"Last April, Hungary indicated that it would seek an opt-out from the euro zone. More recently, Czech Eurosceptic President Václav Klaus said that the EU currency club was a "failure" and that his country should get a permanent opt-out from its obligation to adopt the euro."
Thursday, 15 September 2011
"Croatia to sign accession treaty ‘in early December’"
And no doubt the treaty text finalised yesterday, with the approval of Cameron, will also put Croatia on the conveyor belt to joining the euro as a condition for it joining the EU.
Is it reasonable that a country is not allowed to join the EU, unless at the same time it legally commits itself to joining the euro at the earliest opportunity?
Which is what happened with every one of the 12 countries which has joined the EU since Maastricht, including Sweden - some of them are now wondering how they can wriggle out of that legal obligation:
"New EU members to break free from euro duty"
"Seven EU members which joined the European Union between 2004 and 2007 are concerned about an obligation to adopt the euro under the terms of their accession and could stage referenda to change their accession treaties, AFP reported, quoting diplomatic sources."
We have a supposedly "eurosceptic" Prime Minister who publicly celebrates the fact that the UK has its own treaty "opt-out" from ever having to join the euro, so that we have a free choice in the matter; and yet his predecessor Major deliberately allowed it to become the norm that new member states would not have that free choice but would be compelled to accept the legal obligation to eventually join the euro as a condition for their accession to the EU, and in the absence of any indication to the contrary it can be assumed that Cameron is now allowing the same standard entry condition to be imposed on Croatia.
So whether or not the Croatians liked it, Croatia would eventually become part of the eurozone bloc, dominated by Germany and France and lined up against the remaining non-euro EU member states like the UK - or maybe that would be just the one remaining non-euro EU member state, the UK.
Apart from any sense of decency in our dealings with these other countries and their peoples, relatively small and still economically weak countries whose governments are easily bullied by the German and French governments, where is the common sense in our government allowing and encouraging the formation of a Europe-wide coalition against our own country?
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