Why Europe Keeps Failing........ merged with "EU Seizes Cypriot Bank Accounts"

[Kirkhill]

Occasionally you have to give the people what they want.... no matter how ugly that may be.  You can't keep the lid on forever.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Financial Times reports on the permanent tension in the EU, this time highlighted by the selection of the next president of the European Commission. The Financial Times notes that "Berlin needs the UK in the EU because Britain supports the kind of competitive, free-market union that Germany wants but the French tend to oppose. “In economic policy, we pull in many ways in the same direction as Great Britain: for more market and less centralisation, for free trade and against excessive regulation,” said Markus Kerber, managing director of the BDI, the German industry group."

The ball is in Ms Merkel's court. She must decide who leads Europe: is it Germany, supported by Britain, Finland and the Netherlands or is it France supported by Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, etc?

My guess, nothing more than that, no detailed analysis, is that France will win and, consequently, the EU will fail.


Edited to add:

More, also from the Financial Times, in this article which explains how the president of the European Commission is selected (essentially from within the European Parliament) rather than how British Prime Minister Cameron and Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt want him/her to be selected (by national leaders). Of course its just a wee, tiny bit ironic that both the British and Swedish prime ministers are selected by their parliamentary parties, not by, say, the heads of county governments ...

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Financial Times is a view of the UK in/out of Europe by ultime insider Martin Wolf:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0813c1ae-f099-11e3-8f3d-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz34npRbmmv

No shelter for Britain in European halfway houses
Attempts to keep privileged access to EU markets outside the EU would be an added humiliation

Martin Wolf

June 12, 2014

The UK is, has been and always will be a European country. The EU remains far and away the UK’s biggest trading partner and London is Europe’s financial capital. What happens inside its European neighbours will always be of vital interest to the UK. Yet the UK’s history has also been different from that of the rest of the continent. Guarded by the sea, it managed to prevent invasion. Seeking to exploit opportunities across the oceans, it devoted itself to keeping Europe out of the hands of a single despotic ruler. It succeeded.

Today, the UK is no longer a global power, while Europe is uniting peacefully. Legally, the UK is inside the EU. Psychologically, it is ever more outside it. It is, in brief, semi-detached. This is shown in its rejection of the euro, in the rise of the UK Independence party and in the promise of David Cameron, the prime minister, of a referendum on EU membership in 2017.

Whether this referendum will happen depends on the outcome of next year’s general election. Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour party, is not committed to a referendum. Yet the question of the UK’s place in Europe will not go away. Gaining full access to EU markets while doing as it pleases is an option the UK cannot have. Its choice is this: more independence and less influence or less independence and more influence.

This week, the Centre for European Reform produced a report on the economic consequences of leaving the EU. (I was a member of the commission that produced this report.) Its conclusion is stark: all conceivable halfway houses would deliver the lack of influence that comes from being outside the EU with the lack of independence from being inside it. “In” or “out” is the choice: of the two, the first would be vastly better.

The halfway-house alternatives to being inside the EU might include membership of the European Economic Area (like Norway), membership of the customs union (like Turkey) or bilateral agreements (like Switzerland). If the UK were in the EEA, it would retain access to the single market but would have no voice in setting its rules. If the UK were in the customs union, it would lose access to the single market and would have to accept the common external tariff. If the UK sought bilateral agreements it would be at the mercy of a vastly more powerful partner: the UK does 50 per cent of its trade with the rest of the EU, while the latter does 10 per cent of its trade with the UK.

Again, if the UK wanted any form of privileged access to EU markets it would have to accept EU regulations, the bete noire of eurosceptics. Furthermore, should the UK choose membership of the EEA, it would still be bound by rules on freedom of movement of people. Should it not even be in the EEA, it might regain control over movement of people, but that would depend on the outcome of bilateral negotiations on market access. Even the saving on net budgetary contributions (now 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product) following an exit could be notional. If the UK still wanted access to EU markets on privileged terms it would have to make a fiscal contribution, as do Norway and Switzerland. Today, Norway’s contribution per head is much the same as the UK’s.

The only way to give the UK more independence would be abandonment of all forms of privileged access to EU markets and so total reliance on membership of the World Trade Organisation. But that would also give the UK little say in new plurilateral agreements among big powers, provide negligible protection to its exports of financial services, damage its appeal as a base for multinationals’ exports to the EU and allow the eurozone to force relocation of trading in euro-denominated assets from London.

Yes, full exit would allow the UK greater freedom over its own regulations. But, as the OECD has shown, product and labour market regulations in the UK are already among the least restrictive in the developed world, despite EU membership. Though some fantasists hope that these rules would be repealed if the UK left the EU, the idea that the British people would allow elimination of almost all labour, product or environmental regulations is mad. Remember: the most economically damaging UK restrictions – those on land use – are, alas, entirely home-grown.

It is perfectly possible that a lethal blend of xenophobia, public folly and political incompetence will lead to a UK exit from the EU in the next parliamentary term. But let us be clear about the implications. All attempts to preserve some form of privileged access to EU markets while being outside the EU would merely add humiliation to all the other disadvantages. Full exit would at least be an honest choice. But it would also be extraordinarily stupid. It would bring no important economic benefits, while certainly delivering significant costs.

The British people might not like their current position. But it is much the best of all available choices. In any referendum, I would expect them to reach that obviously sensible conclusion.

This is a reasonable and powerful argument for working within the EU to change the EU to better suit Briatin's needs. But it may be that the EU is set, firmly, on another course, one which Britons cannot, honestly, accept. It may be that the economically harmful "honest choice" is the better one.

 

[Kirkhill]

I don't see the business of market access as being insurmountable.  Britain should be able to make products for the European Market that conform to European rules.  Equally it should be permitted to make products that conform to domestic laws.  The fact that Britain is a smaller market will inevitably drive the domestic product higher in cost.  At which point Brits will clamour for the export models.  They will also note that Germans are not dying from the consumption of toxic lager will continue to expect to see cheap lagers on their shelves.

The issue for the bureaucrats is that they feel they have to impose that which Adam Smith predicted would happen invisibly.  But that would be a calamity for the bureaucrats - they must be seen or not appreciated.

Bureaucrats, protectionist and interventionist, need to be seen.  It doesn't help them if society gently evolves on its own.

 

[a_majoor]

Bureaucrats, protectionist and interventionist, need to be seen.  It doesn't help them if society gently evolves on its own.

Perhaps the coming radical changes in technology which bring greater and greater power into the hands of individuals will eventually defang the bureaucrats. Why pay for an expansive and inefficient school system when you can get your lessons on the internet through the Khan Academy? Even at the current state of the art, it is thought that an average person or family can save several thousand dollars a year making common consumer goods at home using "3D Printers". "Victory Gardens" can be scaled to apartment balconies and still provide a large slice of your diet, basic medical advice can be derived from Smartphone apps and so on.

Bureaucrats wil fight to the last taxpayer to keep their power and perques, but the people who invest in these new technologies and uncouple themselves from the grid will be in a position to live a good life with far less interaction with the State, and by becoming DIYers, will also avoid paying taxes (and given they won't need to make so much income to live, will also have much less taxable income for bureaucrats to seize. The Ontario Liberals will discover this in its earlier manifestation as capital and skilled labour moves out of the province, but being able to "go Galt" in the comfort of your own home will be a much more attractive option for the majority of people). Bankrupt governments are coming closer to the stage where they will simply close bureaucracies and departments since they will no longer have the ability to pay for them (and printing more monopoly money simply postpones the day of reckoning without solving the problem).

 

[Edward Campbell]

More, this time from Eric Reguly, in this report which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail's Report on Business, on why Britain ought not to opt out of Europe:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/european-business/euroskeptic-cameron-snubs-eu-to-britains-peril/article19367611/#dashboard/follows/

Euroskeptic Cameron snubs EU to Britain’s peril

ERIC REGULY
Rome — The Globe and Mail

Last updated Saturday, Jun. 28 2014

With relentless determination, British Prime Minister David Cameron stood his ground but he was not magnificent in defeat. Fighting a losing battle to prevent the election of veteran Brussels insider, Jean-Claude Juncker, as European Commission president only pushed Britain farther in the Euroskeptic corner, from where it may never emerge. Britain’s influence over the European Union is melting away.

That’s a pity, because down the road Britain could make the EU its own in the same way Germany does today. That’s because Britain is on course to displace Germany as the biggest European economy. But Britain may not even be part of the EU in a few years. It may not even exist if Scotland wins its sovereignty referendum in September.

Britain has always been a Euroskeptic to some degree, depending in good part on its prime ministers’ cynical pandering to voters. Maggie Thatcher’s political star soared in the mid-1980s, when she negotiated a rebate from the EU budget (she argued, rightly so, that Britain was paying too much into agriculture subsidies, which largely benefited France, Italy and Spain). In later years, Britain toned down its Euroskepticism, even if it refused to adopt the euro, the currency now used in 18 of the EU’s 28 countries. It strongly endorsed the EU enlargements that brought former communist countries, such as Poland, into the fold.

It’s hard to say exactly when Britain went from Euroskeptic-lite to Euroskeptic-heavy, but there is no doubt it has been a defining feature of the Cameron era. Britain has ferociously opposed any EU-imposed banking regulations, for fear that London’s global financial clout would get sacrificed to an army of faceless gnomes in Brussels with a secret agenda to push Frankfurt to the forefront. In 2012, it vetoed and refused to join the fiscal compact, the European deal that imposed budget deficit and debt caps on the signatory countries. It has been ramping up its attacks on creeping “federalism,” the suspected EU agenda to shed member countries’ last scraps of sovereignty in the great effort to create a political and economic union.

Along the way, Mr. Cameron vowed to hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership in 2017, assuming the Conservatives were to win the 2015 general election. His promise was widely seen as pandering to the Euroskeptics. There is a theory that Scotland’s own referendum is in part motivated by its fear of dropping out of the EU if Britain rejects it. An independent Scotland would want EU membership, though that would have to be negotiated.

Then came Nigel Farage, leader of the rabidly anti-Europe UK Independence Party. It placed first in Britain in the EU parliamentary elections in May. The party with similar anti-EU views, Marine Le Pen’s Front National, enjoyed the same success in France. Parties that are outright EU haters, Euroskeptic or simply want a serious debate on the speed of the whole European integration project won about a third of the votes in the EU election. The results, of course, have pushed Mr. Cameron even further onto the hard Euroskeptic fringe.

Which brings us to Mr. Juncker. He is the former Luxembourg prime minister who was, until 2013, president of the Eurogroup, the powerful club of euro zone finance ministers who oversee the monetary union and read the riot act to fiscal wastrels like Greece. Mr. Cameron apparently despises the man, not because he’s done anything rude or because he speaks French; it’s because he represents the face of relentless European integration, at least in the Briton’s view.

Mr. Cameron waged a lonely fight to prevent Mr. Juncker from getting the EC president’s job, which is somewhat ironic, given the eternal whining among British politicians about the EU’s “democratic deficit.” Mr. Juncker was the candidate for the centre-right European People’s Party, which won the most votes in the European election. He was backed by almost all of the EU leaders, including the one who matters most – German chancellor Angela Merkel. He got the blessing of the EU’s prime ministers and presidents on Friday. It would have been a failure of democracy if he did not get the job because one leader had his shorts in a knot about the candidate.

Yet even though Mr. Cameron’s campaign was doomed, he never stopped ramping up his anti-Juncker rhetoric. At the onset of the EU summit that anointed Mr. Juncker, he said, “It’s the wrong person. Jean-Claude Juncker has been at the heart of the project to increase the power of Brussels and reduce the power of nation states for his entire working life. He’s not the right person to take this organization forward.”

A more clever politician would have backed off and strived for a meaty consolation prize, such as secretary-general, the second most important EC job. Instead, Mr. Cameron seemed bent on isolating himself and Britain, apparently oblivious to the blow he was delivering to Britain’s negotiating power. If he wants to change the EU, it’s much easier to do so inside the EU than outside.

Mr. Cameron is seemingly oblivious to the greater economic trend that stands to put Britain on top in Europe. Britain’s economy is smaller than Germany’s and France’s, and more or less tied with Italy’s. But that’s changing in Britain’s favour, thanks to strong population and economic growth. By 2050, probably sooner, Britain’s population will be considerably greater than Germany’s. By 2030, its economy should overtake Germany’s, measured by economic output. Britain’s economy is growing at a 3 per cent clip, the fastest among the Group of Seven countries.

Germany used sheer size and industrial might to dominate the economic agenda in the EU. The buck, or in this case the euro, stops at the desk of the German chancellor. If Britain were to play the EU game, its rising economic power would allow it to shape the agenda in the not too distant future. Instead, Mr. Cameron embraced an attack and retreat strategy. Little England indeed.

Mr Reguly is giving us the received wisdom from Wall Street, The City, Bay Street and the Gnomes of Zürich.  There is no doubt that, in the short, even near intermediate term, Britain will pay a stiff price for leaving the EU or, even, for forcing a restructuring on the EU.

But the position is less clear, for me, anyway, in the medium and longer terms. I believe that the underlying strength (continued growth) in the British economy is, mainly, native, not because of the EU. In other words: I think Britain will manage to prosper with or without the EU. The bigger question, for me, is: how will, the EU do, with or without Britain? My guess is: not well. I think the EU is badly designed, especially the Eurozone part of it, and cannot be rescued without massive restructuring. I think the EU will end up disintegrating because I doubt the Latins France, Italy, Spain, etc, and e.g the Scandinavians, Brits and Irish, will be able to reconcile themselves to Germany and Mitteleuropa. Yeats was right, "the centre", which for the EU is France and Germany, "cannot hold."

 

[Jungle]

I think the EU will end up disintegrating because I doubt the Latins France, Italy, Spain, etc, and e.g the Scandinavians, Brits and Irish, will be able to reconcile themselves to Germany and Mitteleuropa.

Interesting that you include the French in the "Latin" countries. The French language definitely has latin roots, but most of France was settled by Celts, so the French people have more in common, ethnically, with the Germans, British, Irish and others in western Europe.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Interesting that you include the French in the "Latin" countries. The French language definitely has latin roots, but most of France was settled by Celts, so the French people have more in common, ethnically, with the Germans, British, Irish and others in western Europe.

It reflects my own biases, I suppose. I tend to think culture matters a lot more than ethnicity, and the economic and political cultures of the Scandinavians, British and Irish are (and were even in e.g. the 16th century) much, much different, much more liberal than the political and economic cultures in France, Italy and Spain.

The big difference, in my opinion (a lot of reputable historians will disagree), is that the Latins had concentrated power in the hands of a small (but changeable) ruling class. The Northerners, the outliers if you will, had dispersed both wealth and political power to a much, much greater degree. I have suggested that the difference was that the continent had rich, powerful kings and England, for example, had (relatively) poor and weak monarchs and that this had highly beneficial political and economic effects on England and on the (similar) Scandinavian and Germanic kingdoms.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Not surprisingly, the Euroskeptical Daily Mail suggests that "at teatime on Friday, it became clear that Britain could no longer remain a member of the EU. Any hope that we might change  its nature – make it looser,  more flexible, more attuned to its nation states – was coldly extinguished."

I'm not sure I would put it in quite those stark terms but I suspect that the Daily Mail is closer to the truth than is the much more fiscally responsible Financial Times.

(By the way, I subscribe to the Financial Times because it is the best, the only really trustworthy newspaper in the English language, in my opinion. But it, the FT, isn't always well attuned to British public opinion.)

 

[Edward Campbell]

More on Britain vs the EU in this article which reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21606282-struggle-avoid-divorce-between-britain-and-european-union-loosening-union

Loosening the union
The struggle to avoid divorce between Britain and the European Union

Jul 5th 2014 | From the print edition

BRITAIN and Europe are like a couple in a difficult marriage. One day they have a blazing row; the next they want to kiss and make up. Britain’s David Cameron tried every means possible to block the nomination of Jean-Claude Juncker as the next president of the European Commission. But reasoned argument, appeals to self-interest, emotional blackmail and threats of “consequences” all failed: the European Union summit on June 26th and 27th endorsed Luxembourg’s former prime minister by 26 votes to two (only Hungary sided with Britain). Now Mr Cameron says Mr Juncker is a man he can do business with. Germany promised to help keep the family together. Sweden would “go the extra mile” to satisfy Britain’s desire to renegotiate its relationship with the EU. All vowed that British concerns would “be addressed” and that “ever closer union” need not apply.

Many in Brussels dismiss the “Junk Juncker” campaign as a tantrum provoked by the internal politics of the Conservative Party and the challenge of the UK Independence Party rather than by the EU. Perhaps, some Eurocrats hope, the problem will go away if Mr Cameron loses office next year. That would be a delusion. British politics may be changing, but the EU is changing too, and in ways that are uncomfortable for any British government. It was striking that all the main British parties objected to the system of Spitzenkandidaten, or leading candidates, that secured Mr Juncker’s victory, fearing it would shift power from national governments to the European Parliament. Britain long ago stepped out of line with the rest of the EU. It is neither in the euro nor in the Schengen free-travel zone. Its desire for an ever looser union may be postponed but cannot be avoided. Every row rends the relationship further, and there are bound to be more.

For one thing, Mr Juncker’s nomination is just the start of the fight for top Brussels jobs. At a summit on July 16th, immediately after the parliament’s expected endorsement of Mr Juncker, leaders will wrangle over other posts, including that of the president of the European Council (representing leaders), the high representative (the foreign-policy boss), a full-time president of the Eurogroup (the euro zone’s finance ministers) and the main commission jobs. European leaders have reassured Mr Cameron that the head of the European Council, in particular, will be chosen by consensus. Yet such private promises may not survive the last-minute scramble for national influence.

The usual method is to satisfy all with a package that balances political party, region and gender. Since Mr Juncker is from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the European Council job may go to the centre-left Socialists & Democrats. The obvious choice is Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s prime minister (married to Stephen Kinnock, son of Britain’s former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock). But she may not be leftist enough for France’s François Hollande, and she is handicapped because Denmark, like Britain, is outside the euro. Some are touting the Dutch Liberal prime minister, Mark Rutte, but his abrasiveness over euro-zone bail-outs has incurred the wrath of southern Europeans and his group now trails Mr Cameron’s European Conservatives and Reformists in the parliament. So it may be back to the EPP: Finland’s Jyrki Katainen, Latvia’s Valdis Dombrovskis, Estonia’s Andrus Ansip or Ireland’s Enda Kenny, all former or current prime ministers.

Contenders for the foreign-policy job are three foreign ministers: Poland’s Radek Sikorski (too anti-Russian for some, and damaged by leaked tapes of conversations in which he criticises both America and Britain), Italy’s Federica Mogherini (too pro-Russian for others, and a neophyte) and the Netherlands’ Frans Timmermans. Having been sidelined with the foreign-policy job for Catherine Ashton, Britain now wants a big economic post, perhaps competition (also claimed by Germany) or the single market. Assuming the British can overcome Mr Juncker’s wish to reward his supporters, securing such a job would require them to send a heavyweight who is not so Eurosceptic as to invite rejection by the European Parliament—a test they may well fail.

One thing should be watched in the manoeuvring. As important as the public figures are less visible officials, particularly those linked to Germany’s centre-right CDU. The forces behind Spitzenkandidaten include officials linked to Germany’s centre-right CDU such as Klaus Welle, secretary-general of the European Parliament, and Martin Selmayr, who is likely to be Mr Juncker’s chief of staff. A canny gesture for Britain would be to appoint Jonathan Faull, a respected senior director-general, bagging the top post in the bureaucracy, secretary-general of the commission.

The changing balance of power

The nub of Britain’s dilemma is the fact that the more Mr Cameron talks of leaving, the more toxic he becomes to his friends. On Spitzenkandidaten, Britain had the sympathy of about a third of leaders, yet almost all abandoned the prime minister. He himself ruefully admits that British support for any candidate would now “blight” their chances. France, so often Britain’s rival, would normally share the desire to ensure the primacy of national leaders. After all, it was de Gaulle who pressed to keep the national veto in 1965. But these days Mr Hollande counts for little. He signed up to Spitzenkandidaten, hoping to get a German Social Democrat, Martin Schulz. He and his Italian colleague, Matteo Renzi, now hope Mr Juncker will be soft on fiscal austerity.

The heart of the matter is the strength of Germany. Mr Cameron trusted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s half-promise to halt Mr Juncker, but she changed her mind when she was accused at home of favouring the British over democracy. When the lady was for turning, everybody else turned too. It is she, above all, who will decide how far Europe can go to keep Britain in.

Britain is no longer the 'sick man Europe,' Mrs Thatcher put it on the right course back in the 1980s. I think the EU needs Britain more than Britain needs it. The question is, therefore: how much will (can) the EU give?

My opinion is that the EU needs a lot of "loosening;" in fact I have suggested that the EU needs to look rather like a tiered wedding cake ...

                                               

    ... with a big, wide tier at the bottom to which almost anyone can belong ~ just a big free trade area, really ~ with successively smaller and more restrictive layers above, each separated by legal/treaty protections, for things like the Schengen  Agreement (1985), the Eurozone (1999) and even more.

The bottom layer is, I think, something like the Council of Europe while the upper layers include the other groupings.

                       

 

[Edward Campbell]

This somewhat philosophical article, by Prof Jan-Werner Müller, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs may actually explain "why Europe keeps failing:"

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141638/jan-werner-mueller/the-end-of-christian-democracy

The End of Christian Democracy
What the Movement's Decline Means for Europe

Jan-Werner Müller

July 15, 2014

The Europe of today is a creation of Christian Democrats. They were the architects of European integration and of postwar Atlanticism. And they were crucial in shaping the form of constitutional democracy that prevailed in the Western half of the continent after 1945 and has steadily been extended east since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Europe’s most powerful politician, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is a Christian Democrat, as are the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and his designated successor, Jean-Claude Juncker. In last May’s European Parliamentary elections, the continental association of Christian Democratic parties -- the European People’s Party (EPP) -- won the most seats.

Yet both as a set of ideas and as a political movement, Christian democracy has become less influential and less coherent in recent years. This decline is due not only to the continent’s secular turn. At least as important are the facts that nationalism -- one of Christian Democrats’ prime ideological enemies -- is on the rise and that the movement’s core electoral constituency, a coalition of middle-class and rural voters, is shrinking. As the larger project of European integration faces new risks, then, its most important backer may soon prove incapable of defending it.

OLD TIME RELIGION

“Christian Democrat” is a designation that sounds peculiar to anyone accustomed to a strict separation of church and state. The term first appeared in the wake of the French Revolution and in the midst of fierce battles about the fate of the Catholic Church in a democracy. For most of the nineteenth century, the Vatican viewed modern political ideas -- including liberal democracy -- as a direct threat to its core doctrines. But there were also Catholic thinkers who agreed with the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville’s insight that, like it or not, democracy’s triumph in the modern world was inevitable. So-called Catholic liberals sought to make democracy safe for religion by properly Christianizing the masses: after all, the reasoning went, a democracy of God-fearing citizens would have a much better chance of succeeding than one whose subjects were secular. Other Catholic intellectuals hoped to keep the people in line through Christian institutions, especially the papacy, which the French thinker Joseph de Maistre envisaged as part of a Europe-wide system of checks and balances.

Most important, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Vatican itself eventually came to see the benefits of playing the democratic game and fostering parties that would defend the concerns of the church. Initially, they did so in bad faith -- Christian democratic parties essentially functioned as interest groups within a system whose legitimacy the church continued to reject. By using the term “democrat,” they were not signaling their acceptance of representative democracy but, rather, their ambition to work with ordinary people. To this day, that approach is evident in the prominence of such terms as “popular” or “people” in the official names of Christian Democratic parties.

The parties grew strongest in countries where church and state were evenly matched. There was no need for Christian democracy in a deeply Catholic country such as Ireland, for example, but it also failed to take root in France, where Catholics, in the face of onslaughts from anti-clerical republican governments, put their efforts into complete regime change. By contrast, where culture wars between secular forces and the church were fierce but eventually resulted in a stalemate, as in Germany and the so-called Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), Catholics invested in party-building.

As the political scientist Stathis Kalyvas has shown, Christian Democratic party leaders eventually developed their own interests. Playing the democratic game brought rewards and resources -- and Christian Democrats eventually accepted political participation as legitimate. After World War I, when democracy swept Europe, the Vatican also relented somewhat: having completely rejected an Italian nation-state and prohibiting Catholics from playing any part in it (even banning voting), the pope threw his support behind a new party called Popolari. By uniting peasants and the lower middle classes, the Popolari became the country’s second-largest after the socialists.

During the interwar years, relations between Christian Democrats and the Holy See cooled across Europe. The Vatican saw parties that it could control as useful, but it sidelined those that were unwilling to follow instructions from Rome and instead dealt with states directly. To that end, the Vatican abandoned parties such as the Popolari and concluded a number of diplomatic agreements designed to protect Catholic interests -- the most infamous of which was the so-called Reichskonkordat between Hitler and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII, in July 1933.

It wasn’t until after World War II that Christian Democratic parties fully freed themselves from the Vatican and took a leading role in constructing the postwar European order. The circumstances could hardly have been more propitious. Fascism and the war had discredited competing movements on the right. And Christian Democrats were seen as the quintessentially Atlanticist and anticommunist parties in countries such as Italy, West Germany, and other frontline states of the Cold War. Moreover, they now endorsed democracy, though with a caveat: to avoid drifting into totalitarianism, they argued, democratic governments needed to have spiritual underpinnings -- something best supplied by the church. In this sense, the Christian Democrats rejected both communism and liberalism as forms of materialism. This stance did not prevent them from eventually making peace with capitalism -- while insisting that religion was also needed to hold the evils of the market in check.

Parties such as the German Christian Democratic Union went out of their way to include Protestants -- thereby ending centuries of religious conflict. In fact, they sought to become as inclusive as possible, rather than appearing as sectarian representatives. Their hallmark was a centrist politics of consensus and accommodation, based on a Catholic image of a harmonious society, in which even capital and labor could cooperate and the church could play a crucial role in the provision of social services. Still, at the time, observers said the kinds of things about Catholicism that many Europeans say about Islam today: that it was inherently illiberal and, as a kind of monarchy with a king in Rome, incapable of genuinely accepting democracy. The Harvard historian H. Stuart Hughes, for instance, wrote, in 1958, “A Christian Democrat is a Christian primarily, and a democrat only in a subordinate capacity. The adjective is more important than the noun.”

Yet Christian Democrats kept confounding their critics. In Germany, Italy, and -- to a lesser extent -- France, they created genuine democracies. At the same time, however, they governed with a good deal of distrust of popular sovereignty. They essentially sought to constrain the people through institutions such as constitutional courts, make them moral through the teachings of the church, and subject them to a new supranational order: the European Convention of Human Rights, for instance, was the creation of British Tories and continental Christian Democrats. And it was the latter who also became the architects of what today is known as the European Union. After all, Christian Democrats -- like Catholics, internationalists by nature -- placed little value on the nation-state. In fact, in the nineteenth century, it had been newly unified nation-states such as Germany and Italy that had waged so-called culture wars (what came to be known as Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf) against Catholics, who were suspected of putting devotion to the Vatican above loyalty to the state. But the Christian Democrats were also pluralists: they were content with a federalist, legally fragmented European community that resembled a medieval empire more than a modern sovereign state.

PARTY CRASHERS

After decades as Europe’s dominant political force, the Christian Democrats are now facing the prospect of decline. Some observers have blamed secularization for weakening popular support. It is true that, since the early 1960s, churches have been emptying across the continent. But the parties themselves had already started to insist that one simply had to subscribe to humanist ideals in order to be a good Christian Democrat. The real problem arose with the triumph of the very political model that they had been promoting since the 1950s.

Most central and eastern European countries adopted this model after 1989, but virtually none of them developed Christian Democratic parties in the mold of Germany’s Christlich Demokratische Union or Italy’s Democrazia Cristiana. In some countries, such as Catholic Poland, Christian Democratic groups seemed unnecessary; in others, they turned out to be radically different from their Western European counterparts in two respects: they were vehemently nationalist, and thus unwilling to concede much of the national sovereignty wrested back from the Soviet Union; and they were much more populist, seeing no reason to distrust the simple folk who had managed to survive state socialist dictatorships with their morals seemingly intact.

Meanwhile, further west, Christian Democrats lost their greatest enemy -- communism -- and with it much of the ideological glue that had held often fractious political coalitions together. In Italy, the Christian Democrats had participated in every single government since World War II -- the rationale being that the Communist Party, Western Europe’s largest, had to be kept out. In the early 1990s, the hugely corrupt Democrazia Cristiana collapsed. Then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi -- not a man known for strict adherence to Catholic morals -- in effect inherited the party’s votes.

To be sure, Christian democracy, as evidenced by the recent success of the EPP, remains the continent’s strongest political force on paper. Yet the party is also deeply dysfunctional. The squabbles over its top candidate for president of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, are a case in point. During the campaign, some EPP leaders tried to benefit from anti-EU sentiments. Berlusconi also attempted to ride anti-German resentment and appeal to Italians fed up with austerity. Immediately after the elections, Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister and a former vice president of the EPP, attacked Juncker for being an old-style promoter of European unity, one who failed to respect nation-states and their traditions. In recent years, Orbán had already raised eyebrows when he declared a “war of independence” -- whose aim was to make Hungarians independent from the EPP’s very own political project, European integration.

Part of the problem, some observers say, is that the EPP -- encompassing no fewer than 73 member parties from 39 countries -- is simply overstretched. In the early 1990s, as Helmut Kohl, then German chancellor, and Wilfried Martens, former Belgian prime minister and then president of the EPP, recruited politicians throughout Europe, they maintained relatively low standards, with little regard to the new adherents’ real commitment to party ideals. Kohl was adamant that Christian Democrats had not built Europe just to surrender it to socialists, and that the EPP needed to retain continent’s largest political grouping no matter what.

The deeper issue, however, concerns the movement’s ideological distinctiveness. Leaders such as Kohl were willing to take risks for Europe. Today, one is hard-pressed to find any true believers who would put their career on the line for European integration, least of all the current German chancellor. On questions of markets and morality, the Christian Democrats had a prime opportunity to reinvent themselves after the financial crisis: they might have brought back their old ideals of an economy, for example, in which the morally relevant unit is a societal group with legitimate interests, not a profit-maximizing individual. Instead, Juncker and Merkel have fully embraced conventional austerity policies, and it is largely forgotten that Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi -- the great hope of the European left -- actually started out as a member of a reconstituted Popolari (and, even earlier, as a Catholic boy scout).

Europe’s Christian Democrats could also take a page out of the playbook of American conservatives, refocusing on social issues and waging a Kulturkampf of their own against secularism. Some have already tried: during the last decade, the Spanish Popular Party mobilized the Catholic vote against socialist Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero, who had introduced same-sex marriage. Contrary to the cliché of religious America and irreligious Europe, there remains considerable potential for such campaigns in some southern and eastern European countries. It is telling, however, that Spanish voters ultimately parted with Zapatero for his handling of the eurocrisis.

POPULARITY CONTEST

Christian Democrats face a difficult dilemma. Their policy goals are only marginally different from those of Social Democratic parties on economic questions. Kulturkampf is risky, but becoming too mainstream on social matters creates political space for groups that present themselves as genuinely conservative. Political parties such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, which is mostly focused on opposing the EU but increasingly defends traditional morality, and France’s Front National are the beneficiaries.

Most important, Christian Democrats are under intense pressure from right-wing nationalists and populists. And since they no longer dare to defend ambitious plans for European integration, the erstwhile architects of continental unity are more or less defenseless. Their politics of accommodation does not work as a response to the populists, who thrive on polarization and identity politics. The old class coalition that supported European integration at the polls and benefited from it economically -- the middle class and farmers -- has diminished virtually everywhere. This longer-term transformation makes it unlikely that Christian democracy will ever regain the dominant position it had in the postwar years. That leaves the EU a hollow shell: the ideals that once animated integration have seemingly been forgotten, defended only by small parties such as the Greens.

The European Union will not collapse as a result. The real problem is the half-finished eurozone. As Europeans have learned at great cost in recent years, the eurozone as it exists today is incomplete and incoherent: it is a monetary union that does not allow for the proper coordination of fiscal policies or a real convergence of the participating economies. A flood of cheap money from the European Central Bank -- the current solution to the euro crisis -- has failed to address the underlying structural problems of individual states and of the eurozone as a whole. Making the euro work in the long run will require a willingness to take political risks and material sacrifices. And the days when Christian Democratic idealism was capable of generating both are over.

For more than two generations two political movements, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, bought coherence and stability to Western Europe. (Their British confrères were Conservatives and Labour.) The Social Democrats were the first to fragment and fall. If the Christian Democrats cannot revitalize themselves then I suspect Europe, even the whole EU, will be unmanageable.

There is one point on which I differ from  Prof Müller: I think a Kulturkampf is more than just "risky;" I think it is doing serious socio-economic damage, and even worse political damage to America, and it would lead Europe to war.

 

[Kirkhill]

Christian Democrats and Social Democrats have/had one deep abiding commonality, identified by Prof. Mueller: Internationalism.

Their primary point of divergence was the centre of control. 

Social Democrats have leaned heavily east over the last century tending towards Moscow.  The Christian Democrats centre of gravity is located in the nexus Main, Trier, Koeln, Aachen.

When the Eastern Europeans broke free of Moscow they didn't join the EPP because of shared ideals.  They joined because they viscerally reacted to anything Socialist and with any suggestion of association with the Comintern or the Socialist International.

The last thing that the Easterners want is a supranational agency organizing their lives.  They are nationalists.  They have been nationalists at least since the days that Charlemagne attempted to impose Vatican Suzerainty on them.  His efforts didn't outlive his sons.  However the idea never seems to die.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from CNN, is not about Europe failing, exectly, but it is about why the Eurozone is a drag on Germany:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/24/business/is-uk-set-to-claim-europes-economic-powerhouse-title/index.html

Is UK set to claim Europe's economic powerhouse title?

By Ivana Kottasova, CNN

July 24, 2014

(CNN) -- The UK economy has shaken off the European crisis with growth figures that outshine its G7 peers.

It is expected to grow 3.1% this year, according to a forecast by the prestigious EY ITEM Club, above earlier expectations of 2.9%.

The growth is well above that expected of Germany, Europe's biggest economy and one which dragged the bloc out of crisis, at 1.8%.

"We have moved from the recovery phase to expansion. And furthermore, it's looking very durable," said Peter Spencer, professor of Economics and Finance at University of York and chief economic adviser to the ITEM Club.

Figures due to be released Friday are expected to show the British economy passing the pre-crisis peak from 2008.

Spencer said the growth is no longer financed by people tapping into their savings -- as was the case this time last year -- but by business expansion and a stronger labor market.

Business spending is on the rise, meaning companies are investing into production rather than sitting on cash. Business investment by itself now generates more than half of the UK's growth.

The government is trumpeting a record-high employment -- 73.1% of people were in work in the three months to May, matching up the previous record-high from 2004/2005.

But there is a catch. While record numbers of Brits are working, their wages are growing at the slowest rate on record -- and at about half of the inflation rate.

That fuels another problem of the UK's economy -- the chronic and rising inequality. Of all UK households, only the highest earning 20% increased their disposable income last year. The remaining 80% of households suffered a drop in their income, numbers released by the Office of National Statistics show.

The Bank of England has also warned that the UK productivity has been "extremely and uncharacteristically weak" since the recession.

Productivity growth, which indicates if the economy can produce more for less, remains below the pre-crisis levels, at 16%.

Many economists are also warning the UK about a potential housing bubble. The average cost of a home in the UK is now 20% above the pre-crisis peak in 2007.

The IMF has already warned the UK government that rising house prices and low productivity could hinder the economic growth and urged the country to put in place "early measures" to prevent housing bubble.

But Spencer told CNN the fears of a bubble were overblown. "This is not driven by mortgage borrowing. In London for example, it's mainly cash buying and overseas buyers," he said, pointing to relatively flat mortgage borrowing.

The UK is also vulnerable to shocks from outside. Half of the country's international trade is with the European Union countries, many of which are still suffering from the consequences of the eurozone crisis.

"If Germany takes a hit, we'll suffer too. If Germany does well, we'll do well, like the rest of Europe," Spencer said.

 

[Kirkhill]

This little gem came from the link posted here:

http://army.ca/forums/threads/115277/post-1320023/topicseen.html#new

The most dramatic moment of the conference came five minutes before its end and drove home the urgency of submarine politics. The incident was a tense exchange between the Swedes and the Germans over Kockums, which was sold to the German-owned TKMS 15 years ago.

Commenting from the conference floor, retired Swedish rear admiral Göran Larsbrink said that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s adventurism in Ukraine had strengthened the desire of the Swedes to renationalise their submarine industry.

The Swedes were nervous about the resurgence of hard-edged military power in Europe, and on 8 April, the very day of the conference welcome reception, the Swedish military had raided the premises of TKMS in Malmö, Sweden, and taken back sensitive submarine technology. Larsbrink tried to explain his government’s unprecedented actions, suggsting the Swedish government now regretted the sale of Kockums to the Germans. The chair of TKMS publicly accused the Swedish government of using “force to deprive us of our basic ownership rights”. This heated exchange raised eyebrows in the Department of Defence and the minister’s office. On 29 June the Swedes finally got their precious submarine builder back when Saab bought Kockums from TKMS.

Edit: Adding comments cut during loss of connectivity.

I knew Sweden was taking a hardline on arms transfers to Russia and was taking the whole Russian thing pretty seriously but this brings things to a whole new level.

Observations:

Sweden doesn't trust Germany (and by inference the EU?)
Sweden is quite comfortable using the full capabilities of a sovereign state, including the use of armed force - the EU and the courts be damned.

 

[a_majoor]

Anyone looking for some investment property 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2721887/France-flogs-le-family-silver-Cash-strapped-government-puts-state-owned-properties-sale-desperate-bid-balance-books.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&utm_content=bufferd2c99&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

France sells-off le family silver: Cash-strapped country puts its opulent New York properties up for sale in desperate bid to balance the books
France's national debt expected to hit almost €2trillion by the end of the year

Seven-floor, 16,000 sq ft apartment block in New York once used by diplomatic staff goes on market for $32.5million
It follows sale of ambassador's residence overlooking Central Park which sold for $70million earlier this year
French Government has an estimated €190billion worth of state-owned property in Europe
2,150 state-owned properties currently being sold on government website
By MAIL ONLINE REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 14:41 GMT, 11 August 2014 | UPDATED: 17:08 GMT, 11 August 2014

France is resorting to selling off many of its most prestigious and valuable properties in a desperate bid to raise funds and keep its national debt under control.

With France's total debt expected to hit almost €2trillion ($2.7trillion) by the end of the year and President Francois Hollande's government hoping to save around €50billion ($67billion) over the next three years, state-owned properties across the world are having to be offered up for sale.

The latest property to go on the market is 1143 Fifth Avenue in New York - a stunning seven-floor, red brick and limestone block in central Manhattan once home to many of France's top U.S. diplomats.

Up for grabs: This seven-floor apartment block in Manhattan, New York, which was once used to house  French diplomatic staff is being offered for sale f

Covering 16,000 sq ft, the imposing block was built in 1923 and has an asking price of $32.5million (€24million). It consists of five apartments each boasting an impressive 1690 sq ft as well as a stunning eight-room duplex offering a huge 2712 sq ft.
Viewings are understood to have started in April and it is believed that a buyer has already been found as the official authorisation for the sale was granted last week by France's Office Journal, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The cars with a certain 'je ne sais quoi' take to the track at Le Mans - French track hosts 2,500 Citroens, the ultimate Gallic vehicle
French and Irish wind farms could receive British funding... so long as they export power to the UK

It follows the sale earlier this year of the luxurious 18-room French ambassador’s residence at 740 Park Avenue which was reportedly snapped up by an American financier for a cool $70 million (€52 million).

Once dubbed the world's 'richest apartment building' the block was once home to Jacqueline Kennedy and John D Rockerfeller. The 18-room, 7-1/2 bath duplex apartment featured five fireplaces was reportedly used to host parties on an almost daily basis.

Its sale resulted in some embarrassment for France's new ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre who is yet to find a new place to live after his plan to buy a a palatial 14-room Art Deco flat overlooking the East River were blocked by one of the current residents.

New York City socialite Elizabeth Kabler reportedly upended the sale because she didn't like the idea of a French ambassador moving in and throwing too many parties.

Fearful of too many guests, constant entertaining and of a neighbor who fancies himself above the law, Kabler waged a biter campaign to urge her fellow stakeholders to block the sale of the 14-room co-op to French , or any foreign emissaries.

Sold: An 18-room apartment at 740 Park Avenue, overlooking Central Park, previously used as the French  ambassador's residence was reportedly snapped up by an American financier for a cool $70 million earlier this year

Homeless: The sale of the apartment at 740 Park Avenue means France's new ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre s yet to find a new place to live
In a letter sent to fellow residents she wrote: 'It is not in the interests of the residents of River House to cohabit with foreign emissaries who are, to a large extent, beyond the reach of the law.'

France has an estimated €190billion worth of state-owned property in Europe, more than any other country. A government website is currently listing some 2150 properties that are currently up for sale or in the process of being sold, indicating the scale of the sell-off.

Among the prestigious properties that have already been offered for sale are Louis XV's hunting lodge at La Muette outside Paris and Chateau Thonon-les-Bains  by Lake Geneva in the French Alps.

France is not the the only country looking to cash in on state-owned properties. London in particular has seen scores of embassies or diplomacy related buildings sold or considered for sale in recent months.

The trend was started by the US government which sold its embassy in grosvenor Square to the Qatari royal family — for an estimated £500 million.

Canada recently sold its Mayfair embassy for £306milion - more than six times the value placed on it just 14 years ago.

The Brazilian embassy, on Green Street, Mayfair, fetched £40 million, with one agent describing the diplomatic market as a 'goldmine'.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2721887/France-flogs-le-family-silver-Cash-strapped-government-puts-state-owned-properties-sale-desperate-bid-balance-books.html#ixzz3A8sNM3JI
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

[a_majoor]

So many of Europe's problems are self inflicted. As Edward likes to remind us, the EU is illiberal, and here is yet another reminder that voters in the EU do not have the same sort of influence we have here (should *we* choose to vote):

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/382181/slouching-towards-post-democracy-andrew-stuttaford

Slouching Towards Post-Democracy

By Andrew Stuttaford

July 8, 2014 12:37 AM

An interesting, if somewhat technical, story emerged in the EU’s parliament yesterday.

Let’s start with Euractiv:

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage this evening (7 July) blasted the three main pro-European parties for blocking his Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy MEPs from influential positions in European Parliament committees. At time of going to press (7 July), it appeared that the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe had teamed up to prevent the posts going to the EFDD.

After a secret ballot this evening, they rejected Italian EFDD MEP Eleanora Evi as chairman of Committee on Petitions, 23 votes to eight, instead electing Liberal Cecilia Wikstrom. They also blocked Evi, from Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, from a vice-chairmanship. She said the move was “anti-democratic and immoral”.

EFDD sources said they had also been blocked from influential posts in the agricultural committee, which they blamed on the stitch-up between the three groups. The EFDD currently has no chairmanships or vice chairmanships in any committee.

To take a step back at this point, the ‘EFDD’ is the political ‘family’ within which UKIP is housed for the purposes of the EU parliament. The biggest of these families is the European Peoples’ Party (the EPP), the center-right grouping that, until a few years back, also included Britain’s Tories.  Being a part of such families (the bigger and the more pan-European the better) generates substantial procedural advantages within the parliament and also (I know, I know) can increase the amount of taxpayer funding available.

Anyway, back to the story, turning naturally to the Shanghai Daily:

The composition of the committees, including each chairmanship, is carved up according to the D’Hondt system, a calculus designed to award posts in proportion to the number of MEPs in each political grouping that make up the EP.  Following last week’s elections in Strasbourg to decide who sits on the each committee it was thought that the eurosceptic Europe of Freedom & Direct Democracy (EFDD) group would chair the petitions committee, with the job going to Italian MEP Eleonora Evi, from Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement. This committee scrutinizes petitions from individual EU citizens but is more important in guarding against lobbying by special interest groups.

That’s not how it worked out.  The EPP, center-left S&D and ‘liberal’ ALDE groupings (respectively the largest, second largest and fourth largest ‘families’ in the parliament) agreed between themselves to ignore the D’Hondt precedent and to vote in that ALDE Swede.

Even ahead of this (secret: the EU parliament doesn’t do accountability) vote, the planned stitch-up had already outraged the Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA), a grouping, incidentally, with politics very different to those of the EFDD.

Shanghai Daily:

Danish MEP Margrete Auken, the Greens spokesperson on the committee, said: “Excluding any political group from a committee chairmanship to which it is due under the established system for fairly distributing these posts would be a blow to the democratic process in the EU Parliament. This goes beyond petty politicking to the heart of European democracy.”

Auken added that it was all the more important for the petitions committee, given its role in defending rules and rights and “standing up to interference by special interests”.

”The candidate nominated by the EFDD group appears to have all the qualifications and the right approach to adequately exercise this duty,” the Danish MEP continued. “

Now, the D’Hondt system is a ‘convention’, not a rule. Legally, it can be ignored. That it has been, however, on this occasion and in this way, is telling. Not only are the EPP, S&D and ALDE sending a clear signal to Europe’s increasing number of euroskeptic voters that their opinions simply don’t count, but they are also revealing something else: that their loyalty to the construction of a European superstate transcends the allegedly distinct ideologies for which they are meant to stand. In that connection, it’s worth remembering that the ‘center-right’ EPP and the ‘center-left’ S&D voted together some 75 percent of the time in the last EU parliament, as indeed, you would expect oligarch parties to do.

And so, once again, we turn wearily to the last lines of Animal Farm:

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

The idea that this structure can be reformed is idiocy. Pretending that it can be is deceit.

 

[Kirkhill]

Bugger yer constitutions....

Parliament is supreme.

 

[Edward Campbell]

But it is the Constitution that says that "parliament is supreme" ... it's all there, not written down anywhere, but absolutely clear and enforced, on an as required basis, by the courts and even (albeit about 350 years ago) by the military. 

 

[Kirkhill]

But it is the Constitution that says that "parliament is supreme" ... it's all there, not written down anywhere, but absolutely clear and enforced, on an as required basis, by the courts and even (albeit about 350 years ago) by the military. 
[/quote

Fair enuff but...  ;D

Common Lawyers may get that but I doubt that Civil Lawyers grok it.  And both in Canada and the EU the Civil Lawyers are in the ascendancy (in Canada ever since Trudeau's Triumph (his Constitution)).  Instead of the merits being debated by peers (juries or commons) adjudication is handled by expert judges and bureaucrats.

 

[Edward Campbell]

In Daily Mail/Toronto Sun terms the headline is:

France Surrenders ... Again


But the story, from Bloomberg is that "The French government abandoned its 2014 deficit targets after the economy unexpectedly failed to grow for a second straight quarter, risking a clash with European partners striving to meet their own fiscal goals," but this is not sitting well in Germany where Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said that "France should stop pleading for more support from Germany and accelerate measures to overhaul its economy."

Before the Euro the continental Europeans developed an Exchange Rate Mechanism called the snake which aimed to keep all member currencies within a smallish range against one another. The Brits joined, but when, in 1992, George Soros organized a 'run' on the £ the Brits were honest and withdrew from the snake. The French, on the other hand, simply lied ... they lied when the snake was introduced and they continue to lie to their Eurozone partners today. The French, being French, consider self serving lies to be self evident truths, so no problem ... right?