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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Tue Nov 15 14:14:03 2011, in response to Re: EUEUEUEUEU Crisis leads to technocracy rewriting rules in EUEUEUEUEUEU, posted by Olog-hai on Mon Nov 14 23:13:46 2011.
edf40wrjww2msgDetailOT:detailStr fiogf49gjkf0d Sydney Morning Herald
Germany, Britain clash over EU’s futureThomas Penny, London
November 16, 2011BRITISH Prime Minister David Cameron has rebuffed Germany’s call for political union in Europe, underlining the splits in the 27-nation bloc as it seeks to contains the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis.
The crisis offers an opportunity for powers to “ebb back” from Europe to nation states, Mr. Cameron said in a speech in London. Hours earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her Christian Democratic Union party in Leipzig that it was time to push for closer political ties and tighter budget rules.
“We should look skeptically at grand plans and utopian visions; we’ve a right to ask what the European Union should and shouldn’t do,” Mr. Cameron said. Europe should be “outward-looking, with its eyes to the world, not gazing inwards” and should have “the flexibility of a network, not the rigidity of a bloc.”
Dr. Merkel’s drive for closer union and Mr. Cameron’s riposte set up a potential tussle between European leaders at a summit on December 9 that will discuss an overhaul of the EU’s guiding treaty to bolster the 17-nation euro, of which Britain is not a member.
Mr. Cameron, who is due in Berlin for talks with Dr. Merkel on Friday, has pledged to use any changes to EU rules to claw back powers from Brussels.
Evoking the 1989 democracy protests that began in Leipzig and led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dr. Merkel, in her most explicit prescription yet to tackle the crisis, said it must be seen as a “turning point” in shaping EU and euro policy.
“The task of our generation now is to complete the economic and currency union in Europe and, step by step, create a political union,” she said in a speech to more than 1000 CDU delegates. “It’s time for a breakthrough to a new Europe.”
The speech marked an escalation in her rhetoric as the debt crisis sent Italian and Spanish borrowing costs to euro-era records last week and shook French markets.
In contrast, Mr. Cameron said the fall of the Iron Curtain marked a turning away from the need for the EU to act as a tight alliance to keep peace in Europe after 1945 to the need for a loose union of democratic states working together.
The EU should be an alliance “that understands and values national identity and sees the diversity of Europe’s nations as source of strength”, he said. “Change brings opportunities: an opportunity to begin to refashion the EU so it better serves this nation’s interests and the interests of its other 26 nations too; an opportunity, in Britain’s case, for powers to ebb back instead of flow away.”
Dr. Merkel had renewed her warning that “if the euro fails, Europe fails” and said her mission was to save the “historic” EU project.
New Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos says he is determined to keep the country in the eurozone, but acknowledges it is set to miss its deficit reduction target this year. Mr. Papademos told MPs that Greece’s euro membership is “our only choice”. He spoke after conservative leader Antonis Samaras defied a EU demand to provide a written commitment to the new debt agreement — or else see rescue loans frozen.
A vote of confidence in Mr. Papademos’s new government will take place in parliament today.
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