loss of freedom that is the most important for them, and even were the streets of Europe paved with gold it wouldn’t be enough to convince them otherwise.

As for the people as a whole? As per usual, the vast majority simply won’t care.

July 9, 2012
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments

Post-Council, what next for the eurocrisis?

(Sorry for blogging silence – I’ve been asked to write a book on the eurocrisis and European integration, so have been deep in research working out if I understand the current situation enough to do so.)

It’s been a bit over a week since the European Council’s shock announcement of some kind of deal – which means it’s been just about long enough to work out what the hell it all means in practice.

One of the best articles I’ve seen in the last few days is the following from VoxEU (an increasingly indispensible resource).

The key issue, the argument (which I’ve seen elsewhere) runs, is the vicious cycle of bank debts being linked to the finances of the state in which the bank is based. Multi-national financial organisations, running into problems worldwide, being supported by the single nations in which they are based.

Banks get in trouble, and under the current system states are expected to bail them out, increasing risk in government bonds, weakening the state’s ability to pay, which weakens the banks yet further, and so on ad infinitum (or, at least, until bankruptcy/default for either bank or state or both – which would in turn trigger fresh crises elsewhere).

The European Council’s decision to bypass governments and bail out banks direct via the European Stability Mechanism, then, is designed to break this cycle. However, as always there’s a problem…

“The ESM has financial resources amounting to €500 billion. Compare this with the total government bonds outstanding of close to €2,000 billion in Italy and of about €800 billion in Spain and it is immediately evident that the ESM will be unable to stem a crisis involving one of these two countries, let alone the two countries together.

“In fact it is worse. As soon as the ESM starts intervening, it will quickly destabilise the government bond markets in these two countries.”

Why? Because as soon as it’s used, the argument runs, the European Stability Mechanisms’s already inadequate funds will become even less adequate to bail out additional bank liabilities, making those liabilities instantly less attractive and prompting investors to flee to safer harbours.

The answer, according to the article, is simple: the European Central Bank needs to come into play, with an last-ditch ability to print more euros to pay off bank liabilities:

“The ECB is the only institution that can prevent panic in the sovereign bond markets from pushing countries into a bad equilibrium, because as a money-creating institution it has an infinite capacity to buy government bonds. The fact that resources are infinite is key to be able to stabilise bond rates. It is the only way to gain credibility in the market.”

Both the ECB and Germany, however, are unwilling to go down this route. Partially, as far as I can tell, due to German fears of a repeat of the hyperinflation of the 1930s (print more euros to pay off bad debts, will this push down the value of the euro? No one seems sure…), partially – the argument in the article runs – because the ECB is acting like a regular bank, not a central bank:

“It is surprising that the ECB attaches such an importance to having sufficient equity. In fact, this insistence is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of central banking. The central bank creates its own IOUs. As a result it does not need equity at all to support its activities. Central banks can live without equity because they cannot default. The only support a central bank needs is the political support of the sovereign that guarantees the legal tender nature of the money issued by the central bank. This political support does not need any equity stake of the sovereign. In fact it is quite ludicrous to believe that governments that can, and sometimes do, default are needed to provide the capital of an institution that cannot default. Yet, this is what the ECB seems to have convinced the outside world.

“All this would not be a problem were it not that the ECB’s insistence on having positive equity is in conflict with its responsibility to maintain financial stability. Worse, this insistence has become a source of financial instability.”

And so the only institution that can solve the eurocrisis is the least reluctant to act. No change there, then…

(Of course, the way the crisis has been unfolding of late, there’s probably been an announcement since I started typing this post that’s rendered all the above obsolete…)

By the way: If you want to dig deeper on this, I strongly recommend this from Edward Hugh at A Fistful of Euros, which digs into much more detail on this whole issue – including the intriguing recent suggestions that the ESM “direct bank bailout” concept may actually be nothing of the sort.

June 19, 2012
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments

The eurocrisis: Politics without policy choice

This piece on Crooked Timber really is superb. A few highlights – but do read it in full:

“the fuzzy compromise between supposedly depoliticized trans-national rules (run by the ECB), and national-level responsibility for compliance, is now increasingly problematic. Countries in loan programmes find their national capacity for choice dwindling to nothing. National autonomy is subordinated to the requirements of the transnational official lenders. What gets squeezed out is the democratically determined policy choice at national level. They are in Rodrik’s ‘golden straitjacket’. It’s politics without policy choice…

“Secondly, although the country-by-country approach clearly isn’t working, we don’t have any real capacity to generate a politics of common interest across the Eurozone. ‘Austerity’ is clearly having seriously deflationary effects across the Eurozone. Krugman regularly advocates a coordinated Keynesian stimulus programme to prioritize growth, led by a Germany willing to bear higher inflation and more domestic consumption.

“But while this might seem like an attractive solution from afar, we don’t have either the political capacity or the economic space to get anywhere near this at the moment. It is far from clear how we could have proper debates about alternative policy options, nor is it clear in what political forum new ideas could gain traction.”

June 18, 2012
by Nosemonkey
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The FP Twitterati 100 – including me, it seems…

I appear to have been listed among prestigious company in Foreign Policy magazine’s Twitterati Top 100. I’m rather flattered, it must be said – not least because Foreign Policy’s been rather good of late. In fact, I have a draft post based on one of their articles from last week that I was planning to polish off tomorrow… Now I’ll just look like I’m brown-nosing… Also, note to self: stop swearing on Twitter… (On this blog – bar some of the swearier earlier years – I try to remain a bit more restrained than I do on Twitter. It’s something about the 140 character limit that makes 4-letter words so useful on there…) P.S. Apologies for quietness. Flat hunting…

June 14, 2012
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

New answers to an old question: the EU’s influence in member states

This blog’s most popular post ever remains one from June 2009 on the percentage of laws that come from the EU. It’s won me an award and been quoted in numerous follow-up studies, including one by the House of Commons Library, which was nice.

Now a new German study has revisited this topic, focusing on Germany, the UK, Denmark, France, Austria and Finland. Its onclusions can be found in more detail here. Short version:

The UK – 15.5% (in line with my 10-20% estimate)
Denmark – 14%
Austria – 10.6%
France – between 3% and 26%
Finland – between 1% and 24%
Germany – 39.1%

But note the qualifiers – all of which are points I’ve made in the past (both in the post linked above and nmerous follow-ups), but which are very neatly summarized here (emphasis mine):

“Do these numbers tell us that the impact of European policy making is by and large minimal, while at the same time there are some interesting variations between member states? No – in fact, these figures can tell us very little about the impact of EU-policy-making.

“First, looking at overall numbers on all policy fields make little sense…

“Second, one has to be aware that all such studies in this area are based on two assumptions: first that a policy is shaped to a relevant degree by legislation (this is the case in most policy fields except for external relations and defense); second that a European impact can be identified in this legislation…

“Third, the low values that most studies show about do not indicate a low level of European level influence but are the result of a rather parsimonious measurement of Europeanization. For these studies a Europeanized piece of national legislation is a law that serves to implement a European directive. Apart for the many problems involved in identifying such legal acts this is a much too narrow a way…

“Fourth, the identification of a European impact is based on a purely formal argument (if a national legal act serves to implement a directive, it will most probably be influenced by it) while the causal impact as such is not certain. What is more, we can say nothing on the intensity of this impact. We cannot tell if a notational law is influenced by a directive only at the surface, or if it introduces a completely new policy due to the directive.

“Finally, the focus of the research tends to reduce the complexity of multi-level politics and to bias the results. The question of Europeanization research is on the domestic impact in Europe, and the focus is on the Member States and how they are influenced, which tends to make us see Member States as victims of EU-policy-making while widely neglecting that without the activity of the same Member States on the European level there would be no European policy at all.”

June 14, 2012
by Nosemonkey
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A rare non-hyperbolic take on the likelihood of a Grexit

Good stuff from European economics think tank Bruegel:

“Commentators, especially from North America, take it for granted that Greece will exit the euro area and will be followed by others… But is a Greek exit really inevitable?

“…If we look at the export performance of EU15 countries since 2008, Spain is the best, followed by Germany, Ireland and Portugal – they outperform even the UK and Sweden, the only two EU15 countries which benefitted from sizeable nominal exchange rate depreciations. Therefore, even if the unemployment situation is miserable in Spain, Ireland and Portugal, their export sectors show signs of hope. But Greek exports look hopeless…

“Consequently, euro-area partners should recognise two major issues and act on them decisively if a cooperative government is elected in Greece:

“1. Greece’s economic outlook is hopeless. A real programme for supporting Greek growth should be put together with very significant investment from Europe…

“2. Greece’s public debt is still too high. The Greek fortune cannot be turned to good without properly addressing the public debt overhang. Greeks were irresponsible in accumulating such a huge debt, but it was a major mistake of official lenders to start the first programme in 2010 without a sizeable debt reduction.

“If a cooperative government is elected [in the Greek elections this weekend], but Europe fails to offer a prospect for Greece, the country will likely subsequently fall back to its current state. Then the scenario of Greek exit and the disorderly and destructive dissolution of the euro area could follow, unless all of the flaws in the euro’s design are corrected promptly, which does not seem to be realistic.”

June 12, 2012
by Nosemonkey
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Excellent teacherly putdown in this post from thinktank Bruegel’s blog:

“Europe has already expressed its intention to focus [the upcoming G20 summit] on growth and jobs; the deliverable should foreseeably be yet another ‘plan’ without specific deadlines or commitments, along the lines of previous summit discussions. Growth and jobs are obviously fine in principle, but adopting such broad focus is likely to divert attention from the immediate challenges and even more from the actions to be undertaken. It is a pity, because Europe, while being ultimately responsible for its own actions, badly needs to explain itself and convince the global community that it is doing its best to resolve its problems.”

Reads like many a school report*: “It is a pity… Must try harder… We wouldn’t mind if it were only himself this behaviour was affecting, but he’s disrupting the whole class…” (etc. etc. etc.)

* Not one of mine, obviously… *ahem*

June 12, 2012
by Nosemonkey
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An American view of Europe the UK would be sensible to note

Once again, no one knows what’s going to happen – yet everyone knows it’s going to be bad. This from The Atlantic makes some good points amidst the “eurogeddon” worst-case scenario act – but this time from an American perspective, which is a handy alternate view, now that our American friends are starting to wake up to the problem and sound like they know a little of what they’re talking about:

“Last year, the European Union was America’s second largest export market. It wouldn’t necessarily be catastrophic if we sold them fewer goods. But consider this: the EU is also China’s biggest export customer. It’s one of Brazil’s top buyers as well. In turn, China is our fourth largest partner, Brazil is our eighth. If Europe stops buying as many Chinese flat screen TVs and Brazilian beef, those economies will have less to spend on American medical equipment and tractors. Not to sound too much like a T. Rowe Price commercial, but it’s all deeply connected.

“‘Whatever happens in Europe has truly systemic implications,’ when it comes to trade, said Domenico Lombardi, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. What we sell directly to Germany, Italy, Spain, and France is only part of that picture. The real worry is that a deep European recession would sink world trade across the board.

“…The U.S. economy might be able to sustain all of these body blows if our government had all of the possible tools at its disposal. But we don’t… Our defenses are down. Our economy already appears to be wobbly. It’s not hard to see how a Italian or Spanish exit would knock it over. At this point, our future depends on the ability of Europe’s leaders to get their house in order.”

And remember, this is an American analyst talking. If America has that much reason to be worried (with only 3 eurozone members among the US’s top 15 trading partners), then how much more does the UK (with 7 out of our top 10 trading partners being euro countries).

(Please also note a brilliant name hidden in the middle of that article – Jacob Funk Kierkegaard. I can’t wait for his next album – a glorious mix of New Orleans jazz and Scandinavian existentialist metaphysics)

June 11, 2012
by Nosemonkey
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A terrifying but promising sign

Oh, sure, it sounds terrifying at first:

“European finance officials have discussed limiting the size of withdrawals from ATM machines, imposing border checks and introducing euro zone capital controls as a worst-case scenario should Athens decide to leave the euro”

But hell, at least it’s a sign that the buggers in charge are starting to take things a little more seriously.

The euro seems to have been run from day one on a mixture of wishful thinking, misdirection and (increasingly bad) luck. It’s about time some proper contingency plans were put in place – because even if these do smack somewhat of scare tactics designed to knock people into line, the fact that they are being discussed at all is at least a sign that the powers that be are waking up.

Because there *should* have been eurozone exit contingency plans in place from day one, had the thing not been devised an implemented by a bunch of deluded, blinkered idealists who refused to believe in even the *possibility* of failure. That there weren’t was arrogance of the highest degree.

The admission of the possibility that things could go tits up shows a degree of humility that’s long been missing from the European project, and as such should be welcomed even as it scares the hell out of us all.

June 11, 2012
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments

How can the EU win the people’s trust?

Former Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio raises some important points:

“few official pronouncements, let alone policies, are addressing Europe’s deficit of trust and credibility. The current crisis has exposed the original lacunae and widening cracks in the compact between Europe’s citizens and EU institutions, between Europe’s north and south, and between its peoples and its elites.

“…The EU’s supposed democratic deficit is a corollary of the ‘technocratic imperative’ that has emerged as a favorite scapegoat in the ongoing European drama. According to this view, European integration was flawed from the outset, more than six decades ago, because it was conceived and developed as an elite project. But, for as long as the European project delivered prosperity, no one bothered to question its rationale. [Nosemonkey note: Well, some did - but most were dismissed as fringe loons...]

“If EU institutions are to regain trust and relevance, they need to articulate concrete policies and deliver on issues that bear directly on citizens’ interests”

And what *are* citizens’ interests? There lies the rub: Throughout the long history of European integration, at no point have the people been asked what *they* want out of it. At no point have *the people of Europe* been asked what powers and responsibilities should be pooled at European level.

Because although some might write me off as an anti-democratic elitist, my position on the EU has been fairly consistent in one regard for years: European integration will never work unless you ask the people what form (if any) it should take:

“if our representatives at these meetings are starting from a position of ignorance about what the people they are representing actually want, little wonder that they end up with something that the people then reject.”

This has long been the EU’s most fundamental flaw – and it looks like the current politicians running the place still haven’t realised that they need to address this most serious of issues if any of the others they are facing are ever to be properly dealt with.

God alone knows how, though. Perhaps a multiple-choice questionnaire? “Which of the following areas should be dealt with at EU level? Yes / Maybe / No” (etc.)

Hell, it’s no more stupid than most of the other suggestions I’ve heard over the years…

June 9, 2012
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments

The failure of European centrism: Towards a hypothesis of historical recurrence

Likely the first of many posts on this – as a fairly hardcore centrist (arguably a stupid concept in itself, that, if you ask most people today) with a dogmatic refusal to align myself to any one political party this is of particular interest. Because, the theory partially goes, it’s the dominance of political centrism that is the cause of our current woes.

Be warned – this is a long one…

Continue Reading →

June 9, 2012
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

Good pessimistic (realistic?) piece from Der Spiegel:

“The next stage in the crisis will be blatant blackmail. With their refusal to accept money from the bailout fund to recapitalize their banks, the Spanish are not far from causing the entire system to explode. They clearly figure that the Germans will lose their nerve and agree to rehabilitate their banks for them without demanding any guarantee in return that things will take a lasting turn for the better.

“The next test of the resolution of Europe’s donor nations will come from the Greeks… after the election on June 17, the Greeks will bargain with the other EU countries to see what it’s worth to them to see Greece abandon the euro. The Greeks no longer have much to lose; but their EU neighbors — and particularly the Germans — still do. This discrepancy will determine the price to be paid.

“Germans have always expected that being part of a united Europe meant that national interests would recede into the background until they eventually lost all significance. One recognizes in this hope the legacy of political romanticism.”

June 8, 2012
by Nosemonkey
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Cameron’s confusing approach to the eurocrisis

Good points raised by the eurosceptic organisation Open Europe’s blog today about the British government’s rather bizarre, contradictory attitude(s?) towards the eurocrisis:

“A German-led superstate still seems years off – if it ever will be agreed (no matter how much other parts of the eurozone or markets might like to see it right now).

“In contrast, David Cameron last month called for a bigger bailout fund, shared eurozone bonds and a more active monetary policy from the ECB – in other words, the eurozone quickly moving to ‘joint and several liabilities’ with stronger states indefinitely underwriting weaker ones. That would really be a German-led super state. [Nosemonkey note: depending on your definition of 'super state'...]

“…the UK government could end up in a rather strange position by sending all these political hares running at the same time. Is it going to veto the same Treaty changes (to establish a fiscal / banking union) that it is now effectively calling for? If it’s deemed that these treaty changes de facto transfer powers away from the UK – i.e. by shifting the institutional balance of power towards the eurozone at the UK’s expense – will it then also call a referendum on those treaty changes? What would the question be?

“This may all work out both in the polls at home and in talks in Europe. But given the unrealistic expectations it raises – and how very difficult it will be to square all these various factors – it may well come back to haunt the Tory leadership, at home as well as abroad.”

David Cameron having an incoherent approach to the EU? This is nothing new, as this post of mine from FOUR YEARS AGO makes clear.

June 8, 2012
by Nosemonkey
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Yeah – sounds like a piece of piss…

“Jörg Asmussen, a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board and a former official at the German ministry of finance, outlined what Europe needs to do.

“‘It’s very simple,’ Mr. Asmussen said. ‘We need a more integrated monetary union, because the monetary area that we have now is incomplete. And we have to complement it in a way to make it more stable. One point is a fiscal union. The second one is a financial market union with three key elements: a resolution regime; second element, a deposit guarantee insurance; and third, we need a centralized supervision for the large 25 banks in Europe.”

“‘We need a democratically legitimized political union,’ he added. ‘We need to start this speedily.’”

Well that’s alright, then. Should be doable by the end of next week, I’d say.