The Ongoing Political Transformation of Europe

[disability student]

One thing struck me was that these politicans including gump have failed to tackle these ongoing 'Euro'problem since 2008. It doesn't seems bode well for the EZ in particular as they are doing all the fire- fighting all over EZ re various financial problems unrelated to each other. These politican's inability to tackle these very problem is very worrying. Their solution is one size fit all re fix the EZ problem like a band aid sticker pasted over the cracks doesn't work.

One thing was clear that EU fuelled low credit scheme as a form of free credit which led to this bubble.Most banks availed of this and paid their price with their reckless and irresponsbile behaviour.

EZ model isn't working. Hence a new model or alternatively, breakdown of the Euro reaching the endgame.

[ang]

What does he mean by that ? More incoherence. None of us will actually know anything until Thursday.

I would assume it was a response to a Dail question.

Will post any further updates.

Maybe its the beginning of - Enda - I've made it clear I don't support a federal EU but this new treaty is not about that.........

[Greengoddess]

If it requires unanimity it could provide opportunities. I notice Kenny much more aggressive about the debt. Just shows you what the budget will be like. And indeed the two after that.

[Sam Lord]

Perhaps just forcefully and consistently pointing out the democratic deficit,thereby creating a transparency that would otherwise be absent, and pushing a democratisation agenda, is a good enough reason to be there. Worth every Eurocent?

Waffling in other words.

[Greengoddess]

[QUOTE=Sam Lord;258058]Waffling in other words.[/QUOT
You know Sam , your just, well, MEAN!

[Dr. FIVE]

Darth Vader was in the examiner during the week following on from his comments at the Lords committe a few weeks back

EU needs to recognise value of immigrants

http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysi...ts-201808.html

[C. Flower]

No doubt about it, short holidays for the EU eminences this year as they are busy working on redesigning Europe as a political as well as economic entity. They learned their lesson after the long holliers of 2008 and 9.

[Dr. FIVE]

From the EU G+ page

[C. Flower]

From the EU G+ page

Is that the best they can offer in exchange for a democracy-free unified Europe?

Paul Gillespie wrote on the theme of this thread in the Irish Times on Saturday -

"Politics moving to the foreground of the euro crisis"

...."Constraints of domestic politics in dealing with the crisis have provoked an impressive intervention from the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas,...they see the need to link up domestic politics with transnational EU bargaining on the euro and also, crucially, to citizen outrage about the loss of democratic control over this, also expressed in protests against austerity."

Habermas and his co-authors call for a European convention followed by a referendum - on the one hand this seems to be wanted as a post hoc rubber stamp for a rushed unification - and on the other hand "if the results of the referendum were positive, the peoples of Europe could regain, at European level, the sovereignty that was stolen from by "the markets" a long time ago."

They call for "a supranational democracy that would allow collective government without assuming the form of a federal state."

The Gillespie article gives no notion as to how that could possibly be achieved.

This week the SDP opposition has called for pooling of European debt in exchange for "mutual budgetary oversight and joint fiscal policy."

However the reality is that what most people envisage is German budgetary oversight and German fiscal policy.

In the past, following German immediate needs on interest rates was the single most destabilising factor in the Euro crisis - the suggested cure seems to be "even more of the same."


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...321995747.html

Such initiatives feed in to the “time-bound roadmap for the achievement of a genuine economic and monetary union” endorsed by the EU summit on June 29th. It sets out four essential building blocks: integrated financial, budgetary and economic policy frameworks and “strengthened democratic legitimacy and accountability”, and will report by December.
So this autumn will see a determined effort to put politics back in the foreground of the crisis, even while the ECB takes most of the economic strain.

No doubt that many people in the central European states are working around the clock this summer to draw up both road map and detailed plans for the destination, and that these will be dropped on us in the middle of a new phase of crisis in September.

[DCon]

The powers that be won't be happy if this guy ends up running the Netherlands. I assume the Dutch Labour party is more of a traditional Labour party than our Right of PD's effort

With less than a week to go before national elections, an abrupt rise in the popularity of the brainy new leader of the Netherlands’ Labor Party, Diederik Samsom, has conservative Prime Minister Mark Rutte suddenly fighting to hang on to his slim lead in the polls.

Neither candidate is seeking to radically alter the Netherlands’ relationship with Europe, but Samsom, a former Greenpeace activist with an engineering degree in nuclear physics, has said he views Rutte’s emphasis on austerity as misguided. If elected, he would de-prioritize spending cuts in the short term, investing more in education.

In an interview with De Telegraaf newspaper published Saturday, Rutte called Samsom “a danger for the Netherlands,” and criticized his economic policies.

Rutte may be right to worry about Samsom’s rise. According to pollster Maurice de Hond in a poll released Friday, a growing number of voters now view Samsom as a potential prime minister.

After a decade of right and center-right governments in the Netherlands, left-leaning parties command a majority in most opinion polls, though they encompass many small parties. With a record 40 percent of voters still undecided less than a week before the election, if progressives begin to see Samsom as having a chance to beat Rutte, they may throw their support behind him.

Although Samsom was only elected Labor leader in March, he is a reasonably well-known figure in the Netherlands.

He has served in parliament since 2003, and his ability to perform well on television should not have come as a surprise, as he has been a serial victor on celebrity television quiz programs. In 2005 and 2006 he won “The National News Quiz,” in 2008 he won “The National IQ Test” and the same year he won “The Big History Quiz.”

His wife reportedly told him he had proved his point and should stop competing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...orld-headlines

[Ephilant]

Jose Manual Barroso "State of the Union" address, today, Strassbourg.

A deep and genuine economic and monetary union, a political union, with a coherent foreign and defence policy, means ultimately that the present European Union must evolve.

Let’s not be afraid of the words: we will need to move towards a federation of nation states. This is what we need. This is our political horizon.

This is what must guide our work in the years to come.

Today, I call for a federation of nation states. Not a superstate. A democratic federation of nation states that can tackle our common problems, through the sharing of sovereignty in a way that each country and each citizen are better equipped to control their own destiny. This is about the Union with the Member States, not against the Member States. In the age of globalisation pooled sovereignty means more power, not less.

And, I said it on purpose a federation of nation states because in these turbulent times these times of anxiety, we should not leave the defence of the nation just to the nationalists and populists. I believe in a Europe where people are proud of their nations but also proud to be European and proud of our European values.

Creating this federation of nation states will ultimately require a new Treaty.

FULL SPEECH

[Dr. FIVE]

aaaauurgh

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...323960731.html

[C. Flower]

aaaauurgh

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...323960731.html

In his mind for a couple of years. He suggested at a Think Tank in Dublin that an elected President would be enough to plug the democratic deficit, in a Europe in which national sovereignty was gone.

Somewhere in one of our threads here..

[Dr. FIVE]

jeeezus, I thought Ganley has his eye on the job

[Apjp]

Jose Manual Barroso "State of the Union" address, today, Strassbourg.



FULL SPEECH

Isn't Barroso's speech akin to a right wing nationalists? He calls for sharing of 'defense and foreign policy' so there goes our neutrality. He opposes nationalism but promotes a tyrannical nation of the most dangerous kind-the invisible one.