Here is an idea!

I HAVE long held the view that quitting the Euro and reverting to a free-floating peseta would restore the fiscal flexibility so desperately needed to help balance budgets and bring unemployment under control. Unfortunately, those in charge of the economy appear too timid to consider such a step, but...

Shameless – or merely thoughtless?

WHILST almost the entire eurozone groans beneath the weight of austerity measures demanded by Brussels, with millions out of work, countless others on the breadline, and some even losing their homes, what has been the EU’s response? To demand – not request – that the ‘citizens’ of the European...

Europe re-born? But which of the many Europes?

FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE, the Socialist aspirant for France’s Presidency, took part in a function to celebrate the ‘renaissance of Europe’; a little premature you might think, since the future form of the EU is still undecided. One could even ask which of the many European configurations – cultural,...

Should Greece have called in the administrators?

BY utilising a doubtful form of financial chicanery, Greece has managed to clear away €100 billion of sovereign debt by retrospectively writing into government bond contracts a piece of highway robbery called ‘Collective Action Clauses’ (CAC). This meant that once 65 per cent of bond-holders had agreed...

Politics is a strange business

IF a British politician were to bribe someone he thought could be in a position to further his aims, he might, especially if he did it at election time, be open to criminal proceedings. And yet this kind of behaviour appears to be tolerated, even encouraged, in the EU Corridors of Power where the euphemism...

Cracking the whip EU style

The ‘Eurogroup’ – no doubt yet another layer of EU bureaucrats – has issued a statement detailing the measures demanded by the EU Commission and the Troika before the next instalment of the bail-out can be made available to the Greek government. It’s worth noting that these demands – in disguised...

Spain makes it easier to get rid of lazy workers

THE reform of Spain’s Labour Laws has been big news, and not before time. For too long the level of youth unemployment – at almost 50 per cent – has been a national disgrace, with nothing being done to correct the problem, for fear perhaps in the past, of upsetting the smaller,...

European democracy is an oxymoron

THE EU remains enmeshed in its habitual tangle of differing opinions, and Heads of State continue to put their political careers before anything else. So I thought I might distance myself from such kindergarten squabbling, but what did I find whilst ‘surfing the web’, but a re-hash of comments I made in...

Merkozy mark 2

ONE should really give credit – if that’s the right word – to Merkel and Sarkozy for striving so untiringly to get their Fiscal Union Plan back on the rails, even if it means sneaking it in by the back door and with a different name. When David Cameron vetoed the original proposal which would have...

Fiscal union – a plan, or a prop?

A FEW thoughts concerning the ‘Merkozy’ Fiscal Union plan. Let’s start with Greece, the government of which, headed by the EU Commission-appointed Lukas Papademos, is still in deep trouble. The Prime Minister has been warning the Unions, the Bankers, and the public in general, that if Greece fails to...