I’ve been stunned with the extent that many supposedly progressive and open-minded pro-Europeans are utterly unmoved by the democratic deficit, especially as regards the completely unaccountable power of the ECB (seen in a systematically and disastrously anti-growth monetary policy and the toppling of the Italian government).

Germany needs to understand that if it wants a common currency then it needs to consider its neighbours as family, including the less fortunate, and act appropriately.

If it cannot see past Holland, Austria, & Benelux to recognise the virtues of the olive belt then it should exit the Euro now, before joining in marriage with these countries via a fiscal/political union.

That said, the EU has no common Demos capable of giving real legitimacy to a common Kratos, as such governance can not be both representative and accountable on an EU wide basis. Such powers are utterly incompatible with its limited mandate.

I am constantly amazed at the determination to keep the ever-closer-union project alive, even to the point of instituting utterly undemocratic governance in member states, I thought they would have walked long since.

As Hannan terms it; the EU’s “hideous strength”.
Welcome to the Sanjaks 2.0. Or should that be Satrapy 3.0.
Either way, it’s just another word for a subservient possession of empire, good luck to Greece and Portugal for they will need it!

I don’t know in what you mean by “healthy” economically. All I would say is all other industrialized regions are returning to growth and falling unemployment, while the eurozone has rising unemployment and a double-dip recession. As a result, not only has the EU failed in the one area people care most about (economic security) but its dithering is leading to significantly worse debt-to-GDP ratios.

As to the theories of what will bring “growth” in the periphery, I am convinced no one in Frankfurt, Brussels or the IMF has any real idea how it is done. The idea that foreign apatride bankers can induce growth by socially engineering other societies with neoliberal economic reforms strikes me as… unadulterated fantasy. It is absurd on its face and the track record of the IMF is hardly encouraging in this respect. (And all this doesn’t even begin to address the question of democracy, such reforms should be spontaneously reached by national governments, not imposed by Berlin-Frankfurt-Brussels.)

The problem is not primarily “competitiveness”, notwithstanding the apatride bureaucrats’ longstanding fixation on the subject (http://www.ucema.edu.ar/u/agaletto/krugman_competitiveness.pdf).

All peripheral EU economies are being devastated by Berlin-Frankfurt-Brussels. They are all facing recession, rising unemployment and massive emigration.

You cite a number of problems in each country (Italian south, Spanish regions…) and not “this won’t be solved by eurobonds or money printing.”

All countries have good and bad regions, weaknesses and strengths. What you forget is that *on average* the eurozone’s fiscal situation is significantly better than of the USA, UK and Japan. In addition, Spain and Italy had declining debt before the financial crisis. So whatever Europe’s regional problems, they weren’t so bad as to drag the whole thing down (and, believe me, there are plenty of depressed and basket-case areas in the USA/UK).

But, although the overall eurozone situation is better than that of other regions, it alone faces recession, dropping revenue and rising unemployment, because of the failures of Berlin-Frankfurt. This will dramatically accelerate the expansion of European debt and make repayment much less likely. These are the economic consequences of Angela Merkel.

“Now, would national politicians (some of them are nothing more than party stooges) supersede the common good and national interest above their own carreer, that is indeed a good question ?”

Implicit in your question is the assumption that neoliberal reforms, imposed by foreign governments and bureaucrats, automatically leads to growth. You even go further: Opposing these foreign-imposed reforms is evidence of careerist opportunism and failure to serve one’s nation. Suffice to say I think both assertions are self-evidently absurd and, besides, are disproved by the track record of the IMF in developing countries and the history of economic growth in Europe and elsewhere.

but they aren’t healthier economies for that matter.

since the crux of the problem is economic competitiveness, of which state fiscal responsability is one of the component ( but not thje only one ofc), socialising EU peripheral economies debt provides breathing room (or time), but doesn’t solve the underlying market rigidities that prevent real growth.

even now, when one talk of EU peripheral countries in depression, it’s actually quite misleading because it’s a matter of sector and regions.
Ireland domestic economy is in the doldrum, but international investment is booming again. Businesses related to the construction sectors and DIY, have been decimated. Retail is still down compared to 2007.
Yet international hubs in Galway, Cork, Dublin and elsewhere keep going.

look at Spain, and you’ll see that the central government budget position is decent, but it’s the regional administrations that went full red. Especially so in regions that are rather de-industrialised, and with a different party in power than at Central (PP vs PSOE until last election).
even the famed 22%+ spanish unemployment is both a giant billboard of everything that is wrong in the administrative management of the spanish economy (ie: too rigid), AND an over-exaggeration of the actual severity of unemployment on the population.
If the government were to try to narrow the conditions for eligibility of the dole while increasing the surveillance mechanisms, just to be on par with UK (or Irish or Dutch) criteria, you’d realize that a significant portion of “unemployed” would prefer to keep working in the black economy rather than to be subject to fines.

Italy is almost a basket-case of a northern industrious half, that keep exporting (and very successfully) despite being saddled by a corruptly inefficient state administration and an (almost) indigent southern half.

These structual problems won’t be solved by eurobonds or money printing. The best you can say, is that it’ll tempiorarily alleviate the pain, but only to make it come back a few years later.
Remember that many of the advanced economies current financial problems can directly be traced, not only to the wave of deregulations of late 90′, but also to the gush of money to “assuage” the effects of the 2000-20001 crisis

In Ireland, there wasn’t much of a property bubble pre-euro, though they did rise greatly.
Nor did prices significantly accelerate post-euro introduction, yet at this point they reach unsustaibnable price/income ratio.
However, credit financing rules were relaxed and mostly left unsupervised by central banks, a handful of property barons and financial tycoons were purchasing their business from a political class, that was all too happy to deliver Polyanna speeches about the state of the economy so as long as the buck was passed to the next administration.

And this is the crux of the “problem” : how to reform European economies, so that while open and flexible, regulation provide a stable environment for growth and investment.
The current “teutonic” strategy might be crude and self-serving, but IF it was genuinely implemented by latin countries, it’d go a long way to achieve it.
Now, would national politicians (some of them are nothing more than party stooges) supersede the common good and national interest above their own carreer, that is indeed a good question ?

Best regards,

As to the solution, one has been proposed repeatedly: the ECB indiscriminately buys up debt in solvent countries (particularly Spain & Italy) until interest rates on the bond markets go down (and says that it will do this).

The Bank of England, Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan have all done this and they all borrow at lower rates of interest on the private bond markets than even Virtuous Germany. Nor is the inflation in these countries unbearable.

This is more or less the position of a many countries in and out the eurozone, not to mention innumerable top tier economists (Roubini, Eichengreen, Krugman, Sachs…).

Had the ECB done this last year we would not be facing a lonely recession right now. The EU’s unemployment rate had been closely shadowing the US’s over the course of the economic crisis until European Council leaders and the ECB bungled the sovereign debt crisis. Interest payments would be low and growth would have resumed, giving an opportunity for eurozone countries to start reducing their debt-to-GDP ratios (as had been the case for heavily-endebted Italy and Belgium before the recession).

In short, we’d be no worse off than the rest of developed countries with major currencies (UK, US, Japan), which all are significantly worse off in terms of overall debt & deficits than the eurozone average.

Instead, the euro structure itself caused an unnecessary double-dip recession. Historians will have fun arguing about the causes for decades to come. For my part, I ascribe it to a combination of the incredible power and ideological nature of the ECB, German opposition to any common liability for eurozone debts, and the liberum veto of the European Council.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/felipe-fernandezarmesto-theres-magic-in-a-crisis–and-good-reasons-for-hope-amid-the-gloom-6261039.html

I might be taken for a naive’s fool in giving my support to the Euro and the European Union, but the author do reflect some of my empirical and factual position.
That is the Union is a constant work-in-progress, with a deep well of support on the Continent (if not smug scepticism on the Isles), whose motor stretch back to the 18th European romanticism, itself a by-product of the Enlightment.

When the press try ot reflect on the pst few weeks, months or say years, they tend to forget that the Euro is a tool for monetary independance on the global stage, that notably was born out of the sense of “betrayal” after the failure of the Bretton Woods gold standard in the 70′.
If the practical period might be the last decade, the Euro is in effect a much longer project. A living and evoluting currency.
When interest rates of the european economies peripheric countries are compared between the last 3 years (sovereign debt crisis), 10 years (Euro introduction), 20-30 years (joining EEC and drive to the Maastricht criteria), then it all looks a lot more progressive.

It’s so easily dismissed in the UK, that the establishment all to often fail to take the historical perspective and instead indulge in posturing.

ofc, no noe can really predict what’s planned in the back-alleys of government, nor where we’ll all end up. but I’m resolutely on the optimistic side.
I find the alternative of the Hobbesian world much more despairing.

as the author rightly said, in Europe “Meanwhile, bring on the crises; without them, we’d be more likely to fail.”

Best regards,

I’m not just talking about tabloids, but also about news (printed or televised) that advertised themselves as “fair and balanced”, yet show a clear political bias. Including in the reporting, the wording and the editorial choices.
If the press is not there to inform, but to instruct or disinform, where can voters turn to for reliable information (and plz don’t say the web, no offence to Nosemonkey).

pundits are fine. so are politically motivated columnists.
but when press outlets can hardly be distinguished from propagandist broadsheets, I get worried about how referenda can be used for.

on this point, Sky News has steadily tilted over the years towards a Conservative bias, but hasn’t its Eurosceptic (phobic ?) bias taken a superboost lately ?
when watching the press review, the choices for “independent” comments are between a hard-line Tory (David Nuttall) and a mild Tory (only a regular pundit to Tory conferences), or a left-wing Eurosceptic (ie : a trade unionist who wants social protectionism) and a right-wing Eurosceptic populist (ie: Nigel Farage).
And all the while, they spout uninterrupted their garbage :
“70% of UK laws are designed in Brussels”
“EU responsible for Human Rights Acts”
“we can have access to the single market without respecting any of the Acquis Communautaire”
“EU riddled with corruption and gravy train but our MPs free of expense problems or lobbying conflict of interests”
“EU costs £40 millions a day to the UK, net”
“According to Taxpayer Alliance, EU regulations costs £150 billions to the UK economy each year”
….

Best regards,