The recent Franco-Prussian, upssss, Franco-German summit in Paris between Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy, the latest in a series of failed attempts by the deluded duo to overcome the sovereign debt crisis, ended with ringing tones of a "true European economic government". Cue alarm bells this side of the Channel at the prospect of the 17-strong eurozone at the very least being transformed into a fully-fledged fiscal union, nay a united federal state, with headquarters in Berlin. Germany would dictate the terms of its creation, oversee it and severely punish those which failed to live up to its own standards of Disziplin und Ordnung, Sparsamkeit und Stabilität.This paranoid fantasy was expressed most crudely in yesterday's Daily Mail by Simon Heffer, whose lengthy rant, not only eurotoxic but virulently anti-German, ended with the phrase: "Welcome to the Fourth Reich." Pitiful if it were not so perniciously poisonous.Even the notion that Merkel and Sarkozy are talking about an "economic government" is wholly erroneous. When the German chancellor talks of Wirtschaftsregierung or the French president of gouvernement économique the Brits would say "economic governance". In Paris it's shorthand for reining back politically the European Central Bank's independence; in Berlin for fiscal probity. The Franco-German pair did little more on Tuesday than rehearse arguments and notions that date back to at least earlier this year for improved economic governance in the wake of the initial Greek crisis. This means turning the EU's discredited stability and growth pact into a more effective mechanism for preventing excessive budget deficits, imposing stricter debt ceilings and resolving economic imbalances.
Access Investments-Building Awareness - European Union-ROMANIA
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The recent Franco-Prussian, upssss, Franco-German summit in Paris between Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy, the latest in a series of failed attempts by the deluded duo to overcome the sovereign debt crisis, ended with ringing tones of a "true European economic government". Cue alarm bells this side of the Channel at the prospect of the 17-strong eurozone at the very least being transformed into a fully-fledged fiscal union, nay a united federal state, with headquarters in Berlin. Germany would dictate the terms of its creation, oversee it and severely punish those which failed to live up to its own standards of Disziplin und Ordnung, Sparsamkeit und Stabilität.This paranoid fantasy was expressed most crudely in yesterday's Daily Mail by Simon Heffer, whose lengthy rant, not only eurotoxic but virulently anti-German, ended with the phrase: "Welcome to the Fourth Reich." Pitiful if it were not so perniciously poisonous.Even the notion that Merkel and Sarkozy are talking about an "economic government" is wholly erroneous. When the German chancellor talks of Wirtschaftsregierung or the French president of gouvernement économique the Brits would say "economic governance". In Paris it's shorthand for reining back politically the European Central Bank's independence; in Berlin for fiscal probity. The Franco-German pair did little more on Tuesday than rehearse arguments and notions that date back to at least earlier this year for improved economic governance in the wake of the initial Greek crisis. This means turning the EU's discredited stability and growth pact into a more effective mechanism for preventing excessive budget deficits, imposing stricter debt ceilings and resolving economic imbalances.
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I just find claims like this nothing less than ludicrous, indeed, if not downright divisive and malicious usually uttered by people who don't like (or for whatever reason are afraid of) the monetary union among 17 member states.
Let's just inject a bit of reality and common sense into all this before we get swamped by idiocy of unique proportions. There is nothing more, I bet, most Germans would want than not to have to bail out any badly failing eurozone countries. One could say, 'Well, it was those German banks that lent all that money in the first place, wasn't it?'. As a matter of fact it wasn't just German banks, it was also French ones, still I don't hear many (nonsense) claims being made about the French working hard to dominate the indebted eurozone countries on the pretext of this debt crisis. And secondly, let's not forget, it takes both borrowers and lenders to have the two. There is a moral equivalence between the two -- let's not forget.
And another thing, I would like to know whether such absurd claims about Germany and the Fourth Reich are also made with same frequency in the Spanish press or the Dutch press as much as they are made in the British press? It's like having the German press having a good old dig at the UK saying, the next time the UK joins the US in another self-righteous Iraq-style war, "Oh yeah, there goes the UK again, Big Brother's Little Brother", or "the UK, the US's little errand boy which likes to throw its weight around a bit in reminisce of bygone colonial, imperial times, whilst Uncle Sam is around".
If some people don't like the monetary union, then they're perfectly entitled to argue so and make a case for it, but let's not worsen this crisis by making ludicrous assertions. Some could say, there 's more truth that the UK is the Big Brother's Little Brother than there is to the claim that economic governance heralds the Fourth Reich.
Fourth Reich may be an emotive way of putting the truth none the less. The EU is an evil Empire, not exclusively German, there are most of the elites as collaborators. 'Ever closer union', subservience to the EU Empire, in the design from the beginning via deceit, 'sleight of words', and lies, it is worming its way there. Honest war has failed the several who tried before, now they are getting together and using other means of achieving it. European Empires fail, usually bloodily. Try and unwind this one peacefully!
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