It's time to make Europe smaller, more focused, less distracted by the English-speaking countries with their special relationships across the globe which have the habit of getting the way of them being properly European. Let them have the customs unoin they thing the EU should be limited to, and let it be called the UK. And, Ireland, having rejected Europe not once, but twice, and bought in, election after election, to Anglo-American neo-liberalism, should be invited to join in. Similarly, countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, also keen advocates of what Jerome calls anglo disease and in any event trojan horses against the Europe I want to see, should also be invited to join it...in both cases virtually no one in those countries does not speak English and small wonder since that's the world view to which they've married themselves.
Similarly, countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, also keen advocates of what Jerome calls anglo disease and in any event trojan horses against the Europe I want to see, should also be invited to join it...in both cases virtually no one in those countries does not speak English and small wonder since that's the world view to which they've married themselves.
Now there is a European Economic Area that encompasses the EU, the EFTA and Switzerland. Countries can leave the EU and remain in the EEA. Will any do so? Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
The issue with a multi-speed Europe within and outside the EU (retaining the EEA) is that you still have essentially free trade with countries that have lower social standards. If you want to change that, you'll have to destroy both the EU and the EEA.
It is becoming evident that "enhanced cooperations" are the only way forward.
I agree totally, and would add that such enhanced cooperations will be "bottom up" and networked cooperations.
IMHO networked P2P financing and economic interaction - and particularly energy flows - is drivin the "once in a thousand years" transition currently under way.
The geographic frame for such economic cooperation has its roots, as we have discussed, in historic interactions within and across river and sea basins.
eg a Hanseatic League Mark II, and maybe a Mediterranean League as well. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
At the moment lower social standards/tax rates are the only ways in which poorer, smaller, more peripheral members can compete even marginally with the big boys - it is not so much a matter of political choice as of economic necessity.
On the larger point I would expect increased divergence or enhanced cooperation to develop as the EU becomes bigger and more unwieldy as a whole. The Euro/Schengen and various national derogations shows this can be compatible with the development of the EU as a whole. The best way to promote some progressive policies is to show that they work to the advantage of those member states which have embraced them.
I have no difficulty, for instance, with the French public healthcare system being promulgated as the standard for an emerging European model for healthcare provision - to be adopted on a member by member basis or the slow development of minimal EU standards. In fact we should be actively looking for examples of "Best practice" in members states with a view to promoting them at an EU level. But lets not be under any illusions about this - unless the EU competencies, budget, and wealth equalisation programmes are dramatically upscaled none of this is feasible across gross national differentials of income and wealth.
It ill-behoves the wealthy members to lecture the poorer on lower social standards if the one thing they will not agree to is the wealth transfers that would be required to make the equalisation of social standards possible... notes from no w here
Virtually the entire programme of the New Deal in the US and what followed through the 1960's involved just such a thing, rural electrification, investments in a national transportation grid leaving no region out, schools in poor areas, public housing pretty much everywhere, energy generation grid. And those parts of the US which were far behind in wealth, particularly the south, caught up. Overall wealth also went up, as previously poor southerners could now plug into the national economy and buy goods they couldn't afford before, just like Latvians and Poles should be able to afford more German and Frnehc goods as their prosperity increases, thereby increasing our own.
The thing is, you don't get your return on investment in such a scheme when you simultaneously employ neo-liberal trade policies, because there is no guarantee that the fruits of those investments be re-invested in or consumed of one's own goods. IF the Poles prosper only to turn around and buy American goods, what's the use in that?
And, what's more, the neo-liberal extremism that we've seen in trade and capital flow agreements and proposals ever since GATT accentuate not only this fact, but also drives migrations which otherwise would not have happened, further stressing solidartiy mechanisms. And, of course, those who profit from such arrangements are the last to want to pay for the consequences, and the parties they bankroll tend to play the anti-immigrant card to great effect, one need not look further than today's UK to see the end result.
We clearly need more coordinated investments, financed by the richer countries, and yes, I think debt-financing is in order. But...we need to change other rules of the game, too. The US made out like bandits from the Marshall plan, not least because the aid was required to be spent on US capital ando ther goods. When we do the same thing, the trade rules need to be similar. Else, there's really no sense in it. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
To the EEC, clearly. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
