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Sunday, December 4, 2011

Not Everyone Wants a Greater Germany

Most of the op-eds and stories I've seen on European (or, more correctly, British) news sites seem to support giving the European Union more power over the finances of its member states (at least those using the Euro). However, from The Telegraph comes a slightly different view:
She [German Chancellor Angela Merkel] means prior vetting of fiscal plans. She means automatic fines, cuts in EU development funds, and loss of EU voting rights for alleged violators, all justiciable before the European Court.

The correct term is 'Stability Union', as the Chancellor calls it at home. It certainly entails unprecedented intrusion into the internal affairs of sovereign states, but in one direction only: discipline, without transforming help.

The Greeks have had a taste of this with EU commissars lodged in each ministry under the occupation terms of their loan package, and it may come back to bite Germany itself one day as the economic cycle plays its trick.

Nor is the idea going down well in France, where Leftist MP Jean-Marie Le Guen compared President Nicholas Sarkozy’s kowtowing to the Iron Chancellor with Daladier’s capitulation at Munich in 1938, and where Le Front Nationale’s Marie Le Pen is running near 20pc in the polls with calls to “let the euro die a natural death.”

“The time has come to take on the political confrontation with Germany and defend our values,” said socialist doyen Arnaud Montebourg, equating Mr Sarkozy’s epic humiliations with French defeat at Sedan in 1870.

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