|
December 8, 2011
As a result of the neo-liberal euro crisis Germany is emerging, for the first time in the EU’s history, as the unquestioned leader. France is having to adjust to a subordinate role, Britain is moving to the margins, and the European Commission is losing powerr as it has failed to lead Europe’s response to these problems of the euro crisis. Public opinion has become more nationalist in much of the Union, weakening those – like the Commission – who favour European solutions.
Martin Rowson
Richard Wolff, the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, has commmented that the politics of the current crisis:
is a struggle to take a crisis, caused by the business community and the governments they support, and make the mass of people pay for it. That’s what austerity means. And the test here is whether the mass of people will absorb it and accept it. And I think what’s happening is that they didn’t accept it in Greece, they’re not accepting it in Italy, and so they’re trying to make it a continental austerity program, led by the powerful countries.
France and Germany are pushing for changes to the eurozone treaty, including centralized oversight of national budgets and tighter reins on debt. It is spreading Germany's stability culture towards fiscal union.
In The curious case of German leadership Katinka Barysch says:
Merkel’s government ...wants to construct new eurozone rules and institutions – but in a way that spreads and enforces a German vision of a ‘stability union’. ....the government’s vision for Europe is limited so far: a few ‘surgical’ amendments to the EU treaty to introduce automatic sanctions, take fiscal rule-breakers to the European Court of Justice and allow Brussels to intervene in the budgets of countries that ask for bail-outs.
The immediate questions are: which eurozone states are prepared to agree to what political steps to oversee the fiscal union? If strict budget discipline is to be imposed on eurozone member states like Italy or Spain, what institutions will supervise and legitimate this intrusion into the core competences of a nation state and the lives of its citizens?
Will the new rules to establish a stability culture to be agreed to at the summit in Brussels on 8-9 December begin the process to create a post-Maastricht treat?. Is the fiscal union a hesitant step towards a federal Europe-- a united states or a federation of Europe? Is that "more Europe" is the solution rather than the problem?
What is certain is that the democracy deficit within the EU, now evident from Athens to Berlin, looks set to continue. European citizens, have felt a growing sense of distance between themselves and those at the helm of European unification as Brussels became increasingly remote and out of touch with the everyday concerns of people.
|
In this Euro crisis the Cameron Govt in the UK finds that it has very limited power as the UK is not in the euro so has only a sideline voice. What it is defending is the threat of a financial tax---Financial Transaction Tax---on the status quo of the loosely regulated and low tax City of London .
Finance capital in the UK is being defended in the name of the national interest.
The EU employment and environmental legislation is abhorred by the Tory right who want the UK to scrap minimum wages and anti-pollution laws so that it can become more like the US.