Thread: The end of the EU?

EU treaty to fix debt crisis fails

EU treaty to fix debt crisis fails - Europe - Al Jazeera English

Franco-German plans to get all 27 members to back EU treaty changes collapses as Britain rejects plans.
Last Modified: 09 Dec 2011 04:27


A bid to change the EU treaty to resolve the eurozone debt crisis foundered at a crunch summit in Brussels on Friday on a British refusal to sign up without major concessions in return.
The key item on the agenda was a Franco-German plan on a tighter fiscal controls with automatic penalties for eurozone nations that overspend.

Reports say Berlin and Paris failed to secure backing from all 27 EU members to change the bloc's treaties to proceed with reforms.
Any deal will now likely involve only the 17 eurozone members.

Al Jazeera's Tim Friend reporting from Brussels says "Its now pretty clear, they have been unable to reach a concensus amongst the 27 EU members, so they might now carve an agreement amongst the 17 nation eurozone members."

With the euro already down against the dollar and stocks hit hard from New York to Tokyo, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of current EU chair Poland had warned beforehand that failure to convince Britain to sign up would mean the "coffin" for a post WWII EU integration.

The summit in Brussels was undermined early on Thursday by a European Central Bank (ECB) warning that there will be no big boost in rescue funding.
On Thursday, leaders took tentative steps to implement a so-called "golden rule" asking countries to set balanced budgets until debt levels drop, although this was only agreed "in principle" with political wriggle room remaining, diplomats said.

Difficult talks running overnight began on a sour note when ECB president Mario Draghi, who joined pre-summit negotiations with a restricted power group of Germany, France and leading EU officials, sent stock markets falling.

Draghi said hoped-for ECB action to buy up the sovereign bonds of debt-wracked countries was "limited" and "temporary".

Over the past two years, bond traders have driven up borrowing costs for a succession of eurozone countries.

Markets have been looking to see how European Union leaders would come up with a promised trillion-euro emergency firewall to save Italy or Spain if sucked in like Greece and others beforehand.



full article at the link above

EU leaders agree fiscal pact, falter on treaty change

WRAPUP 1-EU leaders agree fiscal pact, falter on treaty change | Reuters

Thu Dec 8, 2011 10:53pm EST


BRUSSELS, Dec 9 (Reuters) - European Union leaders sealed a new fiscal pact ensuring tougher budget discipline but failed to agree on a treaty change to enshrine the rules, meaning a deal may now involve the 17 euro zone nations plus any others that want to join, diplomats said.

An agreement involving all 27 EU members fell through - raising the prospect of a two-speed Europe - after British Prime Minister David Cameron demanded concessions that Germany and France were not willing to give, one of the officials said.

"We've always said we would do it at 17 if it didn't work at 27. That's what happened," one senior EU diplomat told Reuters.

The EU leaders, meeting in Brussels, agreed on automatic sanctions for euro area deficit offenders unless three-quarters of states vote against the move, and approved a new fiscal rule on balanced budgets to be written into national constitutions.

"There is a deal between leaders on the new fiscal compact," an EU official told reporters.

After nearly 10 hours of talks running into the early hours of Friday morning, they also decided that the currency bloc's future permanent bailout fund, the ESM, would be capped at 500 billion euros, as Germany had insisted.

It will also not get a banking licence, which would have allowed it to draw on European Central Bank funds to increase its firepower, another move Germany objected to.

As soon as the draft summit agreement leaked late on Thursday, a senior German official rejected key measures including letting the future rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, operate as a bank, and a long-term goal of issuing common euro zone bonds.

Shares and commodities fell, while the euro remained under pressure, on growing doubts that Europe could forge a credible plan to solve the euro zone's debt crisis.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, the summit chairman, wanted all 27 EU states to agree to the rule changes via a minor adjustment to a treaty protocol that could be implemented quickly without requiring full ratification.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded a fully fledged treaty change to give the measures extra weight.

Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy had said that if all 27 EU states did not support more fiscal union by adapting the existing Lisbon treaty, which took eight years to negotiate, then the 17 euro zone countries should press on alone with more integration.

The danger for Cameron is that if a large majority of EU countries do push ahead with deeper integration, it could involve discussions over changes to the single market and financial regulation, both of which could have a profound impact on the British economy.

"Cameron was clumsy in his manoeuvering," another senior EU diplomat said. Efforts continued to get the British to shift their position.


full article at link above

"Cameron was clumsy in his manoeuvering," another unelected EU jobsworth said.

Fixed that for you.

Efforts continued to get the British to shift their position.

This morning Britain still 34 kms off the French coast.

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — If you want to understand the latest Franco-German proposal to “save” the euro, imagine this.




Imagine the governments of China and Japan demanding they be given the legal right to override the U.S. budget’s legislative process if needed, and to impose tax hikes and spending cuts on the American people as needed.

After all, China and Japan are our biggest creditors. The U.S. government owes them trillions. We’re not quite as deeply in debt as a share of our economic output, as Europe’s naughtiest Nellies. But we’re not far behind either.

Markets rallied this week on hopes that the leaders of the European Union will at long last solve the region’s budget crisis. Center stage is the new proposal from Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. They want to turn Europe into, effectively, a federal government, with the power to impose budget discipline on wayward members.

Their proposal is preposterous. Anything can happen in this life, but it would be remarkable indeed if this idea got off the ground. Anyone pinning their hopes that this will solve the crisis needs to think it through.

Why would the Portuguese accept the right of Germany to impose budget cuts on their country? Why would the Greeks?

Would we accept that role for the Chinese and the Japanese, the biggest holders of Treasury debt? How would you feel if you opened the paper to be told that the new Sino-Japanese “Fiscal Stability Commission” in Washington had just slashed your grandma’s Social Security checks by one-third, scaled back federal highway repairs, and that it would impose a 10% national sales tax?

That is, after all, effectively what is being offered to the people of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.

It’s absurd. There is no reason why these countries should have to surrender sovereignty. They can simply, where necessary, default. A default by, say, Louisiana would not destroy the dollar. Neither did the bankruptcy of Enron or Lehman.

The British look smarter and smarter for staying out of the euro area in the first place. Prime Minister John Major, and then, later, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, each took the decision to keep the British pound free. At the time fashionable opinion predicted disaster for the Brits. So much for that.

(Predictably, fashionable opinion now says the Brits look “isolated” for staying out. Really, you couldn’t make it up).

It has long been clear the Franco-German duo wanted to use their shared currency to bludgeon the continent into something closer to a federal system.

Any investor pinning their hopes on this bird flying needs to be aware it looks a lot more like a turkey than an eagle.

This week’s meeting of European leaders already marks the fifth “summit” to solve the region’s debt crisis since early 2009.

My favorite comment this time: “After a series of ‘final’ summits, it would be nice this time to have a real ‘final’ summit.” That was from Standard & Poor’s chief European economist, appropriately-enough named Jean-Michel Six. What’s the betting Mr. Six will be attending Summit No. Six in the new year?
Brett Arends is a senior columnist for MarketWatch and a personal-finance columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

Originally Posted by taxexile

The British look smarter and smarter for staying out of the euro area in the first place. Prime Minister John Major, and then, later, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, each took the decision to keep the British pound free.

... Brown was not opposed to the UK joining the Euro in principle, he just made it conditional, arguably because he could see that there has never been a majority UK population in support of it, and it was a good mechanism for uniting his party.

The way things are sounding, the EU is heading more and more towards becoming something more healthy, like EFTA, with more bilateralism due to unresolvable red-line issues for member states. It's surely obvious now how incompatible some of the economies are, any attempt to weld them together seems like a cut and shut. What good is a Seat, Fiat, and Renault, welded to a Mercedes? It just ruins a Mercedes.

Merkozy is dreaming, it was a losing battle from the beginning

between the treacherous British (which we should kick out of the EU for good measure) and the dodgy members (PIGS), it was too ambitious to achieve

by stirring the pot to fix things, Merkozy is actually stirring the shit and making the market nervous

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Merkozy is dreaming, it was a losing battle from the beginning

between the treacherous British (which we should kick out of the EU for good measure) and the dodgy members (PIGS), it was too ambitious to achieve

by stirring the pot to fix things, Merkozy is actually stirring the shit and making the market nervous

Poor Butterfly. Talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees.

The euro, as I said for over the past 4 years, is a construct of European socialism and could never sustain itself without a bank of last resort. Now the chickens have come home to roost Germany has to decide whether it will fulfill that role.

The Merkozy condominium might save France's bacon but it will do nothing in the long term for either the euro or the EU and imposing so called legal debt brakes and daft morality taxes on a free economy won't alter its path to stagnation - those brakes were already in place over the past 7 years but they faded at the first application and will do so again when it suits the purpose of either of Sarkozy's or Merkel's successors.

And that's the rub. The European model is entrenched in old prejudices that has always abhorred the free market, now epitomised by Britain. It's quite natural that Cameron and Britain were portrayed as the nigger in the woodpile since it will always appeal to any European politician steeped in socialist principles.

It's not for nothing that near 300,000 French prefer to live and work in Britain rather than that faux communist peasant country the other side of the ENGLISH channel.

Get over it Butterfly.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

between the treacherous British (which we should kick out of the EU for good measure)

Which 'we' are you referring to butters? Do the Belgians not have a vote?

Yes, please kick the nasty British out of the EU money pit. It will save them the cost of a referendum. hahahahahahahahah

This is just a small hick-up in the development of the Euro.
They have to solve the insolvency of some countries, but in essence, the Euro is a strong and trusted currency.

Originally Posted by chassamui

Yes, please kick the nasty British out of the EU money pit. It will save them the cost of a referendum. hahahahahahahahah

the truth is that nobody wants you in the EU, so I guess you have more in common with EU members than you thought

useless Brits, may your island sink with the Euro tunnel

I think the problem is that no-one wants the loathsome krauts or the back-stabbing frogs running Europe. European Union my arse.

Can't we motivate the Septics to bomb Europe? I'm sick and tired of the Kraut and the Frog on TV babbling on and on and on and on....

Originally Posted by chassamui

Even Mr pink fluffy Cameron isn't going to be bullied by a fag dwarf and a kraut hippo in the corner.

the fool Cameron is just your typical Brit princess, whining and crying on TV for attention. He is the new Diana.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

I think the problem is that no-one wants the loathsome krauts or the back-stabbing frogs running Europe.

that's why you English fucks kept knocking on our door to let you in. The truth is that the EU was created by the French and the German, so fucking deal with it and eat our shit.

Originally Posted by FlyFree

Can't we motivate the Septics to bomb Europe?

No. The US needs to get its experts and culture from somewhere.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

And then you try and steamroller over the rest of the EU to clean up the mess you made and thankfully Britain is there, on behalf of the rest of Europe, to tell you to fuck off.

and then you woke up, all wet in your pants

Britain is completely isolated, read the news, there is an agreement, only Poland and the UK are alone.

LONDON—The U.K.'s veto of a European Union-wide solution to the region's problems could leave Britain isolated from the Continent and triggered a fresh round of questions about its historically awkward relationship with Europe.

U.K. Veto of EU Plan Could Isolate Britain - WSJ.com

Originally Posted by Butterfly

The truth is that the EU was created by the French and the German,

And now you have the perfect excuse to blame the disintegration of the EU on Cameron.

I really don't understand what the UK is doing in the EU

it's not even on the mainland, that alone should be a disqualifier

the UK should remain the UK, isolated, far, and a remote island full of funny and strange people

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

Originally Posted by HermantheGerman

As far as I'm concerned the Brits have nothing.... and I mean nothing at all.... to offer.

The largest aerospace industry outside the US (and the most advanced), the cutting edge of the motor industry, pharma, design and plenty of other technology. Sadly, the UK doesn't own the most of the major brands any more, but the lower profile companies are still world leaders whether the great unwashed of Europe know it or not. Put it this way; Airbus wouldn't exist without the UK part of it, or if it did, it'd be on par with the likes of ATR.

True.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

I really don't understand what the UK is doing in the EU

Neither do most of us... it's only a few MPs, retired middle-class alcoholics, and journalists that want to keep us in.

We'll have to go back to join those other lonely failed economies, Norway and Switzerland in EFTA, ah well...

Originally Posted by CaptainNemo

Originally Posted by Butterfly

I really don't understand what the UK is doing in the EU

Neither do most of us... it's only a few MPs, retired middle-class alcoholics, and journalists that want to keep us in.

We'll have to go back to join those other lonely failed economies, Norway and Switzerland in EFTA, ah well...

I don't think Krone and Franc want to be Pounded

Britain alone in opposing EU treaty changes

Britain alone in opposing EU treaty changes - Europe - Al Jazeera English

While all other 26 EU members united after marathon talks, premier Cameron argues he is protecting national interests.
Last Modified: 09 Dec 2011 16:24

The European Union has said that 26 of its 27 member countries are open to joining a new treaty tying their finances together to solve the euro crisis. Only Britain remains opposed, creating a deep rift in the union.

In marathon overnight talks, the 17 countries that use the euro gradually persuaded nearly all the others to consider joining the new treaty they would create. Some of those countries may face parliamentary opposition to the treaty, which would allow for unprecedented oversight of national budgets.

"Except for one, all are considering participation," EU President Herman Van Rompuy told reporters after the summit ended. "I'm optimistic because I know it is going to be very close to 27."

A document released near the end of a high-stakes EU summit on Friday said the leaders of nine of the 10 EU countries that don't use the euro "indicated the possibility to take part in this process after consulting their parliaments where appropriate."


full article at the link above