"Fiskalunion" is worst of all worlds for Europe

"Fiskalunion" is worst of all worlds for Europe

Be careful of the German term 'Fiskalunion', the next phase of Europe’s misadventure. What Chancellor Angela Merkel means is increased powers to police the budgets of EMU sinner states.

She means prior vetting of fiscal plans. She means automatic fines, cuts in EU development funds, and loss of EU voting rights for alleged violators, all justiciable before the European Court.

The correct term is 'Stability Union', as the Chancellor calls it at home. It certainly entails unprecedented intrusion into the internal affairs of sovereign states, but in one direction only: discipline, without transforming help.

The Greeks have had a taste of this with EU commissars lodged in each ministry under the occupation terms of their loan package, and it may come back to bite Germany itself one day as the economic cycle plays its trick.

Nor is the idea going down well in France, where Leftist MP Jean-Marie Le Guen compared President Nicolas Sarkozy’s kowtowing to the Iron Chancellor with Daladier’s capitulation at Munich in 1938, and where Le Front National’s Marie Le Pen is running near 20pc in the polls with calls to “let the euro die a natural death.”

“The time has come to take on the political confrontation with Germany and defend our values,” said socialist doyen Arnaud Montebourg, equating Mr Sarkozy’s epic humiliations with French defeat at Sedan in 1870. more