Columns
An EU Budget for the 21st Century
The publication last week of the European Commission’s 2020 paper marks a return to normal service for the EU. We can now get back to proper political debate about Europe’s future rather than be distracted by institutional navel gazing.
Welcome as the Commission’s proposals are though, they reveal a worrying faith in and reliance on the [...]
How to Really Help Africa?
Despite the enlargement of the G8 to the G20, Europe remains its largest presence. In November France will host the G20 meeting, and so Europe will have the predominant influence on the agenda. While Africa is permanently on the agenda, the question is how we might best use that moment to do something for our [...]
What Conservatives do not understand about the Euro
Conservative economists triumphantly expect that the end of the euro is nigh. They take the Greek budget troubles as proof: one size cannot fit all. But they are wrong. The euro has contributed to the largest job creation in Europe’s history: 15.1 million new jobs in the first decade compared to 3.9 million in the [...]
A Faith Betrayed – The Hungarian Left and the State
Major portions of the democratic left always had mixed feelings regarding the state’s power. For the democratic left’s instinctive anti-authoritarian tendencies, the leviathan that is the modern state today should be inherently suspect. Though such doubts do flare up occasionally – especially among the liberal intelligentsia and young leftists (i.e. the non-working class segments of [...]
Green Transport – The Next Step in Europe’s Climate Strategy
Reviewing and improving its climate protection strategy will be one of the main challenges facing Europe over the next couple of months. Generating new ideas and ensuring adequate preparation are essential before the world resumes negotiations in Mexico. During her hearing in the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, the new Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, [...]
The Future of Social Democracy is European
Social Democracy has always been an idea and a strategy of social change. As a progressive movement it has always been on the offensive. When in the 1980s market-radical theories, supported by neo-conservatives and neo-liberals, began to dominate public opinion, the defensive mechanisms of social democracy proved to be rather poor. There was scattered resistance, [...]
The Greek Aftershock – Will it Make or Break Europe?
After the earthquake come the aftershocks. That is a law of geophysics, and now apparently of economics. Well over a year ago, the world economy suffered a massive economic quake of 8.0 on the Richter scale. Since then different countries have been experiencing a number of aftershocks.
Two aftershocks have grabbed headlines, one recently in [...]
A Greek Tragedy or a European Farce? Time to Re-Write the Script
In the official account of the unfolding Greek tragedy the villain is readily identified, the plot is clear, and the dénouement inevitable, tragic, but ultimately both just and morally uplifting.
The villain of the piece is Greece itself: a bloated and inefficient public sector, rampant corruption, and decade-long fiscal incontinence partially shielded from public scrutiny by [...]
The Eurozone’s critical Design Flaws
The problems Greece and some other eurozone countries are experiencing have highlighted a design flaw in the euro: it is ill-prepared to deal with asymmetric shocks because its balancing mechanisms, as Paul Krugman says, are inadequate. But in the case of Greece, there is also no doubt that serious fiscal irresponsibility combined with creative accounting ideas [...]
Why Obama snubbed the EU/US Summit
My mother was fond of telling me that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’. I was reminded of her words when I read about Obama’s ‘snub’ of the EU in declining to attend the EU/USA summit in May.
It is alleged that Obama declined because he could not face having to go down the wedding line [...]
The Eurozone Problem – Learning from Africa
In the debate about Greece and the Eurozone analogies have been drawn with various other currency unions, but the most significant has gone unnoticed. The Franc Zone has been linked to the European currencies for over sixty years. The relationship between the French Treasury and the governments of Francophone Africa displays many of the structural [...]
The Greek Drama and the Social Justice of Responsible Fiscal Policies
I do not envy our Greek socialist friends. They got elected because the previous conservative government was catastrophically incompetent, but the mess they now have to sort out is worse than the wildest imaginations could have predicted. This is not just a local problem. The fate of the euro, and therefore of Europe, hangs in [...]