Sunday, November 27, 2011

Germany, France examine radical push for eurozone integration

Story out of Reuters. Excerpt:


" in meetings with EU leaders in recent weeks, it has become clear to both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that it may not be possible to get all 27 countries on board, EU sources say.

Even if that were possible, it could take a year or more to secure the changes while market attacks on Italy, Spain and now France suggest bold measures are needed within weeks.

As a result, senior French and German civil servants have been exploring other ways of achieving the goal, one being an agreement among just the euro zone countries.

"The goal is for the member states of the common currency to create their own Stability Union and to concentrate on that," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told ARD television on Sunday.

Another option being explored is a separate agreement outside the EU treaty that could involve a core of around 8-10 euro zone countries, officials say."
It looks like the current government funding crisis is indeed accelerating the consideration of further European political integration. The only question now continues to be whether the new political (and hence fiscal) arrangements will include the whole of current members of the currency union, or "a core" of those countries.

4 comments:

googleheim said...

tThis is what I said before about Greece or any non-core EU country X or Y or Z :

The theory of DUAL Currencies :

Let them use the Euro and a local currency. Perhaps this would help with tax collections ( in Greece nobody pays taxes who does not work for the government ).
This would also help them sort things out without bond markets attacking them when they could keep local things cheap to encourage locals staying local, and keep German stuff expensive which is an incentive not to buy.

etc etc

googleheim said...

Since all the Greeks moved their monies outside of Greece, I would NOT be surprised when Merkel and Germany come out and get the new host banks to route out the taxes just like she did with Switzerland a few years back when they were looking for and found Germans using Switzerland as tax havens.

beowulf said...

Let's see France integrates with German economy while the United Kingdom stays on the sidelines.

This sounds oddly familiar ("Its laws, however, were only applied where they did not contradict German ones."), so let's call it the Vichy Union.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France

Tom Hickey said...

I'd like to be a fly oh the wall in upperclass Brit drawing rooms and clubs right now. Actually, no need, I know what they are thinking.