One of my other reasons for pondering a change in direction here (beyond boredom with party politics in the run up to the summer’s EU elections) is that the other big story in the EU – hell, everywhere – is the ongoing economic crisis. What I know about economics could be written on the back of a postage stamp, so comment is best avoided. (Of course, even the supposed experts have been shown to know precisely tit all about what’s going on with the global economy over the last year, so perhaps economic illiteracy isn’t such a handicap after all?)

However, people who know infinitely more about economics than I do reckon that this weekend could be the economic crunch point for the EU – the moment when the sheer extent of the current crisis becomes insurmountable. The Economist is even suggesting that this weekend’s emergency EU summit could mark the start of the breakup of the Eurozone, and perhaps even of the EU itself. The Guardian’s David Gow has more along similar lines.

That Economist article and leader have been followed up by a couple of posts at Fistful that are well worth a gander – the first containing proposals to get the EU out of this mess, the second looking at the wider, global context.

It’s also worth having a look at this piece at Eurozone Watch from last week (rather heavy-going in places, mind) looking at the theoretical/legal arguments for bailing-out a collapsing Eurozone member, and an overview of the case for relaxing Eurozone entry criteria to provide a way out of the current crisis from Central Europe Activ (with considerably more detail about how this approach might work from Edward Hugh here). And for those who still haven’t had their fill of EU economics, Alphasources has a very useful look at why it has got so urgent to have a unified European response after what seems like months of prevarication.