European Union
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 [...]
Europe at the Crossroads: It’s Now or Never!
The European Union is one of the grandest projects in human history – the creation of a new economic, and eventually social, super-state out of the ashes of post-war despair. The founders had a cunning plan: They would create an economic imperative around the production of essentials such as coal and steel, convinced that a [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Does Europe need a Strategy for China?
The European Union is the second largest economy in the world, but does it have a global economic strategy? 10 years after the creation of the euro, there is little evidence for it. Policymakers are more concerned with protecting narrow domestic advantages than with improving opportunities for the European economy as a whole. The Lisbon [...]
New Commission, new European Parliament, new Treaty
The ratification of the Lisbon Treaty at the end of last year, following eight years of institutional introspection, gives rise to mixed feelings for proponents of EU integration – relief and an element of exhaustion. The debate on the Treaty pushed its proponents into a corner, to the point where in the end – to [...]
New Priorities for the EU Institutions
The priorities must be formulated, as always, in a manner that takes into account both form and content. I shall accordingly deal with both aspects, while placing greater emphasis on the latter. A first priority will be to ensure that the new institutional balance resulting from the Lisbon Treaty can be made to work. The [...]
2010 will be the Year of Parliaments
2010 will be the year when democratic accountability takes a front seat in the European Union. That is because the Lisbon Treaty gives bigger roles to the European Parliament, national parliaments and to civil society.
The big winner from the Lisbon Treaty is undoubtedly the European Parliament. It has fully become an equal lawmaker with the [...]
The Right to Towers
The Swiss vote to ban the building of minarets shows that Europe’s view of Islam is still plagued by fear and ignorance.
The Swiss vote to ban the building of minarets has led to a global outbreak of irritation and indignation. On the surface this may have concerned a building ban, but the core issue was [...]
The Winner is: Democracy!
Habemus Presidentem. With the Lisbon Treaty ratified, the European Council appointed the Belgian Prime Minister Van Rompuy as its President, and Lady Ashton as Vice-President of the European Commission. The echo has been devastating. The Financial Times has called it ‘a colossal failure of ambition’. However, the decisions by the heads of states and governments [...]
The Tories’ European Policy Mess
When will we Brits ever learn? The EU is made up of 27 member states, the majority of whom and indeed, sometimes the totality have to agree on anything it does. The EU is not made up of the UK and 26 supporting acts. Most people would regard that as a statement of the [...]