The global financial crisis creates new losers each day. So far, though, the EU is looking like a winner. For many countries along the continent's northern edge, euro-skepticism is a luxury they can no longer afford. Will 2008 be remembered as the year that killed the euro-skeptics? It certainly didn't begin that way. Back in June, the people of Ireland stunned the world by voting down the Treaty of Lisbon, bringing the project of ever-closer European integration to a screeching halt. The failure of the Irish vote -- the only popular referendum on the treaty anywhere in Europe -- seemed to ratify the verdict delivered by French and Dutch voters in 2005 as they torpedoed the European Constitution: no more power for Brussels. Will anything be left standing after the financial crisis? The EU and its currency are among the few winners. Then, in August, the EU got another jolt when war broke out between Russia and Georgia. As conflict raged in the Caucasus, European officials struggled to come up with a unified response, underscoring tensions between member-states. The old-guard, led by France and Germany, sought to balance their affection for the newly-democratic Georgia with their dependence on Russian natural gas imports. At the same time, newer member states like Poland, for whom the experience of Russian intimidation was all too familiar, clamored for solidarity with Georgia. The EU looked weak and riven by internal conflict. These days, though, such bickering seems like ancient history. Between summer's turbulence and today's reality, the New York investment bank Lehman Brothers failed in mid-September, sending the world into a financial tailspin from which it might take years to recover. But instead of sounding the death knell for what was an already flailing EU, the financial crisis has had the effect of breathing new life into a bloc that just a couple months ago looked deflated and defeated.
The global financial crisis creates new losers each day. So far, though, the EU is looking like a winner. For many countries along the continent's northern edge, euro-skepticism is a luxury they can no longer afford.
Will 2008 be remembered as the year that killed the euro-skeptics? It certainly didn't begin that way.
Back in June, the people of Ireland stunned the world by voting down the Treaty of Lisbon, bringing the project of ever-closer European integration to a screeching halt. The failure of the Irish vote -- the only popular referendum on the treaty anywhere in Europe -- seemed to ratify the verdict delivered by French and Dutch voters in 2005 as they torpedoed the European Constitution: no more power for Brussels.
Will anything be left standing after the financial crisis? The EU and its currency are among the few winners. Then, in August, the EU got another jolt when war broke out between Russia and Georgia. As conflict raged in the Caucasus, European officials struggled to come up with a unified response, underscoring tensions between member-states. The old-guard, led by France and Germany, sought to balance their affection for the newly-democratic Georgia with their dependence on Russian natural gas imports. At the same time, newer member states like Poland, for whom the experience of Russian intimidation was all too familiar, clamored for solidarity with Georgia. The EU looked weak and riven by internal conflict.
These days, though, such bickering seems like ancient history. Between summer's turbulence and today's reality, the New York investment bank Lehman Brothers failed in mid-September, sending the world into a financial tailspin from which it might take years to recover. But instead of sounding the death knell for what was an already flailing EU, the financial crisis has had the effect of breathing new life into a bloc that just a couple months ago looked deflated and defeated.
Letter From Berlin: As Financial Crisis Grows, EU Emerges Stronger - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International
... Right now, Danish interest rates stand at 5 percent, putting the country at a considerable competitive disadvantage to its neighbors in the euro zone countries, whose interest rates recently dropped half a point to 3.25 percent. Further cuts are expected. As the Danish economy joins the rest of the continent in the march toward recession, those high interest rates will feel increasingly punishing. <...> "It used to be possible to be pro-EU and anti-euro," [Johannes Andersen, a political scientist at Denmark's University of Aalborg] told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Now, since interest rates started nosing upward, those already predisposed to be friendly to EU are likely to be pro-euro as well.
As the Danish economy joins the rest of the continent in the march toward recession, those high interest rates will feel increasingly punishing. <...>
"It used to be possible to be pro-EU and anti-euro," [Johannes Andersen, a political scientist at Denmark's University of Aalborg] told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Now, since interest rates started nosing upward, those already predisposed to be friendly to EU are likely to be pro-euro as well.
their affection for the newly-democratic Georgia with their dependence on Russian natural gas imports.
All the massive onslaught of recent information that shows beyond a doubt that the war stemmed from mostly unprovoked Georgian agreession still hasn't changed the narrative on this.
How about balancing the claims of "volatile and unstable Georgia with their delicate longstanding relations with their largest neighbor"? In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
