As the economic turmoil afflicting Italy and Greece threatened to engulf the entire European Union, Mrs Merkel called for a new “breakthrough” treaty that would give the EU greater fiscal powers to stop member states from running up dangerous levels of debt.
You\’ve not got the time to do that dearie.
You\’ve a few weeks perhaps, not the several years you would need. You need a different solution.
Also delusional: Mr Barosso (& the Indy, but that goes wothout saying)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/youre-obliged-to-join-euro-britain-told-6259683.html
You know it makes sense…
“Mrs Merkel called for the EU to be given powers to compel a country, by stripping away its sovereignty, to honour commitments to bring budgets into line with eurozone spending targets.” [Telegraph]
I saw that article, and I wondered what she really meant by the statement above. What could this “stripping” possibly involve in practice? ASBOs? Seizing of assets? Arrests? Troops? Occupation?
I imagine it’s less about Greece and Italy, and more about locking the gates on the horses still in their stalls, however many survive to Euro2.
And then bricking up the gate…
They may well have one on file. It may not take them years. After all, this was the plan all along. Delors even said so. They knew that refusing to align fiscal policies would cause a crisis and that they could then use that crisis to push federalism.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if they dust the old plan off, tell the politicians they have just weeks to sign away their independence and, ta da!, a new federal Europe.
They will still be bust, federally or not. The (Mer)kozy tyranny of the EU is sustained by the fact that most people still have a comfortable life. When –not if–that stops, the shit will hit the fan.
What’s deeply sad for me, even as a eurosceptic, is that a project which had at least some degree of idealism about it – “bring Europe together and stop war forever” – is now threatening to tear Europe apart.
Gunpowder only explodes if you first contain it in a tight space…
Get the troops home from Afghanistan and Germany pronto.
Wasn’t that what the original growth and stability pact was meant to do? And the conditions for entry into the Euro?
I think the people who let Italy and Greece into the Euro and presided over the current debacle should all be put on trial. Oh, that’s right, we can’t, because they’re still out there, fucking it up.
Wasn’t that what the original growth and stability pact was meant to do?
Yes, until it became convenient for Germany and France to flout it, at which point it got binned.
dearieme (#7):
Afghanistan, yes. But is this really the time to withdraw troops from Germany?