State of the Union EMU

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Göran Persson och federalismen

Ever closer union

State of the Union

It is a union of nation states that has created something
less than a federation and more than an alliance.
how much did that vision presume the blurring or even fading away completely of national boundaries and identities?
Was ever closer political union a way of describing a federal or super state?
Chris Patten, FT June 2 2010

It is a union of nation states that has created something
less than a federation and more than an alliance.
How much did that vision presume the blurring or even fading away completely of national boundaries and identities?
Was ever closer political union a way of describing a federal or super state?
Chris Patten, FT June 2 2010

The truth is that the vision we are offered is too often dated, irrelevant and impractical, and that we require pragmatism, common sense and honesty to bridge the yawning gulf between rhetoric and reality.

To argue that the democratic legitimisation of what happens in the EU depends on its component nation states is not to display a lack of vision.

A third question points to the role of Europe beyond the achievement of a sort of glorified customs union.

Through example and enlargement Europe has promoted stability around its borders. The task is not yet completed. We still have much to do in the Balkans.

Above all, we should understand that the really existential issue for Europe is how we handle Turkey’s membership application.

The single currency was created by eurocrats, foisted upon its people and bound to end in tears.
Liam Halligan Daily Telegraph 29 May 2010

"We are clearly confronted with a tension within the system," Van Rompuy opined.
"The dilemma of being a monetary union and not a fully-fledged economic and political union.
The tension has been there since the single currency was created. However, the general public was not really made aware of it."

Despite what Van Rompuy says, some of us – economists, politicians and commentators – have been shouting about the dangers of the eurozone for many years.

When we did, the trough-nuzzling, self-appointed EU elite, which Van Rompuy represents down to the tip of his Mont Blanc pen, dismissed our concerns as "alarmist" and "anti-European".
Meanwhile, the Brussels publicity machine spent vast amounts of taxpayers' money on propaganda telling the Western European public that the eurozone was not only safe, but if their countries didn't join then "jobs and growth" would suffer.

I wrote in a national newspaper column over a decade ago, "but I find it difficult to see how an 11-member eurozone can be maintained over the long term in the absence of substantial fiscal transfers".

The former chancellor, Denis Healey – not my kind of politician, but an intellectually able and honest man – was another shouter. "European Monetary Union is either a step towards political union or it will fail," he boomed in April 1998.

Nobel-Prize winning economist, Milton Friedman, also weighed in early, warning the single currency would ultimately cause major problems. "The euro was really adopted for political and not economic purposes, as a step towards the myth of the United States of Europe," Friedman declared in September 1997. "I believe its effect will be exactly the opposite."

The economic contradictions of the eurozone are being laid bare, exposing for all to see the political hubris and vanity upon which the entire edifice was built. Yet Van Rompuy and his ilk are incapable of admitting they were wrong. Instead, they claim "nobody" ever warned the public about the dangers of joining the euro.