Re: New EC Thread

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WORLD'S OLDEST BANK (IN ITALY) IS IN NEED OF BAILOUT FUNDS

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EU summit: France says bank deal helps eurozone fusion


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The BBC's Gavin Hewitt reports on the winners and losers in the deal

Continue reading the main story

Eurozone crisis

• Eurozone inches towards bank plan
  
• Euro action gives breathing space
  
• Do summits work?
  
• Q&A: Bailout fund
  

The French president says a deal to start building a banking union on 1 January will enable the eurozone to speed up economic integration.

"Thanks to this we can advance more quickly and with more assurance," Francois Hollande said in Brussels.

He was speaking after EU leaders agreed to set up a single banking supervisor for the 17-nation eurozone - a key step towards a banking union.

But Mr Hollande also said EU states "need different speeds" of integration.

"We should have a council of the eurozone to meet on a regular basis... We need different speeds - that's agreed by everyone now, and there are even some moving backwards," he told a news conference.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted again that "quality takes precedence over speed" in setting up the banking union.
New ECB clout
It has been agreed that the European Central Bank (ECB), as supervisor-in-chief, will have the power to intervene in any of the eurozone's 6,000 banks.

The deal appears to be a compromise between France and Germany, who earlier disagreed over the timing and over the number of banks the ECB would oversee.

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“Start Quote

Compromising and fudging is the way business often gets done in Brussels”

End Quote
Gavin Hewitt Europe editor

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• Read more from Gavin
  

A legislative framework is to be in place by 1 January, with the supervisory body starting work later in 2013.

The timetable remains important, because only when the body is fully operational will the eurozone's new rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), be able to recapitalise struggling banks directly, without adding to a country's sovereign debt pile.

A priority is to rescue weak banks in Spain, where a recent audit put the bailout requirement at 59.3bn euros (£48.3bn; $77.4bn).

But the Greek crisis also looms large, as the EU awaits a key report from the "troika" of international lenders - the ECB, European Commission and International Monetary Fund.

Mr Hollande insisted that "Greece's presence in the eurozone should not be questioned any more" and Mrs Merkel said the Greek government was "really making an all-out effort" to reform its economy.

Meanwhile, Spain's main trade unions have called a general strike for 14 November, coinciding with similar protests in Portugal and Greece.

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Banking union - Three-stage plan

• Single supervisory mechanism (SSM)
  
• Joint resolution scheme to wind down failing banks
  
• Joint deposit guarantee scheme
  

• Peston: UK mugged by eurozone?
  

'Ambitious roadmap'
Berlin wanted to apply the brakes over the banking union and much wrangling lies ahead, the BBC's Europe editor Gavin Hewitt says.

Mrs Merkel insisted on Friday that "the right sequence is important" and added: "It's already quite an ambitious roadmap."

Germany had been at odds with the European Commission over the scope of the proposed ECB supervision. All the eurozone banks will be included - but Germany had wanted it limited to the biggest, "systemic" banks.

Previously, the German government has expressed a desire to retain supervisory responsibility within Germany over the country's Landesbanks - state-owned banks that play a key role in the economies and state finances of Germany's federal regions.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said the 27 EU leaders had agreed to set up "a Single Supervisory Mechanism [SSM], to prevent banking risks and cross-border contagion from emerging".

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“Start Quote

What the media do not do enough is study the reasons we are in this crisis”

End Quote Sofia Palma Rodrigues Portuguese journalist

• How Europe's media cover crisis
  

"Once this is agreed, the SSM could probably be effectively operational in the course of 2013," he said.

With new supervisory powers the ECB would be able to act early on to prevent a systemically dangerous accumulation of debt on a bank's balance sheets.
UK concerns
ECB supervision will not extend to the UK - Europe's main financial centre, but outside the euro.

However, the BBC's Business editor Robert Peston says there is now a serious risk that the UK will always be outvoted when decisions are taken on the regulation of banking and finance in the EU as a whole.

It is more than a theoretical possibility that the interests of the UK and City of London in shaping financial rules will be systematically ignored or overridden, he says. The UK also wants safeguards to protect the powers of the Bank of England.

Mrs Merkel said the agreement was that "banks must be supervised in a differentiated way. That means that some will be direct... at the ECB level and others indirectly, via the national authorities."

She also said that ECB President Mario Draghi had told her it would be some months before the ECB was ready to take on its new role.
Fraught with complications
The leaders agreed that the ECB's new supervisory function would be strictly separated from its role in setting monetary policy.

The banking union plan is fraught with legal complications, as it would give more powers to the ECB and possibly weaken those of national regulators.

There is speculation that it could lead to treaty changes - something that has caused big headaches for the EU in the past.

The EU Commission said the arrangement would be "as inclusive as legally possible for non-euro members to join if they want to".

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Analysts don't think much of the speed at which the EU works and even if a single Banker Supervisor is appointed by 1st January, there are still many imponderables. What happened with a case like Greece, whose debt will take decades to pay off and still, even with the rioting in Greece, the Troika has not agreed on a delay of 2 years to reach the 3 % of GDP target set.?

Investment Managers say it will take a long time for the new sheme to be up and running . What happens to the non Euro Countries they ask?If the ECB takes full control, what will happen if one of the Banks goes bankrupt?

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Cameron hits out at Eurocrats who earn £80,000 on the taxpayer, as he says that Britain should stay IN a reformed EU



By Daniel Martin, Whitehall Correspondent In Brussels

PUBLISHED:16:52, 19 October 2012| UPDATED:19:13, 19 October 2012


Thousands of Brussels staff are on salaries than £80,000 a year, David Cameron revealed yesterday.

One in six employees of the European Commission - almost 6,000 - is earning more than 100,000 euros. The Prime Minister said it was unfair that Europe was being allowed to waste so much at a time when budgets in Britain were being cut to the bone.

But he also spoke out against an 'in-out' referendum on EU membership, saying it was a 'false choice' and that Britain's national interests lay within a reformed union with powers repatriated to the UK.



Outspoken: David Cameron has questioned the salaries being paid to large numbers of Brussels staff

Setting out his stall before the next European summit in November, he said he had a reputation among fellow leaders of being a 'pretty tough' operator - and he would prove this by vetoeing any budget deal which did not reduce spending on staff.

Mr Cameron highlighted the extraordinary waste at the end of an EU summit in Brussels, at which member states reached an agreement on a new banking union for the 17 countries of the Eurozone.

Next month EU leaders will gather again to agree a budget framework for the next seven years.

Asked whether he would wield his veto if the deal was not good for Britain, Mr Cameron said: 'The short answer to that is yes.

'I think it would be good to have a deal; it's good to settle these issues but it just would not be acceptable to see some huge increase in EU spending at a time when other budgets are being cut.

'The British public expect a tough approach; a rigorous approach and that's exactly what they will get.

'There's no point doing a deal that's a bad deal, so if there isn't a deal that's good for Britain, if there isn't a deal that's available then there won't be a deal.

'That's what we should be focusing on, making sure we protect the British rebate - that's absolutely vital.'

Attacking EU waste, he said: 'We can't have European spending going up and up and up when we're having to make difficult decisions in so many areas.

'My favourite fact of the day is that there are 16 per cent of employees in the Commission that earn over 100,000 euros.

'What we have done in Britain is crack down on central administration, in Whitehall and on the numbers of people employed, to release money for things that are more important.

'We need to see in the budget proposals that sort of rigorous approach. There is a deal to be done but it can't be a deal that will cost a lot of money.'

The salaries work out at around £81,000 for just short of 6,000 staff at the European Commission.

Huge wages are only the start of the perks for Commission officials. They pay far lower income tax than a British civil servant would, and also enjoy generous pensions.

On Thursday night, France and Germany reached a compromise on a new banking union for the Eurozone.

Britain will not be a part of the arrangements, and received safeguards to ensure the union did not harm the UK's access to the single market.

However, the new deal will increase pressure from Tory backbenchers for an in-out referendum on EU membership.

Mr Cameron yesterday gave a strong defence of continued membership, saying the idea that there were only two options - the status quo or leaving the EU - was a 'false choice'.

In reality, there was a third choice - staying in the EU but getting powers repatriated to Britain.

e said: 'I've always been clear that leaving the European Union is not in our national interest. Why? Chiefly because we are a trading nation and we need Europe's markets to be open.

'We want a say over the rules about how that trade works and that's what EU membership gives us.

'I think it's a false choice between saying you either accept the status quo or you have to leave. That's not where the British public is or where I am.

'I think what we should be seeking, as Europe changes as the Eurozone integrates, we should be saying they are opportunities for a fresh settlement and then to get fresh consent to get a good deal for Britain.'

Mr Cameron rejected criticism from the Finnish foreign minister that the UK was saying 'bye bye' to Europe, and from the French president that we are in 'retreat'.

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"Mr Cameron yesterday gave a strong defence of continued membership, saying the idea that there were only two options - the status quo or leaving the EU - was a 'false choice'.

In reality, there was a third choice - staying in the EU but getting powers repatriated to Britain"

Maggie Thatcher was known as the "Iron Lady" for fighting to get a good deal from the EU , Cameron is a wimp and just going through the motions . It will take a brave Politician to take the U.K. out of the EU , but I think it is just what the Country needs......the ability to run the Country and make decisions without the straitjacket of the EU......we thought we were voting for a Common Market, not complete domination.

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Blogs Home » News » Politics » Daniel Hannan






Daniel Hannan


Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the European Union is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free.







The case against EU membership





By Daniel HannanPoliticsLast updated: October 18th, 2012

371 CommentsComment on this article



Why hang around for the decline and fall?

There is usually a time lag in politics. Pundits carry on citing obsolete statistics for years. Even when they catch up with the facts, they are slow to adjust their world-view to them.

How often, for example, do you hear politicians and journalists claiming that ‘half our exports’ – or even ‘the majority of our exports’ – go to the EU?

I’m not sure this statistic was ever properly true. The data were distorted in two ways. First, there is what economists call the ‘Rotterdam effect’: many British exports destined for non-EU markets are routed through Antwerp and Rotterdam, thus showing up in the raw numbers as exports to the EU. Second, ‘UK exports to the Republic of Ireland’ in reality include many goods from overseas that have been shipped through Belfast.

Be that as it may, the EU now accounts, on any measure, for a minority of our trade. The Treasury Pink Book, the OECD, the European Commission: all now put the figure at below 50 per cent. The latest official figures, published by the Office of National Statistics on 11 September, show that the EU now accounts for 43.6 per cent of our exports, the lowest share since the current measure was introduced in 1988.

Never mind a percentage point here or there, though. The trend is unarguable. Every continent in the world is growing except Europe. Our exports to the EU fell by 7.3 per cent in the last three months for which we have data, while our exports to the rest of the world rose by 13.2 per cent.

Where are these facts reflected in official thinking? For most of the establishment, our membership of the EU is a datum, a fact around which other policies must be fitted. The main parties, together with the TUC, the CBI and the BBC, are so used to citing the economic indispensability of EU membership that they no longer pause to question their assumption.

Like most legacy policies, EU membership once had a rationale. In the early 1970s, when we launched our third application – the one that would eventually succeed – the EEC did indeed seem an attractive prospect. Between 1945 and 1974, Western Europe had outperformed, not just Britain and her Commonwealth, but also the United States.

In retrospect, we can see why this was. The Second World War had destroyed Europe’s infrastructure, but left in place an industrious and educated workforce, restless to begin the task of reconstruction. There was mass migration – within countries, as people moved from the country to the towns, from the Mediterranean littoral to the coalfields and steelworks of the north, and from former colonies beyond Europe. Europe also benefited from $12 billion in Marshall Aid, which came on top of the $13 billion disbursed between 1948 and 1952, and from the US military guarantee, which freed up defence budgets for civil use.

All this, as I say, is clear in retrospect. It wasn’t clear at the time. British observers couldn’t understand why they were being outperformed by nations that had suffered so much more badly than they had between 1940 and 1945. They didn’t see that they had finished the war with an unbearable debt burden, far greater than any of their neighbours’. They never grasped that the willingness of successive governments to inflate away that debt eroded our competitiveness and productivity, so causing the ‘British disease’. Instead, they assumed that the reason the clever Continentals were doing so well was because of the Common Market.

In the event, Britain’s timing could hardly have been worse. We joined the EEC in 1973, at the very end of Europe’s Wirtschaftswunder. The growth spurt came to a halt in 1974 with the oil shock, and never properly got going again. In 1973, the year we joined, Western Europe (defined for these purposes as the 15 member states of the EU prior to the 2004 enlargement round) accounted for 38 per cent of world DGP. Today, that figure is 24 per cent, and in 2020 it will be 15 per cent.

It’s not just that developing countries grow faster than industrialised ones. The EU has also been comprehensively outperformed by the United States and by what we used to call the Old Dominions.

In June 2012, the Commonwealth’s economy overtook the eurozone's. According to the IMF, the countries within the single currency will grow at an average of 2.7 per cent over the next five years – which strikes me as optimistic – while the Commonwealth surges ahead at 7.3 per cent.

These figures destroy the premise on which we joined. Our trade has been redirected, by government intervention, away from the markets to which we are connected by language and law, habit and sentiment; markets which, unlike those in the EU, are growing.

It never made much sense to join a customs union with similar industrialised economies at the expense of the raw producers of the Commonwealth: the whole point of a market, after all, is to swap on the back of differences. But the latest figures are spelling out quite how wrongheaded our choice was.

I’m not denying that Europe matters: for all that it is shrinking, 43.6 per cent is an extremely hefty share. But the EU is becoming simply one among many of our markets, alongside NAFTA, Mercosur and so on. And no one argues that we need to merge our political institutions with theirs so as to be able to sell to them.

Consider Switzerland. The Swiss declined to join the EU, instead negotiating a series of sectoral trade accords covering everything from fish farming to the permitted size of lorries. As a result, they are fully covered by the four freedoms of the single market – free movement, that is, of goods, services, people and capital – but are outside the CAP and CFP, free to determine their own human rights issues, and spared the budget contributions which EU members are required to make to Brussels.

Has their trade to the EU suffered in consequence? Hardly. In 2011, their exports to the EU were, in per capita terms, 450 per cent of Britain’s. Let me repeat that astonishing fact. Switzerland sells four-and-a-half times as much per head to the EU from outside as we do from inside. It’s true, of course, that Swiss exporters must meet EU standards when exporting to the EU, just as they must meet Japanese standards when selling to Japan. But, critically, they don’t allow the EU to dictate their trading arrangements with third countries.

Although Switzerland tends to replicate most EU trade accords with third countries, it can and does go further when it feels that the EU has been unduly protectionist. It has signed a free trade agreement with Canada, for example, and is in the middle of negotiating one with China. Britain, by contrast, is often dragged into trade disputes in order to protect the interests of some cosseted continental producer.

The Common External Tariff, which the UK must apply to its trade with non-EU states, now averages between five and nine per cent – a higher barrier than we had the 1920s. We have, in other words, bought trade with a dwindling European market at the expense of trade with a growing global market.

People sometimes ask me what kind of renegotiation I’d be happy with. If I had to identify a single test, it would be this. Would the United Kingdom be able independently to sign a trade deal with, say, Australia? Grant that, and much follows. Deny it, and we condemn ourselves to decline.

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Spectre of Spanish bailout



19 October 2012El Periódico de Catalunya Barcelona

• 
  

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy

Kap

The banking union agreed by European leaders on 18 October is just one of a set of measures that also includes supervision of national budgets and a greater role for the ECB. And the goal of these manoeuvres is to determine if, and how, Spain will ask for help.

Antón Costas

Will President Mariano Rajoy decide to ask for the second bailout of the Spanish economy at the new European summit that started yesterday in Brussels? That’s the million-dollar question. At the risk of having to correct myself tomorrow, my feeling is that he will not.

The reason is not, in my opinion, as is often said, that Mariano Rajoy is indecisive, constantly plucking petals off a daisy. The most plausible reason is that he has grasped that the bailout has a lot in common with a poker game, which is a game where you have to learn how to hide your cards and play them well and force other players to show theirs. And, at this summit, he is surely not going to learn what hands they are holding.


Spanish debt and the Franco-Prussian tiff



Many people in Spain, notably the financial elites, believe that there is no card to play and the best thing to do is ask, once and for all, for the bail-out. Leaving aside the fact that many of them are backing the bailout because they are faring very well in their businesses and know that they will not be paying for the terms of a bailout, the fact is that Spain does indeed have a card to play.

Although there are reasons to criticise the government for the way it is handling the crisis, let me raise a voice in its favour. Mariano Rajoy has grasped that the bailout card does gives him some wriggle room, but before showing his hand he has to force the other players to reveal their own: the European banking union, the new rescue fund, intervention by the ECB, or supervisory power over national budgets.

Germany does not want to play the banking union card (possibly because its banks are like Swiss cheese) and prefers to play the card of Europe-wide supervision of national budgets by a European Union super-minister. France opposes that, as it has no desire for German hegemony and is demanding that the banking union be in place first. In this new Franco-Prussian war, the kicks the combatants are meting out to each other are falling on Spain’s behind.

In fact, the high premium on Spanish debt, i.e. the additional costs that the Spanish Treasury has to pay to finance itself, are not down solely to the Spanish disease, but to the Franco-Prussian tiff that is threatening the euro. Part of this excessive cost is caused by the fears of investors that the euro will end up collapsing. As we have seen, ever since Mario Draghi declared that the ECB would do everything it took to save the euro the Spanish premium has been going down, which is a clear sign of the contagion effect of the euro.


Game of poker



Although the ECB says it is willing to intervene, however, that requires being requested to intervene by the interested parties. It's as if a public hospital, whose function is to act on its own initiative in cases of contagious infection, were to demand that it be asked to do so by those infected. It’s senseless. On the other hand, we do not even know how the new European rescue fund will take action and what kind of firepower it can muster.

That said, we’re looking at a complex game of poker. Spain should not show its card until the others have flourished theirs. This won’t happen, though, not even at this summit.

Translated from the Spanish by Anton Baer

On the web

• Original article in El Periodico es
  
• El País article es
  

Comment
Bailout held hostage by Paris and Berlin


“The bailout of Spain is hardening the standoff between Germany and France,” leads El País after the first day of the European Council –

The bailout is just around the corner, almost fully formalised and waiting only on the electoral calendar in certain countries [...] Spain is resisting it, though, because Berlin continues to be Rajoy’s great fear. The German executive wants to hold in reserve a last trump card regarding the terms, to tighten the screw or to cede some ground and be a little more flexible, which is what Madrid is demanding.

There’s also a new pattern of confrontation between France and Germany, the daily writes, noting that President François Hollande has accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of delaying the start of the banking union until 2014 “out of electoral interests”, in view of the German elections slated for the autumn of 2013 –

On most of the major issues, Berlin and Paris differ. France wants an immediate bailout of Spain, while Germany prefers to wait. France wants the chapter and verse of the June agreement on union bank to be respected; Germany has succeeded in upholding its own interpretation. And so on, ad infinitum. Although the arrival of Holland has assumed a certain rebalancing of power in Europe, the euro is a kind of economic competition in which Germany clearly comes out the winner.

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Blogs Home » News » Politics » Norman Tebbit






Norman Tebbit


Lord Tebbit of Chingford is one of Britain's most outspoken conservative commentators and politicians. He was a senior cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government and is a former Chairman of the Conservative Party. He has also worked in journalism, publishing, advertising and was a pilot in the RAF and British Overseas Airways.






Times are changing. Even Robert Peston thinks Britain may be forced out of the EU





By Norman TebbitPoliticsLast updated: October 20th, 2012

282 CommentsComment on this article



Even Robert Peston is talking about an EU exit (Photo: BBC)

Times are changing. While Mr Miliband may feel that there is more mileage for him in exploiting the Prime Minister's embarrassment over the conduct of his Chief Whip rather than at developments in the eurozone, there is not much doubt about which will be seen as the bigger issue in 40 or 50 years’ time.

Forget for a moment what the politicians are saying about the EU and look at what Mr Robert Peston, that pillar of the BBC journalistic establishment, is saying from his centralist position. Mr Peston writes that the United Kingdom is having to face a situation in which a German-dominated banking regulatory agency will dump on to the EU Council table proposals to which all eurozone member states would be committed. Our British view would be heard with polite impatience, but it would have no chance of gaining support, nor votes.

He goes on to say that “it is not at all clear how the Government will prevent the UK becoming an increasingly marginal voice in European financial policy making” and asks whether “the establishment of economic and financial decision-making arguably necessary to its [the euro's] survival will inevitably push Britain towards the EU exit”.

One can disagree with Mr Peston, and I often do, but he cannot be dismissed as a swivel-eyed Europhobic nutcase xenophobe. So it it is now open season for reasoned debate whether the time is coming for the UK to regain its independence. No wonder that Peter Oborne writing in Thursday's Daily Telegraph talks of the Tories detonating the Brussels bomb. So Mr Miliband and his colleagues had better state thinking about serious politics as the blast of that bomb will hit them, too. Indeed only Mr Farage has any reason to smile.

The plain fact is that if Mrs Merkel is determined to prevent “Grexit” from the eurozone, then “Brexit” (from the EU) will be clearly on the agenda instead. Indeed there are now Cabinet Ministers, including Michael Gove, willing to say openly that they believe we would be better off out. I have never doubted that for the euro to succeed it would require fiscal and monetary union. As the next step towards that, the Germans are now talking of the need for a Commissioner for Budgets with the power to strike down the budgets approved by the Parliaments of member states.

It is, of course, for our friends on the Continent to decide if that is compatible with their democratic systems. Perhaps they, and indeed our own politicians here, might do well to consider what that real Liberal Gladstone told a meeting at Hastings on March 17, 1891:

The finance of the country is intimately associated with the liberties of the country. It is a powerful leverage by which English liberty has been gradually acquired … It lies at the root of English liberty, and if the House of Commons can by any possibility lose the power of the grants of public money, depend upon it your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison.

Twenty years on from the Maastricht rebellion, those battles are set to be fought again.
…
It seemed a pity to me that so many acres of space and tumults of words were used by David in Rome and danoconnor in quite futile attempts to change each others’ minds with arguments so repetitive that anyone else must have been put off reading them. I would just observe to danoconnor that David in Rome is neither stupid, insane nor a conspirator against the United Kingdom, although I believe he underestimates the relevance of UKIP. To David in Rome I would say that there are times to accept that rational arguments are not going to be heard by some individuals.

Sadly I would say that prettypolly was again wanting to disagree with me over what I did not write. I did not “almost excuse” Jimmy Savile. I simply noted that he had done a lot of good as well as a lot of thoroughly bad things. As to her puerile question of whether I knew of his sexual abuses, of course I did not, although clearly many in the BBC did. I think that ombzch may have been on to something with his comment on the futility of some of the recriminations. Savile is dead. Many of those who covered up for him are still in positions of authority.

As usual there was a lot of comment, including some good analysis by sodit, on the EU and of course UKIP. I think that cargill55 was right to say that the UK would be happier outside the EU and with much of what old school, tokyoagaremono, Daugeckhat44, MJHopeC, LJB57, musosnoop and others wrote about the attitude of the BBC towards both the EU and UKIP, although see my comments in today's blog post (above).

I also understand why many of you like coupderouge, barbican, huscarl, cognisant, BenWalker, redtuftytail and others ask me to jump ship and join UKIP. It is nothing to do with putting party before country which causes me to work to change the policies of my Party, as I have done in the past. I repeat, it is because there is less chance of a UKIP majority in the Commons in 2015 than there is of a Conservative majority. It therefore makes sense to try to change the policy of the Conservative Party than to take the easier personal option.

Unlike Ray Finch, I do not yet know the result of the next election, nor like INCubbie do I know that it will come before 2015. Either or both of them may of course be proven right, but for my part, I can see too many possible events which might swing things one way or another to be too sure about such matters.

Returning to the main subject of last week’s blog, I was pleased to find that both cambridge elephant and the guerilla broadly accepted my thinking on how we should judge a prime minister, but I felt that Elliot Kane, boudicca and MarcusJuniusBrutus slightly missed the point. Of course a prime minister must show leadership to get into No 10, but he needs to manage his government if he wants to stay there. There have been more than enough examples this week of perfectly sensible policies going off the rails because too little attention has been give to making sure that the implementation has been thought through.

There were several posts from, amongst others, bersher and english pensioner on the absurdity of Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, referring to countries which are not parties to the Convention on Human Rights as pariahs. I shared oopiop's distaste for the chinwobbling and tearfulness displayed on TV and elsewhere these days. As I know only too well, there are moments when it is difficult not to display emotion in the face of terrible events, but the habit of doing so for effect in public is to be deplored. In the same way I think much indiscipline on the track and field is engendered by the absurd gesticulating, prancing, grimacing antics of footballers, cricketers and now even golfers.

I also agreed with 3eng33R (and do I detect an aviator there?) and napiersabre (another one?) that welcome as were Owen Paterson's words we still lack a credible energy policy, but then it is a Lib Dem, not Paterson, who is Secretary of Sate for Energy. I was also invited by Laveen Ladharam and thomaschisholm to comment on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union. That I fear would involve either a single-word obscenity or several pages of text on the absurdity of it. It might have been better to have awarded the prize to NATO and its nuclear deterrent.

As for blisarighetc and his triumphant wail that the welcome decision to refuse the extradition of Mr McKinnon was due to the European Convention rather than Magna Carta, I hope he has now realised that by basing her decision on that matter on the Convention the Home Secretary has needlessly opened a very large can of worms.

Finally may I offer my sympathy to poor Barbara, who has broken both her ankles and sat at home to watch the TV coverage of the party conferences. I am not sure which would have caused her the more pain. At least, however, she was saved the expense of going to either the Tory Conference, which nagsman estimated would have cost £1,000, or UKIP's at £300.

Read Lord Tebbit's previous blog post here

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ECB’s Knot Backs Schaeuble Call for Stronger EU Budget Power


By Fred Pals - Oct 21, 2012 1:50 PM GMT+0100



European Central Bank Governing Council Member Klaas Knot backed German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble’s proposal for a commissioner that has power over European Union nations’ budgets.

“National budgets within a monetary union not only affect national economies, they also touch on other economies,” Knot said in an interview today with Dutch television program Buitenhof. “Hence it is a logical consequence of having a monetary union that there is more coordination in the area of budgets.”





European Central Bank Governing Council Member Klaas Knot also said it is up to Spain to decide whether to apply for a bailout that would enable the country to use the ECB’s bond-purchasing program. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Asked about Schaeuble’s proposal, Knot said “more power is important as the euro crisis has shown.”

Finland and the Netherlands backed Germany at an Oct. 18-19 summit of European leaders in maneuvering that will climax at a Dec. 13-14 meeting to set deadlines -- possibly as long as a decade -- for a more united economy with more disciplined budget management and central oversight.

The EU has struggled to maintain the momentum of its June plan to spur investor confidence by putting the ECB in charge of lenders across the euro area and other nations that choose to sign on. Divisions have flared over the scope of the ECB’s authority and how losses would be shared.

The ECB is set to become the bloc’s main financial supervisor by Jan. 1, raising the prospect of direct aid to Spain’s banks during 2013, the 27 EU leaders agreed at the summit this month. The system will phase in and could cover all 6,000 euro-area banks by Jan. 1, 2014.

Bank Plan


“Everybody is in agreement with what needs to happen --with the banking union we aim to break the cycle between the sovereigns and national banks,” Knot said. “Banks will become gradually under supervision in 2013 but the emphasis will be more at the end of 2013 than in the beginning as this is a very complex operation.”

Knot also said it is up to Spain to decide whether to apply for a bailout that would enable the country to use the ECB’s bond-purchasing program.

“A call from Spain on the rescue fund wouldn’t necessarily need to be seen as adding to the crisis,” Knot said. “At the moment, it is useful for the solution of the crisis that Spain seeks help here and there,” though “this is really up to Spain,” he said.

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By Oliver Joy, for CNN
October 21, 2012 -- Updated 1159 GMT (1959 HKT)



Protesters throw petrol bombs at riot police officers during strike on October 18, 2012 in Athens, Greece.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The Greek coalition government is seeking to push through budget cuts of 13.5 billion euros [$17.4 billion]
  
• Germany has softened its approach to Greek austerity measures, says German member of parliament
  
• Samaras' government is negotiating with the "Troika" over extending the country's program
  

(CNN) -- A country's economy devastated, unemployment endemic and suicides rising -- this is the reality in Greece, and there is seemingly no end in sight.

Greece -- the birthplace of democracy -- is now reliant on eurozone bailouts and subject to political decision-making in Brussels and Berlin.

Last week, Athenians marched in the streets to make it clear German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- in her first visit to the Greek capital since 2009 -- was not welcome.

Read more: EU leaders agree on bank oversight

Merkel met with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to assess the country's economic health as it attempts to drive through more austerity measures to secure further bailout money.

In her brief visit, she pledged German support for Greece but made it clear that Greece cannot -- and therefore will not -- yield on its austerity reforms.

Rooftop snipers and 7,000 Greek police were deployed to keep the protests under control. Protesters bearing swastika flags were kept away from Syntagma Square, the focal point for demonstrators during the crisis. It was here, six-months ago, that a Greek pensioner took his own life outside parliament citing austerity measures for his desperation.

The talks between Merkel and Samaras were just the latest episode between two countries with a fraught and tumultuous history.

Postcard: Why Berlin, America are kindred spirits










Swedish concern over euro bank plan






Reflections on covering Eurocrisis







Can Europe unify over economic crisis?








European markets and the U.S. election
Some demonstrators evoked bitter memories of the brutal Nazi occupation of Greece from 1941 to 1944, when thousands of Greeks were killed.

It was only in 1951 that the European Union began to take shape through the Treaty of Paris and the European Steel and Coal Community. The treaty signed by six nations -- Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands -- was intended to create lasting economic and political stability for a continent ravaged by war.

Three days after Merkel left Greece, the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize for restoring harmony to much of Europe. Despite the award, relations between countries -- particularly in northern and southern Europe -- have been tested by the crisis.

Spyros Economides, a senior lecturer in international relations and European politics at the London School of Economics, said Greeks are "not very positive at all" in their views toward Germany.

He told CNN: "Partly it's a generational thing for those who remember World War II and the consequences, but it's also younger people who are unemployed and suffering economic dislocation, which they pin squarely on other people's shoulders, in this case the Germans."

Read more: Thousands rally, Greece brought to standstill by anti-austerity strike

While the visit from Merkel -- intended to strengthen eurozone unity -- quashed any immediate fears of a '"Grexit" from the euro, many in Europe wouldn't be disappointed to see them go, according to Economides.

"There will be a lot of people in the European institutions and national capitals around Europe who will say, if the Greeks decide to leave the eurozone, then so be it. Good riddance," he said.

To stay, the Greeks are coming under intense pressure from eurozone peers --- led by Germany -- to implement further austerity measures of 13.5 billion euros [$17.7 billion].

Economides explained that the projected cuts could break down into 11.5 billion euros worth of cuts -- from pensions and wages as well as the sale of state property -- and the remaining 2 billion euros from additional taxes.

The measures will ensure that international creditors supply the next 31 billion euro [$40.6 billion] tranche of bailout relief. This will allow the cash-strapped Greek government to meet its debt obligations beyond the end of November.

But the clash between the two countries over the terms of Athens' bailout has led to feisty rhetoric from senior members of both German and Greek political parties.

Frank Schaeffler, a German member of parliament in the Free Democratic Party, has previously advocated the sale of uninhabited Greek islands to fund creditor repayments. He told CNN that "unfortunately" the proper enforcement of a Greek adjustment program is an "illusion."

Read more: Fears grow over EU banking union plan

Schaeffler said: "I am afraid Germany has softened its stance on Greece lately ... Samaras himself has said that Greece is willing to sell off its uninhabited islands."

Former Greek Foreign Minister Stavros Dimas called the suggestion "insulting," and said Germany should pay reparations for the damage and loss of life the country inflicted on Europe during the Second World War.

He told fellow parliamentarians that Greece has never waived its right to claim reparations, including for the loan that Germany forced Greece to pay for its own occupation.

He added: "No one can erase the tragedies that our country suffered... They are engraved in our collective memory."

European leaders are meeting in Brussels this week to discuss the region's debt crisis, and policymakers will consider creating a separate budget for the 17-nation monetary union.

Joerg Kraemer, chief economist at Commerzbank -- Germany's second largest bank -- told CNN: "If Greece does not comply with the reforms and austerity, the troika (ECB, IMF and European Commission) should not recommend releasing fresh money, in pure economic terms."

Read more: Spain: Perils of being 'filthy stinking poor'

Germany is concerned that a Greek exit from the eurozone could lead to a domino effect, whereby a number of indebted nations -- including Ireland, Portugal and potentially Spain and Italy -- may be forced to withdraw from the common currency, which could lead to a full break-up of the monetary union.

Samaras' government is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union over extending the cuts for another two years into 2014 and beyond. If achieved, Economides says this would represent a political victory for the coalition government, as it was elected partly on the promise of extending the timeframe to make the cuts.

Kraemer added: "I don't think Greece will be part of the eurozone in five or ten years but currently the politicians in Germany and elsewhere do not want to pull the plug."

CNN's Irene Chapple, Nick Thompson and Nick Hunt contributed to this report.

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Moody’s Cuts Ratings on Catalonia, Four Other Spanish Regions


By Robert Burgess - Oct 22, 2012 11:21 PM GMT+0100



Moody’s Investors Service, a week after deciding against cutting Spain’s credit-rating to below investment grade, lowered Catalonia and four other Spanish regions.

Catalonia, which will hold an early election on Nov. 25 focused on whether to seek independence for the region that accounts for a fifth of Spain’s economy, was reduced two steps to Ba3 from Ba1, the ratings firm said in a statement dated yesterday. Extremadura was lowered to Ba1 from Baa3, Andalucia was slashed to Ba2 from Baa3, and Castilla-La Mancha was cut to Ba3 from Ba2 and Murcia dropped to Ba3 from Ba1.

Moody’s decision to cut the regions was “driven by the deterioration in their liquidity positions, as evidenced by their very limited cash reserves as of September 2012 and their significant reliance on short-term credit lines to fund operating needs,” the ratings firm said.

Moody’s also said that Catalonia, Andalucia and Murcia“face large debt redemptions” this quarter when retail bonds issued in 2011 are due to mature. The ratings of Basque Country, Diputacion Foral de Bizkaia, Madrid, Castilla y Leon, Galicia, Valencia and four government-related entities in Valencia were all left unchanged.

A week ago, Moody’s kept Spain’s sovereign rating at Baa3, the lowest level of investment grade, citing a reduction in the risk of losing market access because of the European Central Bank’s willingness to buy the nation’s debt.

Spain avoided joining euro-region peers Cyprus, Portugal, Ireland and Greece as below investment grade. Standard and Poor’s has a negative outlook on its BBB- rating, one step above junk, and Fitch Ratings has Spain at BBB, two levels higher.

Creditworthiness concerns have grown since Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy requested as much as 100 billion euros ($130 billion) in European Union aid to shore up Spanish lenders amid signals the nation may miss its budget deficit goals. S&P downgraded Spain on Oct. 10, saying it doubted the loans will be mutualized among euro-region nations.

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Europhorics”, our most dangerous friends

22 October 2012Die Zeit Hamburg

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Zudin

There are the “Eurosceptics”, and there are “Eurohaters”. And then there are the “Europhorics”, who are to be found among both intellectuals and politicians and who at least as dangerous as the former. To them the EU is not a union, but a worldview – and they are abusing it.

Bernd Ulrich

Europe is the last permissible ideology. Specifically, it has been made into an ideology by some of its most vocal propagandists. The continent does not deserve this, and it must protected from its most ardent proponents.

First and foremost, after all, old Europe is a creation of great delicacy, dignified with age and at the same time so fragile – and this right in the middle of the crisis. In the second Europe, the European Union, The continent has found a framework for its history and its future, and that framework is being continuously revamped. The crisis has transformed it too, and a little more than usual, not least following the Brussels crisis summit. And now it’s time to replace the provisional scaffolding with a solid frame. How exactly that new frame should look is – as is usual in Europe – much disputed. So far, so good.

The European Union, though, is another thing. For many it serves as a bogeyman – for those who fear globalisation, for those who have no desire to give money away to other countries and regions, and for those with a perennial inner rage who have chosen to hate the EU.

Finally, there is a third Europe: the Europe of the Europhorics. Those are the people who constantly want more of Europe, and as fast as they can. For them the EU is a way of looking at the world. The idea of a unified Europe they are abusing as an ideology.

Unlike anti-European populists such as Umberto Bossi in Italy, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and the True Finns, the Euro-ideologues are in no way marginalised. They are pivotal in shaping the debate, and many government politicians, like Euro Group President Jean-Claude Juncker or [German Finance] Minister Wolfgang Schäuble echo their arguments in somewhat milder form. Their ideological paradigms often corrupt the discussion, and at worst they provide the populists of the political right with ammunition.


Great leap forward



The leaders of these Europhorics are high-profile intellectuals such as Ulrich Beck, Austrian writer Robert Menasse and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. In their attempt to escape from the demons of the past by the full integration of a Europe of nation states sapped of their meaning, they have ended up right back in the past – in ideology and in the pomposity of the Wilhelmine era.

In their manifesto for Europe they are busy painting the continent in the darkest colours and whispering that things will get far, far worse if total European integration is not begun on immediately. Hovering over us all is the threat that “the ascendancy of our two thousand years of culture” will be swept away in the flicker of an eye.

It’s not only Europe that is threatened with destruction. The world itself is in the gravest danger, facing as it is “large-scale trade conflicts and new world wars.”

Why do such thoughtful people get these notions? The Europhorics are at the moment trying out something rather paradoxical: they want to make, at the most depressive and difficult point of the EU, the greatest leap forward. Precisely because it is so difficult, they argue, we must proceed all the more quickly. This is, of course, extremely

counter-intuitive, since every normal person would say that, if something is not working out too brilliantly, we ought to move forward with a little caution. Which is exactly where Cohn-Bendit and Verhofstadt are pumping up the apocalyptic mood music.

Karl Popper, the great philosopher of sobriety, has described it as a mark of ideologies that they are not falsifiable, and so cannot be refuted. That’s how it is with the Europhorics as well.

To any break-down in the EU, to any reasonable doubt whether we’re on the right track, they reply: weaknesses in the EU can only be fought by having a lot more of the EU! Obviously, people follow such thinking only if they know no other way out.

And precisely this hopelessness is what we are to be won over to. To be or not to be, either/or, now or never, who if not we? That’s the language all the ideological leaders of the last century have spoken. The two hotted-up European politicians Cohn-Bendit and Verhofstadt are taking it to an almost quaintly revolutionary pitch. With fiery gestures, they call their imaginary European comrades onwards: “Only the cowardly, lazy and short-sighted heads of state and national governments cannot grasp this. Shake them awake. Let them pass not a day unchallenged!”

Interestingly, the word “cowardly” is meant to imply that Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande are hesitating to make the great leap forward solely because they are afraid of losing an election. If this is true, it is true only because in Europe there is simply no majority behind this great leap forward, because the people are not yet sufficiently fearful and also because they do not want to be pushed into it.

Robert Menasse, who has lost his temper and wants to make a clean sweep, also gives us an insight into his theatrical flourishes of rage: “In the medium term, one can do away with national parliaments. In such a Europe we would not have to deal with such irrational phenomena as Mr Cameron being able to block a common European fiscal policy in order to protect his City of London, his financial speculation market, despite his country not even being inside the European Monetary Union.” That's the idea, then: Menasse believes he can silence interests and people merely by taking their away their opportunity to express themselves in a parliament.


Inferiority complex



Even the Anti-reformism is creeping back into this European ideology. As in the days of the Weimar Republic, when the Social Democrats stood accused of reformism by the communists, Cohn-Bendit and Verhofstadt are urging the revolutionary European masses never to let the System lull them to sleep: “We need radical change. A real revolution.” “Reject the all-too slow reforms!”

The argument that only a united Europe can assert itself in an altered world where the centres of power lie in the U.S., India, Brazil, Russia and China, of course, has something to it. Europe’s self-assertion is a coldly realistic political criterion, with a somewhat Wilhelmine aftertaste. Europe can certainly desire to secure its place in the sun, but it needn’t make such a fuss about it. Moreover, the countries that Europe will have to deal with in future are predominantly nation states.

It’s not really a question, therefore, of being or not being a nation state, but far more a matter of size and standing. The European nation-state, it seems, almost embarrasses the Europhorics – although in other places they admire it. Along with this inferiority complex comes – again, unfortunately, reminiscent of Wilhelm II – a touch of megalomania.

If Europe does not unite, there apparently threaten, as we have already seen, world wars. Without a European Union superstate, as well, claim the Greens, catastrophic climate change cannot be staved off. Can one not simply say that Europe is searching for its own path and the others their own, and then we’ll see?

How strange it is that people who consider themselves sensible should start spouting ideologies once again, and about Europe of all things – our poor old continent that has, after far too much damage it brought on itself, become reasonably prudent.

In Europe one can really talk about anything, even about the most far-reaching reform. No problem with that, honestly. But not in this tone. Desist!

Translated from the German by Anton Baer

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For sale: a European Union licence for faulty medical implants



Telegraph investigation: British patients’ health being put at risk by unscrupulous EU regulators prepared to license potentially dangerous medical implants for sale in this country.

126 Comments


Slovakian firm tells reporters: 'Sometimes we cross the line'



Patients who were promised an easier life, but got more pain



Patients treated 'like guinea pigs’



Analysis: a system in disarray that favours manufacturers



Video: Medical implants undercover investigation

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Schengen
Bulgarians and Romanians remain in second division



19 October 2012Sega Sofia

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Christo Komarnitski

Job discrimination, threats over visas…. More than five years after their accession to the European Union, Bulgarians and Romanians are treated like second class citizens, complains a Sofia columnist. Apparently, no one, and in particular the leaders of these countries, is bothered by this state of affairs.

Svetoslav Terziev

Soon we will have to apologise for who we are. Several major European countries are very worried about the approach of 2014, the fateful year when Bulgarians and Romanians will no longer have any official restriction blocking their access to labour markets elsewhere in the EU. Some of these countries are already busy developing policies to prevent this from happening, thus ensuring that citizens of both of nations will definitively be categorised as second-class Europeans.

The Dutch initiative to compensate for "the mistake" of the premature accession of Bucharest and Sofia in 2007 by attempting to at least block Bulgaria and Romania’s access to the border-free Schengen Area has found vigorous support in countries like Germany, Belgium and Finland. With its campaign against the Roma, accompanied by an increasing distrust of Bulgarians and Romanians in general, France has also made its contribution.

But it is the United Kingdom which has clearly formulated what everyone else has in mind: that Sofia and Bucharest should formally remain in the EU – after all, it is not really possible to expel them – but with the proviso that their citizens will be required to apply for visas. In one fell swoop, the measure will dispel Dutch misgivings over the abolition of internal borders, French disgust at the influx of foreign Roma and British fears about the loss of the UK’s most precarious and worst paid jobs.


London has cranked up its bureaucratic machine



There was nothing fortuitous about the near simultaneous occurrence of two recent events. On 7 October, British Home Secretary Theresa May literally tore up the European contract on the free movement of people, when she proposed that this right should be abolished for citizens of "certain countries". It was clear to everyone that she meant Bulgaria and Romania. The following day, Bulgarian MEP Ivaylo Kalfin (Socialist Party) made public the response of Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner László Andor in answer to his 11 July question about discrimination against Bulgarians and Romanians in the UK. "Nothing to report" was in substance Brussels’ conclusion after two months of reflection on the subject.

Nonetheless, the facts are there; it’s just a matter of facing up to the reality. Since the beginning of this year, London has cranked up its formidable bureaucratic machine to pulverise foreign job seekers, dragging out authorisation procedures beyond the regulatory six months, and systematically rejecting Bulgarians and Romanians who are sent back into the doldrums of the black economy.

The United Kingdom is one of ten countries to have postponed opening its labour market to the citizens of the two most recent arrivals in the EU for the maximum period of seven years. And the reason? A massive influx of Bulgarians and Romanians is apparently a threat to the stability of the British job market. According to Eurostat, there are some five million foreigners working in the UK, of whom only 15,000 are Bulgarians. Many analysts estimate that the real figure is in fact much higher, but a country of 63 million people is hardly likely to experience their presence as a burden. Forced to accept self-employed worker status, which effectively means that they will earn less than the minimum wage and not be covered by UK health insurance, they are only competing with other poverty stricken migrants like themselves.


Bulgarians should focus anger on their own leaders



A recent BBC investigative report showed the true face of this system, filming the tribulations of a Romanian chambermaid. When the young woman asked why she was paid only a third of the minimum wage, the employment agency administrator tore up her contract and showed her the door.

For honest Bulgarians, this discrimination is doubly painful because Europe is punishing them for their suffering in Bulgaria itself. Other member states are attempting to close the only exit from the crisis that has reigned here for the last 20 years – the departures terminal of Sofia airport, which has long been a symbol of the hope that life, no matter how bad it is at home, can start again under more clement skies. Close to a million young people have already left Bulgaria and others dream of following in their footsteps. The closing of borders will inevitably give rise to anti-European sentiment in the country while aggravating domestic problems. Potential emigrants will respond by setting their sights on New World countries, but how can this be expected to reinforce the identity or the strength of the new Europe?

It’s clear that Bulgarians should first and foremost focus their anger on their own leaders who are not only responsible for the misfortunes of their country, but also for its poor image elsewhere in the world. Our Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, whose providential aura abroad is not what it used to be, could possibly ask his British opposite number, David Cameron, if that is how he sees their friendly relationship, which was so carefully staged on 7 August in London. Aren’t they supposed to be wonderful pals? "David and I have agreed…" "I said to David…" trumpeted Borisov in the wake of his visit to Downing Street. Now all he has to do is to pick up his phone and tell him: "Listen David, enough is enough!"

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Switzerland
Army prepares for ‘euro-humanitarian’ crisis



17 October 2012
PresseuropEUobserver.com

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Switzerland may not be part of the European Union, it is nonetheless subject to the consequences of the crisis afflicting the Eurozone. It should therefore come as no surprise that it is preparing in case the crisis worsens.

Such is the explanation provided by Brussels-based web site EUobserver regarding preparations by the Swiss Army to counter a wave of attacks and other acts of violence caused by the financial crisis. It is also preparing for the massive arrival of refugees from the Eurozone. Drawing on Swiss press reports, EUobserver notes that –

Some 2,000 officers took part in the 'Stabilo Due' military exercise in eight towns around the country, based on a risk map detailing the threat of internal unrest between warring factions and the possibility of refugees from Greece, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal.

The army would intervene to support the police forces. A plan is being drawn up to protect strategic areas and includes "1,600 troops to guard airports, industrial plants and international headquarters in Geneva," EUobserver explains.

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Debate
A federation, yes, but what kind?



23 October 2012Respekt Prague

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Kopelnitsky

Whether it be poltical, budgetary, or based on financial solidarity, the idea of ​​a more integrated EU is in fashion. But just what final form would the Federal Union take in the end? Nobody really knows, and that’s the whole problem.

Jan Macháček

When Angela Merkel, at an economic forum in Davos in January, diffidently mentioned federalism, her words essentially went down without provoking a great response. In the six months since then, though, notions about a federal EU have proliferated by the sackful. The head of the European Commission, Barroso, and some European foreign ministers have called for one, but no one from the Czech Republic has joined the chorus.

The roll call of "federalists" is growing (which this weekly welcomes), but this does not mean that everyone is talking about the same federation. The debate on the future of Europe shows an alarming ignorance of constitutional concepts among many politicians, and the result is verbal chaos.

New concepts are constantly emerging, but their meaning is searched for only afterwards: banking union, transfer union, political union, fiscal union, and so on. Some talk of greater centralisation, others about integration, still others about further harmonisation of laws, while some warn of a superstate.

What all these phrases mean is whipped up after the fact, and we would search for their meaning in a dictionary in vain.

In Canada, the U.S. and Germany, people know what a federation and federalism mean, because they live in federations. In the case of the Germans it’s a paradox that, despite living in one, they are unable to imagine a federation at the European level, and the idea of a federation within a federation (like Russian matryoshka dolls) doesn’t really appeal to them much.

The French, on the other hand, typically (with some exceptions) cannot even imagine federalism, which they confuse with centralism. As for the British, federalism is a symbol of one-sided decentralisation (parliaments in Scotland and Wales, but not in England).


What would not fly in the U.S.



The EU has a very small shared budget (one percent of the GDP of the entire EU) and plans to cut it further (to 0.8 percent), but in some centralising tendencies it has gone so far that, had those moves been tried out in the real American federation, the experiment would have failed. If individual states in the U.S. were ordered by a central authority to rubber-stamp the financial budgetary rules and budget advice sent to them (i.e., change their own constitutions), to submit their budgets to Washington for approval even before they voted on them themselves – and then send them back for inspection (which is the principle of the European fiscal compact), it would lead to a revolt and the American federation would break up.

On the other hand, building a federation is a long process, and according to the experts in this subject, it was only completed in the U.S. in the 1930s, once federal deposit insurance was made into law. We should note, however, that the eurozone is already approaching a common deposit insurance (as one of the defining traits of a federation) and other elements of a banking union in leaps and bounds. What is certain is that the crisis will not be overcome without some sort of shared budget and shared taxes. It follows from that that we in the Czech Republic should know very well what we will do if the federation is built in the eurozone and we are left on the outside.


Who makes history



Critics of federalism argue that the very idea is naive, and even dangerous, because there is no European political nation. An American is first an American, and only then from Minnesota. A German is first a German, and only then a European.

The emergence of a European identity, however, can be "artificially" promoted and accelerated. This and that may help here and there: direct election of a European president, an Institute of European citizenship, some minimum common European tax, and so on.

The American political nation originated in that way as well (although differently and for different reasons than it probably will in Europe). First, it was only elected landowners who could vote, then taxpayers, women a hundred years later, and African Americans only recently. Nothing is ever done quite the same way twice. Americans began with a Ministry of Finance, Europeans with a Central Bank.

Critics argue that all political and (dis-) integration processes should be spontaneous and authentic, not artificial and elitist. But most of the significant shifts in the history of mankind result from the fact that people are led somewhere by someone.

Europe's future is unclear. A federation may arise, but the Union can also break apart. In any case, in building a federation it is important that at least the European elites finally begin to learn what a federation is and what it is not. That basis could be that federalism is not an elaborate construct, but a fundation built on values: on the containment and control of power, of counter-balancing and safeguards and on asymmetrical, reinforced protection of the smaller and the weaker.

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EconomyEuro

Eurozone
Future of ESM in EU court’s hands



23 October 2012
PresseuropThe Irish Times, EUobserver.com

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The European Court of Justice will start hearing arguments today surrounding objections by Irish MP Thomas Pringle to the ratification of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) treaty, reports the Irish Times.

Pringle argued in the Irish courts in June that the ESM treaty, which provides for a €500 billion fund to help struggling eurozone countries and banks, breached both the Irish Constitution and European Union law. Although Ireland’s Supreme Court refused to grant an injunction in July preventing Dublin from ratifying the treaty, it nevertheless referred a series of questions for determination to the Luxembourg based court.

The EUobserver notes that cash strapped Ireland is to pay its first installment of €500 million to the fund, after its came to life on October 8 –

If the EU judges rule against it, the ESM, its ratification and any payments made to Luxembourg, [where the ESM is based] will be deemed illegal. The EU court has fast-tracked its judgment in order to 'remove uncertainty' on the 'financial stability of the euro area' and pundits expect it to say No to Pringle.

The ESM is “galling” for public opinion in Ireland, the Brussels based news site reports. The Irish government has long campaigned to have its €64 billion bank bailout debt burden borne in part by the European fund but –

... eurozone hawks, such as Germany and Finland, have said it cannot help out with old bad bank debt – the main problem facing the Irish exchequer.

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European Lawyers are still considering whether the ECB bail out breaches the Treaty Rules.

Spains' econpmy sinks for the fifth consecutive quarter leaving Rajoy mulling over a bail out. Finance Minister sees a lift in Spains economy in 2013.

Euro bail-outs by way of ECB Bonds rests with the decision of the EU Lawyers........how long does it take to scan the Rules for goodness sake? It's like playing a Harp while Europe burns.

The German economy is giving cause for concern, confidence drops to 100 instead of increasing.

The ECB is meeting in Germany to reassure that the issuance of Bonds will not cause inflation , will the ECB have to adopt quantitive easing to print enough Euros to meet bail-out requests.

Head of European Stability Mechanism says once the Legal issues are resolved and the conditionality of Countries seeking a bail-out is accepted , it could only take 2 days to implement the bail out.

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Britain has left the European Union in all but name



By Ambrose Evans-PritchardEconomicsLast updated: October 23rd, 2012

2069 CommentsComment on this article




To all intents and purposes, the UK is already out. We stayed still. Europe galloped away without us.

No doubt we can find some elegant formula to paper over the split. As my friend Daniel Hannan puts it, we could devise a Swiss arrangement while pretending that we are still EU members. No point frightening the horses.

For those readers who missed it, the UK is preparing to pull out of almost all areas of "Justice and Home Affairs", the so-called Pillar III of EU jurisdiction. (Pillar I is the single market, and Pillar II is foreign affairs)

This is revolutionary. We are withdrawing from 130 directives, covering everything from the European Arrest Warrant, the European Public Prosecutor, to the European justice department (Eurojust).

Luckily, Tony Blair negotiated the right to a mass opt-out on this Pillar III corpus to be exercised before it all becomes justiciable at the European Court (ECJ) in 2014, a move that would transform the ECJ into Britain's supreme court. (The same ECJ that rubber-stamped the rights violations of Connolly, Andreasen and Tillack, and against which there is no further appeal.)

We did so on the grounds that the UK's Common Law foundation requires special treatment, but nobody really thought at the time that we would use the opt-out. It was a sop to placate people like us at The Daily Telegraph until the Lisbon storm had passed.

Well, it turns out that Theresa May is opting out. Some say she will have to opt back in immediately to almost all of it. We will see about that.

The withdrawal from the insidious arrest warrant gives me particular pleasure. I covered the legislation as it rolled through the Brussels and Strasbourg machine years ago.

We were told categorically that it was to cover terrorist offences only. Then it became "terrorist-related". Then serious crimes. Then the final draft appeared and it included such issues as xenophobia, a term that other parts of the EU machinery had extended to include euroscepticism.

Finally, we discover that it is being used to arrest people who fail to pay parking tickets. Any political magistrate can have you extradited for anything without having to put up evidence. Free speech is not safe, as the criminal witchhunt against the rating agencies in Italy shows all too clearly.

(Incidentally, Germany simply ignores the warrant. It won't even extradite a member of the SS to Denmark. Yet we turn over anybody, even to one country on the Danube that has sacked its judges and stacked the judiciary)

Meanwhile, the EU's onward march to a banking union, a fiscal compact, and variants of fiscal union have simply left us behind. To whom – by the way – will the new banking union be accountable? To national parliaments and courts? Obviously not. It will "answer" to MEPs and the ECJ.

A whole superstate structure is coming into being. It cannot be democratic because there is no European political nation or shared political language, and all attempts to mimic the vibrant democracies of the ancient states have failed. The European Parliament has its charms but it is not a body that can hold a powerful executive to account.

Eurosceptics warned from the outset that EMU was unworkable as constructed. Monetary union would engender crises that forced ever more extreme solutions to keep the show on the road, acting as a powerful catalyst for full political union. They have been entirely vindicated. This is exactly what has happened.

It is now clear that Britain's decision to stay out of the euro at Maastricht was a de facto decision to leave the EU aswell, as Britain's political leaders feared even then. It has a taken two decades but we can almost all see now that a free and self-governing Britain can no longer be part of the Project.

This is the backdrop to William Hague's speech this morning, his cri de coeur, his warning that anger over EU encroachment has reached boiling point. "A great machine that sucks up decision-making from national parliaments to the European level until everything is decided by the EU. That needs to change. If we cannot show that decision-making can flow back to national parliaments then the system will become democratically unsustainable."

Obviously, nothing is about to flow back. The EU is going headlong in the opposite direction. What Mr Hague is really doing is preparing the ground for withdrawal.

Of course, we don't to want lose the EU single market – Margaret Thatcher's bittersweet triumph, 20 years old this month – and Europe does not want to lose our market. We will have to work it out.

Relations are likely to be stormy for the next few years. Yet once the boil is lanced, we may find that our relations with Europe improve dramatically. The moment that the EU no longer threatens our laws, our parliament, our democracy, and our way of life – that is to say, the moment we take the stone out of our shoe – almost all hostility will drain away.

We can all become lovers of Europe again. Good fences. Good neighbours.


Tags: emu, maastricht treaty

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Draghi Defends Bond Purchases With Warning of Deflation


By Jana Randow and Stefan Riecher - Oct 24, 2012 3:55 PM GMT+0100

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi defended his plan to buy government bonds in the German parliament today with a warning about deflation risks.

The ECB’s so-called Outright Monetary Transactions “will not lead to inflation,” Draghi told lawmakers in Berlin in a closed-door session, according to a text provided by the ECB.“In our assessment, the greater risk to price stability is currently falling prices in some euro-area countries,” he said.“In this sense, OMTs are not in contradiction to our mandate: in fact, they are essential for ensuring we can continue to achieve it.”





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ECB President Mario Draghi




Michele Tantussi/Bloomberg

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, second right, and Germany's deputy finance minister Steffen Kampeter, second left, face press photographers before speaking to lawmakers in the lower-house of the German Parliament in Berlin.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, second right, and Germany's deputy finance minister Steffen Kampeter, second left, face press photographers before speaking to lawmakers in the lower-house of the German Parliament in Berlin. Photographer: Michele Tantussi/Bloomberg



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Draghi Says Bond Purchases Won’t Fuel Inflation, Hit Taxpayer




Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

“In our assessment, the greater risk to price stability is currently falling prices in some euro area countries,” Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, said.

“In our assessment, the greater risk to price stability is currently falling prices in some euro area countries,” Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, said. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Draghi is seeking to win support in Europe’s largest economy for his plan to purchase government bonds to stem the debt crisis and safeguard the euro. Some German policy makers including Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann have said the proposal is tantamount to printing money to finance governments, which is prohibited by the ECB’s statutes.

“OMTs will not lead to disguised financing of governments,” Draghi said. “All this is fully consistent with the Treaty’s prohibition on monetary financing. Moreover, they will focus on shorter maturities and leave room for market discipline.”

Press Conference


Speaking at a press conference afterwards, Draghi said while it would be “too ambitious” to claim he had won over the German public, he had a “very productive, wide-ranging”exchange with German parliamentarians, which was aimed at building confidence and trust.

“His answers were very convincing and for that reason we can send a message to the German people that inflation fears are without foundation,” Norbert Barthle, the parliamentary budget spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, told reporters. “His uppermost focus is the maintenance of price stability.”

Draghi explained that the ECB’s intervention is necessary“because confidence in the euro has been disturbed,” said Priska Hinz, the Green party’s budget spokeswoman.

The ECB president also convinced lawmakers that indebted euro states must commit to austerity measures and that his bond-buying program is not intended as an alternative to budget cuts, said Hans Michelbach, a lawmaker from Merkel’s CSU Bavarian sister party.

Draghi “emphasized that buying bonds is not the only instrument,” he said. “There is pressure to act on member states to ensure that they consolidate their finances. Draghi emphasized that this is the first priority.”

Merkel’s Blessing


The announcement of Draghi’s yet-to-be-deployed bond-buying program has calmed financial markets.

The program has Merkel’s blessing, yet 42 percent of respondents to a Stern survey published Sept. 6 said they had little or no trust in the ECB president, compared with just 18 percent who judged him favorably.

Draghi said the program won’t compromise the ECB’s independence because it requires governments to agree to conditions. The program doesn’t create “excessive risks” for euro-area taxpayers, he added, according to the ECB text.

“Such risks would only materialize if a country were to run unsound policies,” Draghi said. “The ECB intervenes only in countries where the economy and public finances are on a sustainable path.”

Bond purchases won’t fuel inflation because the ECB will absorb the liquidity created by those interventions, Draghi said.

The ECB expects the 17-nation euro economy to remain “weak in the near term,” before recovering very gradually in 2013, he said.

The International Monetary Fund earlier this month cut its euro-region growth forecast for next year to 0.2 percent from 0.7 percent and said the economy may shrink 0.4 percent this year as governments cut spending

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The Ford Transit Van plant in Belgium is to close with a job loss of 4,300 .A spokesman said he is furious that the austerity measures have resulted in this closure. If people have no money, they cannot buy products which means more people become unemployed.

The French Government is to lend Peugeot E9 billion to keep the Company afloat . There is talk that it is illegal to offer State Aid and fears this will have repercussions.

Germany is also facing a slowdown in manufacturing , Volkswagon is losing custom but the more expensive cars are still doing O.K. at the moment.

Merkel is worried about confidence in the EU......she might have to worry about getting re-elected the way things are going.

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It is said the EU is spinning out of control because after 3 yrs there is still no clear cut plan for the Euro Countries.

Khelil, from the African High Commission says there is no threat of Oil shortage but the political problems are far more worrying.

Spanish Bank debts total $117 Billion , very worrying. Bond sales affected by Pioneer delaying purchase until EU sorted out. Spain is going in the right direction but Rajoy is still hesitating over accepting a bailout with more austerity measures demanded. Payden and Regal say Spain remains very volatile but there is no alternative to seeking a bailout.

The market is encouraged by the news that the ECB will be liable , like any investor , if a Country renages on a loan, unlike the Greek fiasco.

Credit Suisse profits fall 63%

France has quietly been lending Banks and Businesses $78 Billion which is considered State aid, not allowed in the Treaty.

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Eurozone summit highlights growing divide about how to deal with debt crisis


The Telegraph's Head of Business Damian Reece looks at what European leaders hope to gain from this key meeting in Brussels.




















4:01PM BST 23 May 2012

11 Comments




European leaders will try to breathe life into their stricken economies at a summit over dinner, but disagreement over a plan for mutual bond issuance and other measures to alleviate two years of debt turmoil has already been laid bare.


For the first time in more than two years of debt-crisis meetings, the leaders of France and Germany have not huddled beforehand to agree positions, marking a significant shift in the Franco-German axis which has traditionally driven European policymaking.


Instead, new French President Francois Hollande is set up a showdown with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who supports growth but whose primary objective is budget austerity and structural reform.

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Ages: Nordic Credit
By Kasper Viita - Oct 25, 2012 11:54 AM GMT+0100

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  Finnish companies are wielding their job axes as the northernmost euro country braces for a new era of sluggish growth with Europe’s debt crisis entering its fourth ye
  
  
  
  
  
  As companies such as former mobile-phone bellwether Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) succumb to waning demand and competition, outright firings are running neck-and-neck with the more traditional Finnish method of temporary layoffs. Back in 2009, when the current crisis erupted, temporary measures outnumbered dismissals by about six to one, according to data from central labor market organization SAK.
  
  
  
  
  
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  Finland Battered by Real Job Cuts as Crisis Ages
  
  
  
  
  Henrik Kettunen/Bloomberg
  
  Finland is reeling as Nokia, once Europe’s most-valuable company, in June announced 10,000 job cuts and as other industries, such as its papermakers, also reduce jobs to cope with stalling exports.
  
  Finland is reeling as Nokia, once Europe’s most-valuable company, in June announced 10,000 job cuts and as other industries, such as its papermakers, also reduce jobs to cope with stalling exports. Photographer: Henrik Kettunen/Bloomberg
  
  “There’s a clear change in the behavior of companies,”Hannu Kaseva, an economist at Helsinki-based ETLA research institute said by phone. “They estimate that it’s not temporary anymore and we’re facing a more permanent period of weakening.”
  
  Finland is reeling as Nokia, once Europe’s most-valuable company, in June announced 10,000 job cuts and as other industries, such as its papermakers, also reduce jobs to cope with stalling exports. The government is raising taxes and cutting spending to trim deficits in one of the four remaining AAA rated nations in the 17-nation euro bloc.
  
  Unemployment will rise to 8.1 percent next year, the Labor Ministry said on Oct. 23. A total of 12,509 jobs have been cut this year, compared with 19,658 in 2009, when the economy shrank 8.5 percent, SAK data shows, based on publicly available information. The $245 billion economy will expand 1 percent both this year and next, the government estimated on Sept. 17.
  
  ‘Trigger Happy’
  
  
  According to Labor Minister Lauri Ihalainen, job losses are piling up as companies are more “trigger happy” and because the “exporting cornerstones” are in the midst of structural changes. The government’s goal of pushing the jobless rate down to 5 percent by 2015 is at risk.
  
  “It’s a tough goal and with these growth figures we won’t get to it,” Ihalainen said in an Oct. 23 interview. “We’re living with years of slower-than-usual growth.”
  
  Gross domestic product shrank 1.1 percent in the second quarter from the three months through March, the worst slump in since 2009. Exports sank 2.3 percent and household spending slid 2.2 percent, the statistics office said on Sept. 5.
  
  Between 1984 and 1990, Finnish unemployment had averaged 5 percent, compared with 12.3 percent in the decade that followed, peaking close to 20 percent in 1994. Since joining the euro, joblessness has averaged 8.3 percent, according to calculations based on Statistics Finland data.
  
  Buffers Consumed
  
  
  “The previous recession was preceded by a relatively long period of profitability,” Simo Pinomaa, an economist at the Confederation of Finnish industries said by phone. “There’s a danger that when buffers have been consumed, companies are forced to act.”
  
  Standard & Poor’s last month said that Finland’s top rating may be under pressure as the country also has to cope with Europe’s fastest-aging population. The rating company, which has placed Finland on negative outlook, said that “vulnerability to external factors” and weak domestic demand are “complicated by longer-term structural issues.”
  
  The pain of Finnish workers may also endanger the country’s status as a safe harbor from euro region’s crisis.
  
  The yield on Finland’s benchmark 10-year note rose three basis points to 1.83 percent as of 1:52 p.m. in Helsinki. The difference in yield between Finland’s 2022 bond and similar-maturity German bunds was at 22 basis points, widening from as low as nine basis points at the start of last month.
  
  The Cuts
  
  
  The European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have both cut forecasts for the euro-area economy over the past 1 1/2 months as governments lower spending to plug budget gaps, eroding consumer and export demand. Business confidence inGermany, Europe’s biggest economy, unexpectedly fell to a 2 1/2-year low this month, a report yesterday showed.
  
  Finnish companies that recently started cutting jobs include stainless steelmaker Rautaruukki Oyj, which said on Sept. 27 it will terminate 250 positions. Stora Enso Oyj (STEAV), Europe’s biggest papermaker, announced 520 cuts on Oct. 23 at mills in Finland, Sweden and Poland, while metal component makerComponenta Oyj (CTH1V) announced plans to cut 550 jobs on Oct. 18, of which about 20 percent will be in Finland. Metso Oyj (MEO1V), a machinery supplier for mining and paper industries, has said it will eliminate as many as 630 jobs in its paper unit.
  
  Banks are also feeling the pinch with OP-Pohjola Group cutting as many as 700 jobs in Finland, it said on Sept. 19.
  
  Dismissals have become more commonplace even as the government agreed a year ago to pay part of the costs during a temporary layoff.
  
  “This was our message that the economic burden for companies is lighter now than before, we’re trying to encourage temporary measures,” Ihalainen said. “I wish to be optimistic about Finland; the forest industry has many new interesting possibilities, the technology industry as well. Our exports don’t end here, there’s just a major transformation going on
  
  ========================================
  
  Finland was regarded as one of the Northern Countries to form a breakaway group of EU Countries, was also adamant that no more bailouts should be given to Greece. It would be ironic if it needs a bail-out soon.
  

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Erasmus generation, you’re Europe’s last hope



24 October 2012Gazeta Wyborcza Warsaw

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Mural at the Okupado social centre in Casablanca, Madrid, October 2012.

Pollobarba

Don’t count on EU leaders to get us out of the crisis. The future will be shaped by the youth they have forgotten, writes Polish philosopher Jarosław Makowski, as Brussels seeks funds to help the student exchange programme survive the budget cuts.

Jarosław Makowski

Until now, sociologists have focused on the so-called “lost generation”. Politicians had been wary of using the phrase, until Mario Monti, the Italian prime minister, broke the conspiracy of silence, telling his young compatriots: “You’re a lost generation”. Or, more precisely, “The truth, and unfortunately it’s not a pleasant one, is that the promise of hope – in terms of transformation and improvement to the system – will be only for those youth who will come of age in few years.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron could have argued the same thing, but it’s Mr Monti who has paved the way. This means that leaders will soon start preaching “good news” so as to make young people forget about the life that their parents enjoyed. Let’s put things straight: it is the incumbent political and intellectual elites that are to blame for Europe’s crisis today. They are a generation of leaders who grew up in a “crystal palace”.

Interestingly, the sheltered existence they led, enjoying prosperity and security, wasn’t of their own making. Merkel and Cameron, like former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and ex-British PM Tony Blair before them, inherited it from their predecessors – and turned out to have been but an efficient “consumer cooperative”, as Zygmunt Bauman puts it, consuming the fruits of somebody else’s work and basking in the glow of successes that weren’t theirs.

Europe was created and built by a generation for which a tragic past – embodied by Auschwitz – had been a living experience. The European Union’s founding fathers – Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schumann or Alcide De Gasperi – understood that only by working together could they build something lasting and good. European solidarity proved a blessing.


Not profit but sustainable development



Today’s ruling elites lived in entirely different conditions, enjoying security, peace, and systematic improvement in living standards. This was the effect of building a reasonable welfare state. How is it that after such a spectacular success Europe is experiencing today what is perhaps an equally spectacular fiasco? It’s because of the present elites’ belief that they simply inherited the EU from their predecessors, rather than having it on loan for their children. The mentality and spirit of the people leading Europe today can be summed up thus: “Let’s enjoy life as much as we can because soon the EU will be just a memory”.

What is Europe’s greatest, most burning issue today? We see it in the streets and squares of our cities. “We have the right to vote, but we have no work!” cry the young unemployed. We have a democracy, but no bread or homes. A precariat is emerging in front of our very eyes. What sort of people does it consist of? An apt and curt answer is given by Guy Standing, author of The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class: virtually everyone. At its core are young people.

And the only thing they get to hear from their leaders is that they are a “lost generation”, that the EU may collapse. The precariat, Standing notes, experiences “four A’s”: anger, anomie (i.e. the breakdown of social bonds), anxiety, and alienation. The result of such a social mood is the “enraged citizen” that we saw in action in London’s streets in the summer of 2011. These are the “new poor” who have nothing in common with the helplessness of the homeless. A generation facing a lifetime prospect of protracted unemployment or flexi-jobs below their qualifications and ambitions. Such a situation breeds anger and fury.

The question we are facing today is this: how can we forge courage from this fury? Firstly, let’s not forget that courage in thought derives from a courage of vision. Let’s therefore say it out loud: “Let’s not be afraid of our hatred”. We have the right to it, our situation being as it is. There is only one condition: anger, revolt, and, ultimately, hatred must not be directed against another. It must not be directed against my fellow human being, because then it would be a case of pouring oil on flames.

We would turn our world into an utter nightmare. The hatred and rage that millions of young Europeans carry in their hearts today have to be directed against indifference. Our categorical imperative today is this: “I hate my indifference”. Secondly, Claus Leggewie writes in his famous book, Mut statt Wut [“Courage Instead of Rage”], that great changes require “constructive imagination and initiative”. So who can make sure that it is not egoism but solidarity, not lethal competition but collaboration, not profit but sustainable development, that will again become the lodestars that a united Europe will follow?

Let’s state first who will certainly not do it, for reasons that are moral, intellectual, as well as spiritual. It is Europe’s leaders. Those who for the last two years have been saving the EU so successfully that it may soon become but a memory. The leaders are not the solution to the Union’s problems, but their source. Asking Merkel or Hollande to pull us out of the current crisis is like asking a blind person to discuss Impressionist paintings.


A crisis of hope



So who? However crazy this may sound, I think that Europe’s last resort is the Erasmus generation. A project that, as we hear from the eurocrats in Brussels, is so extravagant it may have to be scrapped as part of its “austerity measures”. For why should we be spending taxpayers’ money on grants for young Europeans who, as rumour has it, spend most of their time enjoying themselves? On the other hand, do the eurocrats’ conferences, debates and study trips, plus the accompanying servicing costs, all financed with our taxes, serve the EU’s cohesion better than funding young people the experience of studying and living in another country?

The Eramus generation is one faced with a prospect of joblessness. A generation experiencing a crisis of hope. At the same time, it is one that has grown to know Europe’s diversity through peer contact. A generation that, because of its hopeless situation, understands what the great Czech philosopher, Jan Patočka, called the “solidarity of the shocked”. This common fate means that the Erasmus generation knows today that the world as we know it is coming to an end. What is beginning? The future is in our hands. A time is coming for today’s “lost generation” to start constructing a new Europe. We need a new progressive policy that would not be based on the logic of growth, but on a radical departure from it. Today, the really free are not those saying “more, more, more” (more shopping, more credit, more devastation of Mother Earth), but those who have the strength and faith to say “enough!”

Members of the Erasmus generation, I know you are without work, consistently deprived of hopes for a better future, but today you are Europe’s last chance. Who will save the EU if not you? When, if not today? Do it for yourselves and your children. The “European dream” is in your hands.

Translated from the Polish by Marcin Wawrzyńczak

On the web

• Original article at Gazeta Wyborcza pl
  
• Mario Monti interview in Sette magazine it
  

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