A new European United Nations ?

Prague on Thursday for the inaugural meeting of the European Political Community to discuss the continent's challenges, with leaders insisting on common values.

The new club of nations has been billed as an opportunity for European leaders to have political discussions and was initially pitched as a community of democratic nations in response to Russia's war in Ukraine.

But some of the heads of state in Prague have questioned the presence of some of their counterparts including the Turkish and Azerbaijani leaders, according to an EU official quizzed on the issue.

Read more at: https://www.euronews.com

Globalization: Trump: The Final Wake-Up Call - by Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and Udo Bullmann

Against this backdrop, we concur with Jürgen Habermas, who posits the supranational regulation of globalisation and its subjection to superior social and ecological goals for humankind as the single most important challenge progressives will be facing throughout coming years, and even decades. The revival of the striving for a genuine political union in Europe must be at the heart of this struggle.

We will, otherwise, become the powerless witnesses of a global tragedy although important breakthroughs seemed so close just a minute ago. Shortly after global consensus could be reached on the United Nations sustainable development goals and the recent Paris climate change accord, these great promises of a better world could be undermined and made unachievable by the triumph of the enemies of global progress.

This is why we have to generate a new vision about the type of globalisation we, as progressives, stand for and fight for, and clearly define where political divides and choices lie. In the spirit of Habermas’ call for a democratic polarisation, we need to drive home the fact that our ideals are more sustainable and essentially better than those defended by the liberal and conservative apologists of a globalisation that has turned against ordinary people.

Many policy areas are concerned, from international trade to the regulation of the financial sector, from macroeconomic policy to social protection and labour standards, from the promotion of peace to the defence of human rights and the right to a decent life for all human beings on a preserved and protected planet. This will also be about regaining the political initiative and redefining the terms of the public and political debate.

Our yardstick should always and rigorously be whether our policies bring a better life to ordinary and hard working people, to the most vulnerable, to minorities and, most importantly, to the younger generations, a majority of whom still believe in a different world than the one promoted by nationalistic and nostalgic rhetoric. They are ready to fight for such a better world, as post-election protests in the US have movingly shown.

Trump’s wake-up call must trigger the dawn of a new era of progressive political influence across the globe, not the end of our world. Let us seize this moment and live up to it. We still can.

Read more: Trump: The Final Wake-Up Call

The European Dream Is Based On A ‘Equals Around A Table’ Metaphor - by Rune Kier Nielse

European Commission President José M. Barroso is searching for a new European Union narrative.

As I have argued elsewhere, the EU needs a dream of the Martin Luther King Jr.-type if it wants to stay relevant for the European population. I agree with Barroso in seeing the EU’s lack of a positive vision as a threat to its democratic legitimacy by low public anticipation and appreciation. Eurosceptics stand strong because the union has failed to arm its allies. At the moment the European Union is without a clear vision to mobilise and engage the public leaving its allies vulnerable to strategies of ‘divide and conquer’.

The lack of vision gives rise to xenophobia, ethnic tension and conflicts between rich and poor. Yet the European dream has strong potential for a social Europe. I believe a successful European story would have three characteristics to fulfill its function as described above:

a) It should be derived from the recognised history of the Union to be credible and it should draw on known mythology to be forcefull. That is, it should build a bridge between the Union’s known history and the mythology of the continent – Union and European.

b) It should be sufficiently concrete to convey a sense of shared familiarity and vivid enough to stir emotions enough to create belonging, community and engagement. That is, it should build on local lives and let the means fit the message.

c) It should shield the Union from its most obvious weaknesses and it should give direction to future actions. That is, it should help determine what the ‘small things’ and what the ‘big things’are.

 Read more: The European Dream Is Based On A 'Equals Around A Table' Metaphor

Little to look forward to for EU in 2013

The year 2012 has come to an end, and with it comes a bitter realization. No matter how much help is given to ailing countries like Greece, however large the bailouts they receive, the fundamental problems of the monetary union will not have been solved.

The economic gulf between member countries of the EU remains too large.

Could it be that the euro, the tremendous prestige project of European integration, is inherently flawed? None less than Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, has acknowledged that the currency union, in its current form, "isn't sustainable without taking further steps."

Chancellor Angela Merkel described as a "foundational error" in the euro that the single currency has not yet led to economic convergence between member countries.
The EU would like to change that. At the most recent summit in December, Merkel drove the point home. "I believe that the member states, but also the EU as a whole, are ready to push profound changes through."

Read more: Little to look forward to for EU in 2013 | Europe | DW.DE | 31.12.2012

" Europe is an economic giant, a political dwarf, and a military worm" - Mark Eyskens: by Craig Willy

The above words were pronounced by Belgium’s then-Foreign Minister on the eve of 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. The often-cited bon mot, two decades on, still rings true. But while militarily the European Union is likely remain marginal in the years to come, there are indications it will become something like a “political giant”.

The trouble with the EU (and before that the Communities) – the idea that it could have a coherent policy or even be a world power – has always been that it is effectively a “vetocracy”. A system where decisions of any significance must be taken unanimously means reform and good government are almost impossible. If the status quo suits just one representative’s constituents enough, then no change is possible. This is the single most important reason for the EU’s impotence in world affairs.But the EU, as we’ve seen, will in many areas likely become as “federal-majoritarian” as the United States of America, minus (very significantly) the budget.

The European Superstate may even, in fact, function better than the very minoritarian and viciously partisan American political system of today.

National vetoes and the impulse to collaborate with American schemes will mean that official so-called “European foreign policy” and defense will likely remain marginal (notwithstanding the large number of, mostly relatively small, EU civil and military operations abroad). However, these days, foreign policy and world power are less and less the stuff of diplomatic chancelleries and hard military action. (Can it be said that the U.S. “benefited” from the untold trillions spent and other non-financial costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the two greatest manifestations of American military power?)

Instead today, as economic, environmental and security interdependence between countries steadily increases, foreign policy is increasingly an extension of domestic policy, what in German is called Weltinnenpolitik. In English, we talk less elegantly of “intermestic” issues and there is overlap with the concept of “global governance”. As examples, here are some of the questions the world powers of today are fighting over: What kind of world will we live in? A world of massive energy waste? Of environmental unsustainability? Of banksterism run amok? Of international lawlessness? Of war? Or will we live in a world Europeans (and likely others too) would want to live in? These questions will not be determined primarily by hard military power and conquest.

Instead, here, the EU may well actually be able to become a genuine actor. Within Europe, the rules for financial regulation and climate, for example, will be based on qualified majority voting. Outside Europe, trade and aid policy, the prime methods for incentivizing and fighting for one’s vision of the world, will also be subject to the new majoritarian rules. The EU may then, for the first time, be able to actually fulfill the call that French and German philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida made in May 2003:

Read more: Europa 2024 (ii): Will the new Europe become a world power? | Craig Willy | EU affairs writer

Rules, oversight 'key' to eurozone survival

European countries are not ready for proposals for a political union. Economist Wim Kösters argues in an interview with DW that the decisive question at present is whether shared rules for the currency union can be held to.

DW: Many have criticized the lack of a political union to back up the euro. For months, people have worked on a concept that would fix this problem retroactively. Ideas have ranged from a joint finance minister for the whole currency union all the way to a shared eurozone budget. None of that came up at the EU summit in mid-December. Has the concept of a political union failed?

Wim Kösters: "It's very hard to agree to a political union when important rules have been broken in the past. Those rules, like the no-bailout clause or the stability and growth pact, formed the basis of a rudimentary political union. That showed that people didn't want a constitution at all for the EU. As such, it's hard to agree to a political union in Europe now. It doesn't have the majority's support. So for now, you have to see it as a failed idea."

And a European finance minister - is that a solution to the crisis? I don't think so. The first question is what this minister is supposed to be doing. Is he supposed to operate according to strict regulations, or should he decide from case to case, as France would like to see. Until we've reached agreement on these issues, it's of no use to introduce such an institution.  However, EU finance ministers had agreed to oversight for Europe's banks ahead of the summit. Will that help the euro zone avoid future crises?

"Basically, I think so. If we get a European banking union that entails first and foremost shared oversight over banks, then we avoid the errors that result when some countries are too lax in supervising banks."

Read more: Rules, oversight 'key' to eurozone survival | Europe | DW.DE | 27.12.2012

Britain: End the drift in our relationship with Europe

As we report today, Liam Fox, the former secretary of state for defence, makes a powerful case for renegotiating our relationship with the rest of the European Union. The countries that have adopted the euro will press ahead with the fiscal and political union that is needed to save the single currency.

Britain is not part of that group, and does not want to be. But the countries in the euro group will form a voting bloc within the EU, and that bloc will of course act to implement regulation that is in its own interests, but which may well damage Britain. Rules governing the financial industry are one example.

There are plans to strip members of the EU that have not entered the single currency of the right to conduct deals denominated in euros. This would be highly damaging to the City.

That is just one instance of the sort of regulation that the eurozone countries might adopt to ensure that they can operate as a single fiscal and political entity. There are other areas – such as justice and home affairs, employment law, and agriculture and fisheries – where Britain’s interests are likely to diverge from the countries in the euro core, and where the regulations favoured by those countries would not suit us.

If a renegotiation of our relationship with the EU can be achieved, argues Dr Fox, it should be followed by a referendum, in which the question would be straightforward: do you wish to continue as a member of the new EU? Dr Fox thinks he could campaign for the answer “Yes” if a consensus with our European partners on a looser relationship was reached. But he would not support continued membership if it became clear that Britain was being drawn deeper into an increasingly integrated European Union.

Support from big hitters in the Tory party is beginning to coalesce around that position. Boris Johnson, for instance, has argued that we need to negotiate a new relationship with the rest of the EU, one based more around a simple free-trade association than the super-state that has been the goal of EU officials for the past two decades. The suggestion makes good sense – providing that one basic objection to it turns out to be wrong. Christopher Booker maintains this week that “there is no indication” that any renegotiation of our relationship with the EU is possible unless we first state that we wish to leave it. Dr Fox, in contrast, argues that if we renegotiate with self-confidence – instead of capitulating before the discussion begins, as the Foreign Office has done so often in the past – we could succeed.

Note EU-Digest:  here they go again. Its all about selfish British  interest throwing overboard the common good.  London City as a financial hub for the European Union and the Euro makes no sense in the above described scenario.

 Read more: End the drift in our relationship with Europe - Telegraph

Sharing a vision may be Europe’s biggest challenge - by Alan Wheatley

 It's 2025 and Angela Merkel, Europe's first democratically elected president, is reviewing a crowded agenda for the new session of the increasingly powerful European Parliament.

The head of the European Monetary Fund is recommending a big increase in the by now well-established financial transactions and carbon taxes to fund emergency transfers from Brussels to the European Union's new Balkan members.

Merkel must also overcome lingering opposition to her proposal to re-admit Greece to the euro, 12 years after Athens pulled out of the single currency because of popular unrest over the austerity measures she had championed as German chancellor.

The ensuing financial cataclysm and economic depression galvanized the euro's remaining members to seek shelter in what many had dismissed as unthinkable - full political and fiscal union.

If that scenario sounds far-fetched, then so does the "vision statement" prepared by four EU presidents, the bloc's most senior officials, for last week's EU summit.

The paper, co-authored by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, said the euro zone should push ahead with a banking union and a budgetary union, possibly leading to the creation of a treasury office that could issue common debt.

Critically, they added, for the plan to succeed Europe's voters must rally behind such a surrender of sovereignty. The summit tasked Van Rompuy to deliver by the end of the year a firm timetable for fiscal union.
Read more: Sharing a vision may be Europe’s biggest challenge

Germany - Angela Merkel: "A stronger politically united Europe goes hand in hand with a stronger EURO "

In a speech to the lower house of the German parliament German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced today that European Union leaders are ready to approve a plan to create a permanent rescue shield for the euro zone when they meet in Brussels later this week.

Merkel said the bloc's leaders would back a deal struck last month by EU finance ministers, who agreed to create the European Stabilisation Mechanism (ESM) that is intended to replace a temporary mechanism from mid-2013.

Merkel stressed Berlin's commitment to help its European partners but again rejected the idea of issuing joint euro bonds. "We know that the euro is our collective destiny, and Europe is our collective future," Merkel said. "Nobody in Europe will be abandoned. Europe will succeed together."  However, for the European project to work, countries needed to pull in the same direction, she added. "This is about deeper political integration, and in relation to the euro, above all deeper integration on economic policy," Merkel said. "That's why it's so important that we speak about further political integration over the next few months."


To underpin the new mechanism, Germany has pressed for small changes to the EU's treaty, which Merkel said she hoped would be formally signed off by the bloc's leaders in March. These should then be ratified across the EU by 2012 in order to dispel any doubts that a permanent mechanism would be in place the following year, Merkel said.





EU-Digest

Crisis in the Eurozone ? - by Stewart M. Patrick

Even as the European appetite for integration diminishes, the best solution to the eurozone crisis may indeed be greater integration. Monetary union developed without the requisite support from political and economic institutions, deprives the EU of mechanisms to enact much-needed policy and reforms.

- Germany's support for integration can no longer be taken for granted: Germany provides a perfect example of these interrelated problems. Whereas Germany has long been the engine of European integration, its leadership is currently lacking. The eurozone crisis has contributed to German disillusionment with the EU; popular attitudes and the priorities of German politicians have shifted from their formerly pro-EU stance. Further, the present rift in Franco-German relations makes effective response to the eurozone crisis particularly difficult.

"Despite the euro crisis, the EU remains the world's most advanced regional integration project. Even if the EU's experiment with a common currency proves to be a failure-which is unlikely-the union's experience suggests that even regions with a long history of war can successfully unify and pool sovereignty within common institutions," adds Stewart Patrick in his report.

Note EU-Digest: The Wall Street Mafia supported by most of the Anglo-Saxon financial media has for some time now carried out a constant negative campaign against the EU and just about anything it stands for or does. The motives are quite simple: its a question of divide and conquer. They believe, and rightly so, that if they achieve in breaking up the EU as a unified force, they will be able to manipulate the individual European countries economies at will. Their lobbying and legislative manipulation are running deep and broad, and the EU better become far more vigilant against these dangerous forces than they have done so far. It might also make more sense for Europe to start looking closer to home in establishing alliances with countries like Russia and Turkey, who over the long haul could well prove to be far more reliable partners than those it presently has . 

For more: Crisis in the Eurozone - Council on Foreign Relations