daemonios":3r1yqtmy said:
Most Europeans want to have their cake and eat it too. They don't want to hear about relinquishing national sovereignty (when in fact they've relinquished *parts* of it long ago when they signed their accession treaties) or a federalist Europe. In that regard, the UK is at least more coherent: they never agreed to the Schengen area or the monetary union.
Certainly a lot more coherent than, say, Germany - who appear to be rabidly pro-federal
right up to the point where someone points out that doesn't just mean a bigger market for BMW, it actually means sharing their wealth with the rest of the union.
But I sincerely wish the fear-mongerers die out and we can some day have the United States of Europe, with a real government with real powers. It's sad to think that what has already been accomplished (anyone remember the last time western Europe spent half a century without wars?) might go up in smoke due to anachronistic nationalism.
If the Euro goes tits up, I have absolutely no doubt that the governments of Paris, Berlin and the good folk in Brussels will do everything they can to blame the UK - we are the usual convenient bogeyman after all.
The real blame though will lie with the governments who joined the Euro for all the benefits, but fudged the whole enterprise because they didn't want their electorates to realise there would actually have to be costs as well. If Germany continues to ensure that the Euro is hobbled by having no lender of last resort, because of the narrow political interests of Merkel et al, then it will indeed be petty nationalism that fatally undermines the Euro - and potentially the European project as a whole. There will be no need to point the finger in any direction other than at the very heart of the Eurozone though - Berlin.
If the Euro is not to collapse, it needs either a single bond market (Eurobonds) rather than each country auctioning its own debt - which means borrowing costs for the likes of Greece (and Portugal) will go down but borrowing costs for Germany will rise; the wealth will be shared through the levelling of the cost of borrowing. Germany is implacably opposed, because their government's borrowing costs will rise. Alternatively, the ECB needs to be able to become lender of last resort, effectively being able to buy member state's debt by printing money, in the same way the Fed can in the US or the Bank of England can; the wealth will be shared by the corresponding devaluation of the currency. Naturally, Germany is implacably opposed - because while it will help the smaller Eurozone countries, it will also drive inflation - reducing the value of the money in German pockets.
In other words, the German government is currently playing a game of beggar-thy-neighbour with the rest of the Eurozone. You could call it "anachronistic nationalism."
Of course, what Berlin conveniently forgets is, that while they fight against sharing the costs of the Euro project with the rest of the Eurozone, they have been delighted to reap the rewards - the German economy has boomed such as it has because thanks to the Euro they have been able to sell all those lovely things that the German manufacturing industry makes through to other Eurozone economies. And where did the money those economies pumped into German industry, that drove German exports, come from? That's right, it's the money those countries borrowed. The German government now haughtily refuses to bail out weaker economies while wagging its finger at them for their profligate borrowing, when in reality Germany was a great beneficiary of that borrowing.
Of course, the German government is right about one thing; all attempts to rescue the Euro must come with strings attached - a consistent fiscal policy across the Eurozone. Unfortunately, that will require legislation and treaty changes; measures which by any rational standard
should have been put in place at the very beginning of the Euro project, but which weren't because of political cowardice.
The evils of the press in the UK makes an easy canard for the federalists to take pot shots at; however one has to wonder if the European project would have been better served - and not in the pickle it is now - had all the nations involved entered into it with the full consent of a fully informed populace, rather than with electorates blind to the downsides and sold only the upside by a supine press. Perhaps that way, the fiscal and political union required to back up the economic union could have been put in place from the beginning.
(edit - more verbiage and some grammatical tidying up that I couldn't be bothered with from the iPhone earlier 
.)
