The EU and the Euro
I watched this interesting interview of the Guardian Newspaper writer, Aditya Chakraborrty by RT on the futures of the EU and the EU. Note my use of the pural – furtures. This is because like Aditya, I do not think that the future of the Euro and the future of the EU are the same thing.
Please watch this interesting interview and see if you concur of disagree with my conclusion which is broadly the the same as that of Aditya's.
The problem we have is that very many pro EU politicians turned the EU into the mess that it is, (a financial and political union, incomplete and flawed) from what was then EEC – (which was a trading block bound together by trade treaties). These people are completely opposed to seeing anything threaten their vision of a United States of Europe.
The problem lies in the fact that Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor and others at the helm of the EU see any backtracking on the Euro as a threat to the United States of Europe dream.
As Aditya strongly suggests in the interview - if Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal stay in the Euro, in it's current form, their economies will not be able to grow and will be be slowly strangled to death on two fronts–
1.firstly, because of their goods being uncompetitively priced under the single currency of the Euro.
2.and secondly, lack and deterioration of essential public services due to lack of investment caused by very severe austerity cuts.
What Chancellor Merkel and fellow proponents of the EU project have to realise and which is quite salient to myself, is that the Euro currency is not the European Union. The sooner they accept that the the flawed concept for United States of Europe project is now badly damaged and that bold decisions to be taken in order to solve the economic problems. These problems dog not only Greece but threaten all European economies including countries not in the Euro zone.
My own opinion, it hat the Euro should be split into two tiers, and countries whose economies need to devalue should move to the lower value euro. It will not be pretty. But simply pretending that Greece is the only problem economy in the EU will not solve the problem. And I for one want us to tackle our own problems in Europe and not have our countries owned by the Chinese and intolerant Islamic states by being bailed out by them. There is no such think as a free lunch.