Eurocrash: don't drop the dead corgi
Monday 10 September 2012
Google News is offering over 10,000 English language media reports on the euro – very few of which are worth reading. Perhaps in recognition of this, "most read" on the BBC News website is a report of the death of one of the Queen's corgis.
Actually, the main problem with the euro now is that the media have woken up to the Karlsruhe judgement, and in anticipation of the ruling on Wednesday, are producing a tsunami of largely derivative speculation. With very little in the way of fact to work on, analysis is rendered very difficult and almost completely drowned out by the noise.In the Failygraph Ambrose does his best, with his usual authoritative pronouncements. The effect is somewhat spoiled, though, by one of his commentariat offering a link to a piece which tells us that "Europe's leaders have grasped the nettle". Faced with a spiralling bond crisis in Italy and Spain and the greatest threat to the EU project for 50 years, they have ripped up their bail-out strategy and taken a large stride towards a "liability union", the piece continues. We are then told that the risk is that Spain and even Italy tip back into recession, with knock-on effects for their debt trajectories. The root of Europe's debt crisis, we learn, is the gap that has built up over 15 years between North and South. And to conclude, we are soberly instructed that "this economic chasm cannot be bridged by bail-out funds or loans guarantees". This was written on 21 July 2011, by the same Ambrose Evans-Pritchard who is now telling us that we could soon face a "perfect storm". Well, I don't think there can be any doubt that the euro will collapse at some time, and the AEP prediction will come true. But, three years down the line, it ain't happened yet. Perhaps, in honour of its unexpected longevity, the euro should be renamed the Dick Barton. But until something terminal does happen, you can quite understand why news editors won't be dropping the dead corgi. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 10/09/2012 |
Signs of the times
Sunday 9 September 2012
 
I think the contrast between these two reports tells you something about today's society. I'm not quite sure what, but it certainly tells you something.
COMMENT THREAD Richard North 09/09/2012 |
Eurocrash: EU membership - what if no one wanted us to stay?
Sunday 9 September 2012
 Always reluctant to report on EU issues, this means the coverage of "Europe" has been slight. Because of the focus on the euro, such that there is has been heavily biased by the economics, and largely ill-informed. However, not only the media but euroscepticism seems to have taken a break over the summer, relying on the complacent supposition that the euro will collapse, bringing down the whole project. All eurosceptics have to do – or so the unspoken assumption goes – is bide their time. Soon enough, the EU will cease to be and patriotic Englishmen can pick up the pieces where they left off – many dreaming of returning to a UK locked in some rosy, nostalgic period approximating to the early-50s when Morris Minors roamed the planet and Churchill was still prime minister. The strong expectations of a euro collapse certainly looked justified from events earlier this year and, with the torrent of often hostile media coverage in the German press, by mid-August, when Bookerwrote about the subject, it certainly looked as if it would be Germany that precipitated the fall. Now, I don't suppose the German media is any more accurate in representing what Germans think than is our media about us – any more than opinion polls accurately reflect the subtleties of public mood. Thus, in trying to divine the mood of what to is a very foreign country, all one can hope to do is as accurately as possible, reflect what a wide range of media is actually saying. And, with that in mind, things look very different from what they did even a month ago. Not only does the survival of the eurozone look possible, but the EU itself could emerge from its recent traumas much strengthened and closer to its ultimate goal of European political integration. That much can be inferred (with very little difficulty) from the latest poll data published by Die Welt, which has a clear majority of 57 percent in favour of "more common policy" in the EU. In March, the figure was 58 percent, only slightly higher. However, in what appears to be a contradiction, 50 percent of the Germans polled rejected the idea of the ECB buying government bonds. Only one in eight (13 percent), supported their acquisition, although a bout a third of respondents said they could not judge the matter. In this poll also, Merkel remains the most popular politician, enjoying a personal approval rating of 61 percent – although this is seven points less than in July. And second in line is arch-europhile Wolfgang Schäuble on 60 percent. These findings are very much in line with earlier polls, suggesting that, despite the torrent of media comment, sentiment has changed very little. Such antipathy as does exist in Germany is directed not towards the EU but mainly at bailing out the peripheral eurozone members. With a new treaty now a distinct possibility, one must take a view from this end of the tunnel that, if asked to approve it, the Germans would respond positively. It seems unlikely that we can rely on the Germans to bring even the euro crashing down, much less the EU itself. From the British eurosceptic viewpoint, though, this is not necessarily all bad. A new treaty driving further integration in the eurozone could, in the opinion of Julian Priestley, a prominent europhile, speed up the process of gradual disengagement which he asserts is already underway. 
Priestley (pictured above) has been at the centre of things EU for a considerable while, having been secretary-general of the European Parliament from 1997 to 2007. He now chairs the board of EPPA, a Brussels-based public affairs company, and sits on the boards of Notre Europe, the Paris-based think-tank, founded by Jacques Delors.
As did we, he thought the FCO review of the balance of competences between the UK and the EU to be highly significant. To this, he adds a tendency for Britain to be on the losing side in the EU Council, having lost around one-third of all vote since 2011.
These developments, on top of the refusal to participate in the Fiscal Stability Treaty agreed in March 2012, in Priestley's view, defines the coalition government's "so-far fairly measured policy of disengagement from Europe".
This could accelerate, he says, if an IGC is convened shortly, although with results that will force increased isolation. Britain is increasingly losing the support of its natural soul mates in East and Central Europe, nearly all of whom remain outside the euro and who have generally shared a more eurosceptic approach than the federalist core.
The UK attitude, Priestley asserts, is now widely perceived as obstructive, insensitive to the needs of others and unwilling to contribute to finding generally accepted solutions to the euro's problems which are considered to be in the interests of all, both those in the euro or outside.
Says Priestley, this in turn will make any significant treaty change repatriating powers to the UK the tallest of orders. He thus asks, which other member states would now go out on a limb to support Treaty change to enable the UK to opt out of a range of EU policies (like health and safety legislation, consumer rights, environmental standards which the UK's partners consider to be an integral part of the internal market)?
What, just a few years ago, might have been an argument which Britain could have been won at Council, he says, now looks a lost cause because most of the 26 appear to have lost patience with Britain.
Any recourse to "hardball" - refusing to accept future treaty change - would look to many like a rerun of a bluff already called at the end of last year when the majority carried on negotiating a budgetary pact but outside the framework of the EU treaties.
So it is that Priestley asserts that no other member state would wish to complicate steps towards a fiscal union and the strengthening of euro governance with a detailed examination of where under existing EU competences further opt-outs for one member state might be tolerable. Embarking on this process risks irritating further the UK's partners and ratcheting up the relative isolation of the UK government.
Currently, the policy of unpicking the acquis, of furrowing an ever more solitary course in Council, and the perceived obstructionism of the UK over more radical reforms of the Union, he further adds, runs the serious risk that the will of his partners to help Cameron and his government to find even a figleaf to justify his staying in the Union may start to evanesce.
And, concludes Priestley, if the other member states cease to care very much if the UK remains in the Union, then the Cameron will find it even harder to persuade his compatriots, let alone his backbenchers, to support the UK staying in.
There lies the view of an unreformed europhile. It begs some interesting questions, ones that are rarely posed – especially the question of whether the "colleagues" will continue to want Britain as a member of the EU. Indifference, graduating to outright hostility, could be the game changer. We could end up leaving because no one wants us to stay.
COMMENT THREAD Richard North 09/09/2012 |
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