It's a Family Thing

The Romanian Government has collapsed. You don’t care, but you probably should. Europe is crumbling at the edges. Greek nationalism (remember nationalism – died and was buried with the advent of the EU? R.I.P.) is growing – evidenced by their refusal to play ball with either bankers or the ECB. It was this seeming intransigence that led to the plan being tabled for the EU to take over the economic governance of Greece: an annexation in all but name and an extraordinary thing to be put on the table in the age of “democracy”.

Barely noticed in the tumult is Hungary’s growing need to fund its debt and the likelihood of it becoming on EU budgetary assistance, or Portugal’s relentless slide into dependency on the ECB. For well over a year now, the EU has been overriding national sentiment and elected bodies to pursue its corporatistic vision.

Prognostication is a mug’s game (I’ve been predicting that the end game is just around the corner for nearly 2 years) but it’s clear that the pace of events is changing. The Merkozy ‘fiskalunion’ compact – so loudly trumpeted just weeks ago – may get signed into legislation (despite Cameron’s phantom ‘veto’) but the Europeans may as well pledge to send men to the moon, for all the connection with reality such a deal has.

The real end game isn’t being played out in the corridors of Brussels, or being stage-managed by grandstanding politicians and central bankers. It is being played out in the minds of countless millions who have seen their democracies sacrificed, their futures shattered and their identities trampled in the name of saving a distant bureaucracy and a roster of too-big-to-fail institutions via “economics” which have the use and relevance of trailing a finger through fish innards or staring at the stars. How long will it simmer before boiling over?

The demagogues come in times of tumult to feast on discontent and the truth is that the politicians know that they no longer command legitimacy  - hence their panic at the mention of plebiscites and democracy. As ever was, a nexus of money and power is coalescing to preserve itself and – has as always happened – an opposing force will arise: either the inchoate rebellion of the masses (see: the “occupy” movement, only with more point) or the emergence of nationalistic strongmen who suddenly find receptive ears.

Melodramatic? You’re right. Go buy some Facebook shares and rejoice.

Some irrelevancy, yesterday

David Cameron’s much touted ‘veto’ of the alleged ‘treaty’  at the EU ‘summit’ last week is still setting the political discourse of the media alight. Variously, it has been cast as an example of heroism, treachery, genius or stupidity.

And yet the ‘summit’ was actually a meeting of the EU council, which meets routinely anyway. The council has no legislative power and so could not in any case draw up a ‘treaty’ for Cameron to veto. At best reading, attendees suggested the outlines of some proposals for a future agreement and Cameron indicated that Britain wouldn’t take part in that agreement were it to be formally proposed.

To pretend that he has bravely/foolishly taken any sort of actual action at all is the merest nonsense. That the press are hyperventilating about this phantom series of events tells you all you need to know about the seriousness with which they ply their trade.

The statement of the outcome of the council is, naturally, vague but confirms this:

“The fiscal compact agreed today will be made legally binding by an international agreement. The agreement will be open to the EU member states that are currently not members of the euro area. All EU member states apart from one said they were considering participating.”

The ‘compact’ is basically another one of these things the EU likes so much – an unenforceable set of rules – including limiting ‘structural deficits’ to 0.5% of GDP – and more submission to European bodies – “Member states undergoing an excessive deficit procedure will have to submit to the Commission and the Council for endorsement the structural reforms they plan to take in order to meet the requirement to correct excessive deficits.”

Or in English: “give Brussels the power of veto over your budgets”. Now check again for the weasel words in the first quote: “all EU member states but one said they were considering participating.”

At the moment, everyone is hedging their bets. Everyone fears the secrets of their balance sheets being exposed to the glare of the market and so are trying to hide under Germany’s wings so at this stage of course they would agree to consider any plan that might help them. A ratified treaty that maketh not.

And in reality, what would such an agreement mean? An unelected government of technocrats being parachuted in to do Brussels’ bidding – as in the case of Italy – or the threat of popular plebiscites overridden – as we saw in Greece. Whatever it is, it ain’t your Grandad’s democracy. Only in the corridors of the EU apparatus would anybody imagine that sovereign states will readily hand over their independence to an unelected body of technocrats, or that that will take place with the sanguine acceptance of the peoples directly affected.

So we have the weird spectacle of the press disagreeing or agreeing with a veto that never was, against a treaty that doesn’t exist and that has no agreement other than in principle from other members anyway.

Furthermore, enshrined in this putative agreement is effectively the requirement not to run deficit spending programs in the future, which is the knee-jerk response to being caught out so badly this time. And yet the EU’s medicine has done knack-all to save poor Greece (worse off now than at any point during the crisis) and, bizarrely, runs counter to the anti-cuts, Keynesian model of deficit spending that has characterised what most states have actually done.

In short, this whole thing barely qualifies as a dog’s breakfast, much less a dinner, and is no solution to anything other than the need for various politicians to stride about, chests puffed out, declaring themselves to be the hardest kid on the estate. Nonsense.