The big news this morning is the EU reaching an agreement on its’ Euro 750 bln rescue fund and a total €1.1 trillion EU budget, after its longest ever, five-day, marathon negotiating session.
Ode to Joy is blasting round the halls of Berlaymont, but it’s hardly the symbol of solidarity Macron, Merkel et al are claiming between the member states. Its pragmatism in action as the frugal four/five (depends if you count Finland) were bought into line with promises of rebates, Hungary got away with Orban’s war on democracy, while Poland wriggles out of carbon neutrality by 2050 and can keep burning coal.
It would be easy to pick holes across the whole conflabulated deal, but why snipe? We should celebrate Europe reaching agreement. The market loves it…
This morning’s agreement is another step in the EU’s slow and painful path towards a Federal Europe.
Much to the chagrin of Brexit-supporting, EU-hating Tory skeptics – Europe is getting there, plod by agonising plod. Sure, there are massive cracks in the edifice, which are disguised by slapping on a veneer of Polyfilla that will need fixed again in a few years time.. but its slowly happening..
But….
My big concern for Europe is that’s it’s becoming just too huge a project to succeed. European unity was working well, through closer economic ties and friendly political links, open borders and a common market boosting recovering post war economies, but then it suddenly became a confused rush and embrace an ill-conceived common currency and unwished for political union.
It’s now become even more complex than building La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and less well defined in terms of plans..
All the energy that’s been expended on the “Project” is effort that, perhaps, could have been used better to create wealth, jobs and prosperity across a Europe of diverse but closer links, allowing the process of gradual integration, generation by generation to meld us together. Instead, the EU has become a massive state bureaucracy primarily concerned with consolidation and re-distribution rather than the creation of national wealth.
Generation by generation Europe will become a single state.
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