From:
What we don’t often hear about is here!
In all the “spin” about the euro and the “people wsho matter” the
voters are - as is usual in the EU - are being ignored.
Then secondly there is the dire picture of Hungary. This is largely
caused by trying to join the Euro. NOT a good idea for Hungary any
more than it is for Britain or Scandinavia - or Ireland, or Spain, or
Greece, or Italy.
Before one gets complacent, realise that an appeal to the IMF remains
a possibility. After all it was under a previous Labour government
that we were forced into that very humiliating situation.
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EUROPEAN FOUNDATION INTELLIGENCE DIGEST 2.12.08
1.Euro even more unpopular in Scandinavia
Leading politicians in Denmark and Sweden have used the financial
crisis as an excuse for starting a new campaign in favour of the
euro. Public opinion, however, is unimpressed and the single currency
remains as unpopular as before.
More people remain opposed to abolishing the national currencies in
both countries than those who support this. Both countries would need
to have a referendum before adopting the euro; neither country now
seems likely to hold one. In Denmark the polls show 42 per cent
against the euro and 40 per cent in favour but that is not enough for
the government to win a referendum, at least according to the current
Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who is trying to hold out the
prospect of a new euro referendum by 2011.
In Sweden the latest figures are 53 per cent against. (as opposed to
56 per cent when the Swedes voted against the euro in 2003). The
reason for the continuing opposition to the euro is not difficult to
discern: it is that Sweden and Denmark have continued to fare better
outside the euro zone than inside it. [Helmut Steuer, Handelsblatt,
12 November 2008]
2. Hungary “like a third world country”
All of Europe has suffered in the financial crisis but no country
more so than Hungary, which has been forced to the International
Monetary Fund for a bailout. Normally this is something one
associated with Third World states, not members of the European
Union. The recourse to the IMF is very humiliating for the Hungarian
government, not least because only two weeks beforehand the head of
the Hungarian national bank was saying that the country did not need
any special credit lines from anyone.
More importantly, in a recent advertising campaign, he government of
Ferenc Gyurcsány boasted of the country’s strong economy. (Gyurcsány
famously boasted in 2006, albeit in private, that he and his
colleagues had lied brazenly about the state of the economy in order
to get re-elected.) Now Hungary has taken 20 billion euros in credit
from the European Central Bank, the World Bank and the IMF, and the
country is facing a severe recession. Salaries will be frozen or even
cut; pensions will be slashed. Thus will the conditions be fulfilled
which the IMF has attached to its loan.
[Reinhard Olt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 October 2008]
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