Oh, by the way, the head central bankers in Germany and France have published a newspaper article in Germany calling for a eurozone ministry of finance. “Although monetary policy has done a lot for the eurozone economy, it can’t create sustainable economic growth,” wrote Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann and Bank of France chief Francois Villeroy de Galhau, in an inspired moment of honesty and humility.
Naturally, the Franco-Prussian alliance has suggested another centralised European Union (EU) institution to make up for the failure of centralised monetary policy. An EU ministry of finance – presumably in charge of coordinating a common fiscal policy for eurozone members – would produce growth in ways that monetary policy is currently failing to do so. Maybe by spending helicopter money.
Please note that not every member of the EU is a “eurozone” country. There are nine countries in the EU that don’t use the common currency: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the UK. It is one of the prime minister’s aims – in his attempts to secure better terms of surrender to the EU – to ensure countries in the EU but not in the “eurozone” aren’t bullied, browbeaten or otherwise subdued.
Good luck with that
The Axis-of-Centralisation wrote in their article that:
The current asymmetry between national sovereignty and communal solidarity is posing a danger for the stability of our currency union. Stronger integration appears to be the obvious way to restore trust in the euro zone, for this would favour the development of joint strategies for state finances and reforms so as to promote growth.
In a way, you can understand their point. They are committed to a European project with greater political and economic centralisation. They want solidarity. Not exemptions and qualifications.
Britain wants the old deal. The one it agreed to in 1975 with a common market and free movement of people, goods and services. The other, Margaret Thatcher and the Tories supported.
The current negotiations are a farce. The prime minister is pretending to ask for things of substance. In the meantime, the drivers of the EU project in Berlin and Brussels are deadly serious about a federal Europe with more integration, less national sovereignty and greater control of national budgets. They may as well call in the Ministry of Financial Martial Law (with a hat tip to Tim Price).
And don’t even get me started with the “War on Cash”. That’s happening alongside this pretend negotiation. The aim is to make a deal that gives the Prime Minister some of what he asks for. But not really to change – not one iota – the driving force behind the whole project: ever closer Union and more control over you and your money.
PS The only silver lining is that the folks in the EU are so contemptuous of the British position, or so committed to their own project and so secure in their own beliefs, that they’re making absolutely no attempt to hide their ambitions. They’re the same as they were when the Werner report first came out in 1970.
Category: Brexit