Followed by a quote. Who do you think said this earlier in the week?
“For the first time since it was founded, the failure of the European Union is a realistic possibility. For months, the European Union has stumbled from one crisis summit to another, while the economic crisis has raised poverty in many countries and unemployment has reached disastrous levels among young people in particular. They are protesting in Europe’s streets against an economic system allowing a small minority to take in the profits when times are good, and forcing society as a whole to bear the losses when times are bad. A system, which makes anonymous rating agencies in New York more powerful than democratically elected governments and parliaments.”
I’ll post the answer in the comments section tomorrow if no one else does.
Like this:
Filed under: european union Tagged: | greece, sovereign debt crisis
you said that!
From the same speech. The speech,as a whole, when not selectively quoted,is a Eurocentric view of addressing the democratic deficit.
“Post-war Europe is founded on a sober acknowledgement of the fact that our interests can no longer be separated from those of our neighbours; on a shared understanding that the EU is not a zero-sum game, in which one person must lose so that another can win. The reverse is true: either we all lose, or we all win. The fundamental basis for this is the full involvement of EU procedures and institutions: the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council representing all EU states.. This “community method” is not a technocratic concept, but the principle at the heart of everything the European Union stands for.”
Yeah Bobby, the bit you quote is standard fare and could have been said by any Europhile in the last 60 years or so. The quote in the posting highlighted that even the new European president Martin Schultz recognises and acknowledges where it all has been going wrong. Shared interests are fine but it’s how that concept is managed which is the important thing.
Interests are not the be all and end all either. As Tom Waits says about the USA, “We don’t have friends, we only have interests”
In the quote that you posted, Schultz does not say that integration is the problem. He is saying that the underlying economic system is at fault.
So he says the EU is in danger? Merkel has said the same thing. They are not blaming intergration for this as you imply.
The purpose of Schultz’s speech is to use the crisis as an excuse to strengthen the power of the EU institutions. His nose is out of joint a bit given that summits are being used at the moment in an attempt to avert the crisis. This means that the instutions like the Commission and the Parliament are being bypassed.
His solution, in short, is deeper integration.
And if that’s done properly in a considered and proper manner, it might be the way forward. If it is done the way it has been up to now things will continue as before.
I thought that this may interest you.
As you think about how you will vote in 2014, spare a thought for the Germans.
Historic, nation changing decisions in the last 25 years: 2
Referendums: 0
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/7586243/fear-and-loathing-in-badenwurttemberg.thtml
Bobby, that article sums up my feelings about the Euro and EU in a nutshell. Everyone is getting what nobody wanted in the first place – and not just in Germany.
I’m no fan of David Cameron or the Tories. However his decision at the last summit came under intense scrutiny and it was generally held that this was the UK once again acting against the common interest.
Nowhere it seemed was the proposed agreement placed under the same intense scrutiny. The media home in on domestic politics and
Europe is some dark distant kingdom almost beyond reproach.
This is how and why the EU trundles on like an out of control juggernaut with no one prepared to apply the brakes.
The issues are many and varied and they are complicated but there is a simple economic truth beneath it all.
In recent times there have not been many net contributors joining the EU. Those currently on the waiting list include Macedonia, Montenegro, Iceland and Turkey. Countries in the mould of France or Germany? Or of Greece, Portugal and Ireland?
http://bigrab.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/how-the-eu-works/