Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-08-Speech-3-038"
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"Madam President, what a funny old European Union it is, isn’t it? Last Saturday afternoon, after a jolly good lunch at the Élysée, the European leaders stood on the steps and they talked with fairly weak smiles about solidarity. The smiles were weak, of course, because President Sarkozy’s US-style bail-out plan had already collapsed into the dust. But nonetheless, ‘United we stand’ is what was said. And yet, with almost comic hypocrisy, the German Chancellor decided that German interests come first and European interests come second, and she acted – and, perhaps for the first time in years, she got loud applause from her own electorate.
Of course it was the Irish that started this trend the week before by going their own way, and my admiration for Ireland grows by the day. But I think the last week is going to prove to be the watershed moment for this entire European project. You see, the only way to stop countries acting in their own national interest is to take that power away from them – to form a treasury department, there in Frankfurt, that has power over tax, and power over government spending. Indeed I have heard some of the EU extremists this afternoon effectively call for that. Yet you cannot do it, because it will not command public support. In fact to do that would be even more unpopular than your hated Lisbon Treaty.
No: it is more likely that what has happened in the last week marks the beginning of the end. The markets are saying it already. Italian government bonds now yield 1% more than German- or French-issued government bonds. The markets are saying that economic and monetary union will not last. And I am not surprised, because it never was an optimal currency zone. One interest rate could never fit all these different countries, and you have never had proper public support.
But it must be one thing or the other. It is either a full EU state that controls everything, or it is disintegration and back to national control. The credit crunch is hitting and hurting all of us, but I see a speck of light at the end of the tunnel. I see a dividend: possibly the beginning of the end of this whole mad and unwanted project."@en1
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"en.20081008.14.3-038"2
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