-:Undertaker:-
02-06-2012, 11:36 PM
The EU's 'beneficial crisis' has spun out of control
'Europe' expected to be united through emergencies, but this one will tear it apart.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02237/bookerspain_2237709c.jpg
Facing the axe: a Spanish coal miner in Madrid to protest against the cutting of his industry’s subsidies
So battle-weary have our media become in covering the slow-motion collapse of the euro that it took them quite a while to wake up to the gravity of the crisis building up over the latest episode – the impending bankruptcy of Spain. On Thursday –while even the EU’s economic affairs commissioner was warning of the “disintegration” of the eurozone, and a former Spanish prime minister spoke of “a total emergency, the worst crisis we have ever lived through” – one internet summary of the day’s top stories (headed by “Jeremy Hunt”) ranked Spain only 20th on the list.
Even those commentators who have tried to put this latest crisis into perspective often revealed how hazily informed many of them are about the history of the EU, and what a central role the creation of the euro has played in it. The BBC’s Robert Peston, for instance, was not the only one to “explain” how the idea of a single currency was concocted by Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand after the fall of Communism in 1989. One cannot, however, grasp the significance of the euro without realising that its history goes much further back than that.
As long ago as 1957, Jean Monnet – who was the real organising genius behind the gradual building of “Europe” into a single, unified state – suggested that it was only through monetary and economic union that the “political union which is the goal” could be achieved. “There are no premature ideas,” he wrote, “only opportunities for which we must learn to wait.”
By 1970, Monnet’s ideas were being fleshed out by the Werner report, which saw monetary union as the key step towards political union. But in 1978, another report for the European Commission, by Sir Donald McDougall, warned that it would be reckless to create a single currency unless Europe was first given an all-powerful government, with the power to tax, and to make a massive transfer of resources from the richer states to the poorer.
In the 1980s, though, that other great integrator Jacques Delors (second only to Monnet in his influence on the drive to European political union) decided to ignore the advice of McDougall and others and to launch the single currency without the suggested preconditions. To move straight to fiscal union, he knew, was not on the cards. But if the single currency was put in place first, it would create exactly the kind of strains which had been foreseen – making fiscal union the only way out.
Delors was banking on that same principle that Monnet had relied on ever since the “European project” was launched in 1950: the “beneficial crisis” – one which can be used, as so often in the EU’s history, to justify giving a whole new tranche of powers to Brussels. Those responsible for setting up the euro in the 1990s knew that it would eventually bring about the kind of strains between richer and poorer countries that could justify their moving on to the fiscal and political union that was always the real goal.
What they hadn’t reckoned with was that the crisis, when it came, would be so immense that it would spiral out of anyone’s control. Thus, amid the present shambles, we hear distracted voices calling for “more Europe” – more powers for Brussels, a new treaty – but the truth is that the chaos has gone way beyond their ability to solve it. They are not going to get their new powers, their “eurobonds”, their fiscal union.
As the ultimate “beneficial crisis” that the architects of Europe dreamt of arrives – it is not turning out to be so beneficial after all. As Shakespeare put it, they have been “hoist with their own petard”, as “purposes mistook fall on the inventors’ heads”.
They have been horribly caught out, and the result, as we begin to see, is a catastrophe which could be about to take a great deal more of their “European dream” with it.
Of all the threads and debates i've taken part in on this forum, now is it clear why I continued to post on the topic? a great deal of us are now awake I must say now, although there remain some who are attached to the 'project' not actually having a clue about its intentions or the causes of the present crisis. The topic itself is about the very existence of our nation and other European nations - how can anything in politics be any more important than that?
Whatever comes down the road (almost certainly the collapse of the Euro) the economic circumstances look set to become dire, especially with our own debt and US debt which continue to grow. All I can say is that i'm preparing myself with my small savings by turning money I have into silver - because if everything does hit the fan, then paper money isn't going to be worth the notes it is written on (and that doesn't just include the Euro).
The crisis is coming to a head; the monster of the Euro really is out of control and we're all going to pay for the mad man dreams of the elite.
Thoughts?
'Europe' expected to be united through emergencies, but this one will tear it apart.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02237/bookerspain_2237709c.jpg
Facing the axe: a Spanish coal miner in Madrid to protest against the cutting of his industry’s subsidies
So battle-weary have our media become in covering the slow-motion collapse of the euro that it took them quite a while to wake up to the gravity of the crisis building up over the latest episode – the impending bankruptcy of Spain. On Thursday –while even the EU’s economic affairs commissioner was warning of the “disintegration” of the eurozone, and a former Spanish prime minister spoke of “a total emergency, the worst crisis we have ever lived through” – one internet summary of the day’s top stories (headed by “Jeremy Hunt”) ranked Spain only 20th on the list.
Even those commentators who have tried to put this latest crisis into perspective often revealed how hazily informed many of them are about the history of the EU, and what a central role the creation of the euro has played in it. The BBC’s Robert Peston, for instance, was not the only one to “explain” how the idea of a single currency was concocted by Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand after the fall of Communism in 1989. One cannot, however, grasp the significance of the euro without realising that its history goes much further back than that.
As long ago as 1957, Jean Monnet – who was the real organising genius behind the gradual building of “Europe” into a single, unified state – suggested that it was only through monetary and economic union that the “political union which is the goal” could be achieved. “There are no premature ideas,” he wrote, “only opportunities for which we must learn to wait.”
By 1970, Monnet’s ideas were being fleshed out by the Werner report, which saw monetary union as the key step towards political union. But in 1978, another report for the European Commission, by Sir Donald McDougall, warned that it would be reckless to create a single currency unless Europe was first given an all-powerful government, with the power to tax, and to make a massive transfer of resources from the richer states to the poorer.
In the 1980s, though, that other great integrator Jacques Delors (second only to Monnet in his influence on the drive to European political union) decided to ignore the advice of McDougall and others and to launch the single currency without the suggested preconditions. To move straight to fiscal union, he knew, was not on the cards. But if the single currency was put in place first, it would create exactly the kind of strains which had been foreseen – making fiscal union the only way out.
Delors was banking on that same principle that Monnet had relied on ever since the “European project” was launched in 1950: the “beneficial crisis” – one which can be used, as so often in the EU’s history, to justify giving a whole new tranche of powers to Brussels. Those responsible for setting up the euro in the 1990s knew that it would eventually bring about the kind of strains between richer and poorer countries that could justify their moving on to the fiscal and political union that was always the real goal.
What they hadn’t reckoned with was that the crisis, when it came, would be so immense that it would spiral out of anyone’s control. Thus, amid the present shambles, we hear distracted voices calling for “more Europe” – more powers for Brussels, a new treaty – but the truth is that the chaos has gone way beyond their ability to solve it. They are not going to get their new powers, their “eurobonds”, their fiscal union.
As the ultimate “beneficial crisis” that the architects of Europe dreamt of arrives – it is not turning out to be so beneficial after all. As Shakespeare put it, they have been “hoist with their own petard”, as “purposes mistook fall on the inventors’ heads”.
They have been horribly caught out, and the result, as we begin to see, is a catastrophe which could be about to take a great deal more of their “European dream” with it.
Of all the threads and debates i've taken part in on this forum, now is it clear why I continued to post on the topic? a great deal of us are now awake I must say now, although there remain some who are attached to the 'project' not actually having a clue about its intentions or the causes of the present crisis. The topic itself is about the very existence of our nation and other European nations - how can anything in politics be any more important than that?
Whatever comes down the road (almost certainly the collapse of the Euro) the economic circumstances look set to become dire, especially with our own debt and US debt which continue to grow. All I can say is that i'm preparing myself with my small savings by turning money I have into silver - because if everything does hit the fan, then paper money isn't going to be worth the notes it is written on (and that doesn't just include the Euro).
The crisis is coming to a head; the monster of the Euro really is out of control and we're all going to pay for the mad man dreams of the elite.
Thoughts?