Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's incited the ire of European Union officials on Friday when it snatched away the region's top AAA rating, citing tensions between member states and a deterioration in their overall financial health.
Downgrading the EU to AA+, the agency said the 28 countries' combined creditworthiness had declined – but officials and leaders shot back with an assertion that the region had barely any outstanding debt relative to GDP.
Ireland experienced an exceptionally enormous deficit of 31% of its GDP in 2010, largely due to the cost of rescuing its banks.
Italy, however, has faired surprisingly well. In fact, if you exclude the cost of interest payments on its enormous debts (which the graph does not), the Italian government has consistently run budget surpluses.
EU rules say that countries using the euro are not
allowed to have an annual deficit of more than 3% of GDP, but several countries
have failed to keep to that rule in recent years.
Note that Germany, Italy and France were all among the first countries to
break the Maastricht rule during the last decade, while Spain and the Republic
of Ireland ran surpluses before the 2008 crisis. Since 2008, peripheral economies such as Spain, Greece and Portugal have run
big deficits, because their economies have slumped, generating less tax revenues
and requiring more unemployment benefit payments.Ireland experienced an exceptionally enormous deficit of 31% of its GDP in 2010, largely due to the cost of rescuing its banks.
Italy, however, has faired surprisingly well. In fact, if you exclude the cost of interest payments on its enormous debts (which the graph does not), the Italian government has consistently run budget surpluses.
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“The EU has brought Peace to the European Continent”
The Reality: Even now, the EU is only 27 nations out of the 47 European nations listed as national members of the Council of Europe. The forerunner of the EU, the Common Market, didn’t even come into existence until 1958, and then only with 6 nations, and yet there was no war between European countries from 1945 to 1956 (Hungarian Revolution). Whilst peaceful international cooperation is welcomed at all levels, to say the EU is the sole guarantor of peace is an extreme exaggeration that is dishonest in its application. It is NATO, founded in 1949 and dominated by the USA, and not the EU, that has actually kept the peace in Europe, together with parliamentary democracy. Both of these are being undermined by the EU. The former German President Herzog wrote a few years ago that “the question has to be raised of whether Germany can still unreservedly be called a parliamentary democracy.” This was owing to the number of German laws emanating from the EU – which he assessed at some 84%.
One of the major tests of the EU’s ability to keep the peace in Europe was the break up of Yugoslavia. It was the EU’s interference that helped trigger a major civil war and its dithering that contributed to the deaths of some 100,00030 people. It was only decisive action by US/NATO forces that stopped the violence, and peace was established by the US-brokered Dayton Agreement.
Who said the EU brought peace to Europe. It has however helped maintain it, along with NATO. However it is wrong to say the EU helped trigger a major civil war in Yugoslavia, the Slovenes and Croats voted for independence and fought for it against Serb-dominated Federal Army and irregular attempts to crush it. Yugoslavia was an artificial creation that was bound to break up once the internal contradictions grew too strong, the non-Serb nationalities had no desire to be under the effective (and oppressive) domination of Belgrade forever. And btw the recognition of Slovene and Croation secession was agreed also by the US and NATO, as the overwhelming referenda in favour of such could hardly be ignored.
we were all promised no United States of Europe. We were led to believe we were joining a trading block.
There are far to many people who do not want to ruled from Brussels while budget approval must be sought in Berlin.
So sadly we are heading slowly but surely to the end of the European Union. The politicians have handled this very badly, by allowing countrys to join the Euro that did not qualify under the rules of entry.
By insisting on repeating referendum until they got the result they wanted or just refusing us the vote altogether because we foolishly might not get it right.
The very people who should have slowly steered us to unity have achieved the opposite. If you know a smart politician you are very lucky, cos there sure as hell ain't many.
Various intellectuals, including Naomi Klein, Paul Krugman and Tariq Ali, have rightly expressed concern over the subordination of society to technological measures. The idea that unelected technocrats can solve or reform political, economical and social matters sits at the origin of both the EU's current austerity measures and its cultural crisis.
Even though the EU was created to avoid new wars within the continent and promote social integration, it has never questioned its political horizon. This is why legal scholars are repeatedly reminding us that until our constitution is ratified, the EU will continue to lack the political debate that must be at the centre of any mature democracy. These debates have been substituted by technical and bureaucratic agreements in order to allow the EU to function correctly during the economic crisis. But if the EU has now reached a new record of unpopularity – as a recent study by the Pew Research Institute demonstrated – it is because of this general neutering of politics, which allows technocrats to prevail over politicians and indifference over democracy.
The technicians have not remained neutral, however, but have chosen sides, as the many neoliberal infrastructure projects and economic measures imposed upon member states demonstrate. In Italy the government is being asked to progress the construction of a high-speed railway line (TAV) linking Turin and Lyon, regardless of its environmental impact and popular opposition. Meanwhile in Spain, Mariano Rajoy has now begun to privatise a number of hospitals and health centres, blocking hundreds of thousands of people from access to medical treatments.
It seems popular and easy to blame the evil IMF and big bad ECB for all of the eurozone's austerity problems. The truth is there where deep structural problems with the euro long before the euro crisis erupted.
Southern Europe's culture of mis management, bad spending of public funds, and in many cases just plain political fraud and corruption, like the Bárcenas affair in Spain, is the problem no one really wants to address.
Greece is also riddled with past political corruption of dire waste of public tax money. Politician's lavishing money around just to get re elected. This is why there is a growing divide between northern and southern Europe economies.
The leaders of Portugal are selling off their own citizens to satisfy a handful of international bankers. These are the same bankers that have had all their losses (with trillions more to come) socialized onto the backs of individuals. This is insane and as harmful as it was five years when a similar ideological assault on Ireland and Greece began.
The so-called leaders of the EMU nations are waging a war on their own populations. On one side is the Troika, (Maastricht Treaty, SGP et al) and ALL political parties except Le Pen and Wilders, and on the other side , the citizens.
These nations have surrendered their sovereignty by surrendering their currency and agreeing by Treaty etc. It doesn't matter an iota what party is elected, right or left, the ability to act on behalf of the advancement of public purpose has been stripped away and replaced with arbitrary although binding percentages and ratios.
Which is precisely why nothing has improved or even changed over the last 5+ years from Greece to France to Portugal, regardless of the left or the right holding office.
Democracy within the EMU and the EU for that matter has been bid adieu.
Power now rests with the Troika and their appointed stooges,
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