Yes, the fewest posts in the *only* year I’ve been blogging on the EU that something genuinely newsworthy and interesting has been coming out of the EU… I know…

Anyway, in checking the archives to try to fix this place, it turns out there’s not much more to be said on the current euro crisis that I haven’t said already:

Me on the Euro, September 2004:

“The economics may not be “right” at the moment; they may become “right” at some point in the future – if we join then, that will be beneficial for Britain. But economic conditions fluctuate unpredictably all the time. No one predicted the Wall Street Crash.

“In other words, joining the Eurozone will ALWAYS be a risk, just as staying out will always be a risk. Economics is not predictable. So we may as well take the plunge now – we have no idea how Britain will continue to survive outside the Eurozone, we have no idea what will happen if we join.”

Me on the euro, July 2005:

“The real question, of course, is whether the euro can ever achieve all that has been claimed for it. As of yet, there is little in the way of overwhelming evidence to support claims that the euro – and, importantly, the euro alone – has been responsible for ‘price stability, low mortgage rates, easier travel, protection against exchange rate fluctuations and external shocks’

…when it comes to this sort of thing, better the devil you know is a fair enough line to take until the evidence becomes overwhelming. The evidence isn’t yet overwhelming – hence Gordon still saying his tests aren’t passed – so no one but the most fervently ideological is going to be convinced. That simple.”

Me on the Euro, July 2008:

“Everyone loves a good recession! It’s now a race to the finish line – who’s going to make it first, the UK or Eurozone? (Far more exciting than the Olympics, this…)

…the real question is longer-term. If the Eurozone enters its first recession at the same time that the EU is doing the headless chicken act over the Irish Lisbon Treaty referendum result, what will be the impact on the long-term viability of the EU as a whole? With the economy looking shaky, will the countries of Europe look to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt or to their own national banks for stabilising measures? And can the ECB – only in existence for a decade, lest we forget – handle the tough times as well as the easy? Well, some analysts think the signs point to a big fat no”

Me on the euro, October 2008:

“This whole episode is already going to prove that a single currency simply isn’t enough, that the levels of integration that the EU has so far achieved are simply not enough, that when it comes to the (credit) crunch, we all still look out for number one first, and sod the rest of the continent. Some may even take it as a sign that the old hope that the EU can provide prosperity and insulate from hardship was a false one. It’s all far too early to say… The only thing that is certain is that no one knows where this is heading. Until we do, I’m going to try and refrain from adding to the reams of inaccurate guesswork.”

Me on the Euro, November 2008:

“This recession is going to be the major test of the idea of the Euro – if it fails that test, it won’t just be the UK that gets cold feet”

Me on the Euro, June 2011:

“let’s face it, no one knows what’s going to happen and most economic predictions over the last few years have proven utterly mistaken…

here’s my ranking of the likelihood of the various “what nexts” I’ve seen mooted, in approximate order of likelihood:

1) Another Greek bailout
2) Greek default & risk of contagion
3) Greece leaves the eurozone
4) Germany leaves the eurozone
5) Dissolve the euro & start again
6) Full political integration
7) Give up and dissolve the EU
8) Britain joins the euro to boost confidence & stability

Number 1′s already happened. Other than that, has the situation really changed that much – beyond possibly the likelihood of number 6? Is there anything more that needs to be said? Has anyone actually come up with a solution? Have we got any new options?

The plan: Sort this place out. Then (perhaps) actually write some stuff for a change. I think I’ve *almost* worked out what my position is re: the eurozone crisis now. Almost…

Referenda have a decidedly unclear position within the UK constitution. The people are not and never have been sovereign in the UK – sovereignty rests with Parliament (technically the Crown in Parliament), and anything that threatens parliamentary sovereignty could easily be challenged as unconstitutional. Direct democracy bypasses Parliament, therefore it easily falls into this category.

It always surprises me that anti-EU types don’t realise this, considering one of their key arguments against the EU is that it is unconstitutional for anyone/anything to be able to overrule Parliament (usually they quote the 1689 Bill of Rights – this has little/no actual legal weight, but the theory is still there).

This constitutional angle is a massively important point – advocating wider use of referenda would, if taken up, be one of the biggest changes to the UK constitution in 300+ years. It could potentially undermine the very foundations of how our political system works in ways far more widespread and unpredictable than anything we’ve seen via membership of the EEC/EU. There are no rules on what referenda should be used for, no rules on what they *shouldn’t* be used for, no rules on how they can be triggered, no rules on how they can be overruled.

Short-version – it’s dangerous to introduce any significant constitutional change without thinking through the consequences. In the rush to appease the politically vocal, we could do far, far more damage than any referendum-advocates realise.

See also: The case against referendums by Conservative peer and constitutional expert Lord Norton of Louth, whose key objections are that referendums are misleading, unbalanced and dangerous.

And also: Jon Worth making many of the same points as I do above – before we hold any more referenda, we need to work out what role they should have in the UK political system.

That said, this post’s original, short title (“Not dead, honest”) could refer to the eurozone as much as it does me.

Naturally enough, though, don’t expect me to come up with any magic bullets to solve this ongoing economic shitstorm (that’s the technical term for it, I understand). No one else has, after all. The best I can do is criticise *everything* – which is hardly very constructive.

The more I read about the various proposed solutions (cut stuff! merge stuff! spend more! spend less! suck up to China! leave the poorer countries to fend for themselves! let banks/countries default! stop defaults at all costs!), the more I watch the hesitancy and lack of imagination of Europe’s political leaders (oooh! another bailout – how original!), the more I see the refusal by anyone to accept responsibility for the mess (hint: we’re *all* to blame for getting into a complacent and unsustainable cycle fuelled by debt both national and personal which none of us had worked out repayment plans for, and which the lenders handed over without sufficient checks – the people are as much to blame as the politicians and the bankers for letting it happen in the hope of massive profits on minimal effort), the more I realise that there *is* no solution.

Not a national one, at any rate. There are simply too many extra-national forces at work here that are beyond anyone’s control. Yet so far there’s so very little coordination of governmental response. Everyone is looking inwards, to their own countries. Everyone is pointing accusatory fingers at others beyond their own borders, when what they need to be doing is extending helping, cooperative hands.

The world is too interconnected for this insular thinking. A crisis that started in the US has affected almost every country on the planet. A single, tiny economic basket-case like Greece can put an entire continent on the brink of collapse.

This is the perfect illustration of just why supranational organisations are so vital – had the EU had the power (and will) to stand up to the national politicians and stick to its rules, this coordination could have been imposed. With the current set up, as no one can agree, nothing can be done. (We still wouldn’t have known what to do if we’d got more powerful supranational institutions, but at least we’d all have been doing it together… That concerted unity alone could well have proved enough to give the markets back their confidence – it’s the uncertainty that’s killing us as much as the lack of direction.)

Naturally, greater cooperation alone won’t be enough – mostly because it’s already too late. And I’d be amazed if we aren’t still seeing the effects of this crisis in some countries in a decade’s time.

But where this crisis most certainly has exposed plenty of flaws in the EU’s makeup, it’s done far, far more damage to the concept of national independence, national sovereignty. If even the world’s most wealthy, powerful country can be hit by the problems in tiny Greece – and every scare in the eurozone has been reflected on Wall Street – what hope does *any* country have on its own?

The half measures and hesitations of the EU’s response so far can *all* be put down to national political reluctance to act – Sarkozy and Merkel eyeing elections, everyone else too worried about domestic upheaval to care about their fellow EU member states. It’s the same attitude we’ve always seen from politicians when a global economic crisis hits – but it’s no longer one that works. Glorious isolation is not an option.

What good is nominal sovereignty when an external economic shockwave can bring an entire country to the brink of bankruptcy?

Assuming the rotating presidency of the EU for the first time, Donald Tusk rounded on the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, and Britain over their handling of the sovereign debt crisis in Greece, immigration, EU spending and the budget. He charged them with posing as European champions while pandering to a new form of Euroscepticism for personal political gain, and of using fears about immigration to curb freedom of travel in Europe.

The passionate and optimistic defence of the EU from the Polish leader was completely at odds with the mood in Brussels and other EU capitals, where commitment to the union is being eroded by the rise of populist Brussels-bashing, squabbling leaders, and soaring mistrust between member states. In defiance of the gloomy European zeitgeist, Tusk said: “The European Union is great. It is the best place on Earth to be born and to live your life.”

And you know what? Think about it for half a moment, you’ll see it’s more or less true. Yes – even the “best place on Earth” bit. Greater equality, freedom, cultural and historical variety, opportunity, social support, comfort and safety than pretty much anywhere.

This is very easy to forget amid all the current talk of crisis and default. But it remains the case that the member states of the European Union are pretty much all still more prosperous and have better qualities of life than at all but a very few points in history (and those very few points *all* came within the last decade, during the boom before the bust).

Hell, you couldn’t get a better illustration of this point than to note that yesterday, 1st July, the day Poland took over the presidency, was the 95th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. One of the bloodiest battles of all time, leaving more than a million dead – with bones and artefacts still rising to the surface almost a century later – and a key reminder of the turmoil of Europe past.

1st July is also, nicely, the anniversary of the entirely peaceful, voluntary 1569 foundation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the largest, most diverse European state of the 16th-17th centuries – ruled by an elective monarchy held in check by a senate and elected parliament. Little-known in Western Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth deserves to be far more widely studied – not least because it arose at a time that the western half of the continent was submersed in a series of bloody religious conflicts that would last the best part of a century, while it was not only democratically progressive, but also religiously tolereant and ethnically diverse.

Poland has shown Europe the way in time of crisis before, in other words. But she has also frequently been a little ahead of her time. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s elective head of state and bicameral parliament, not to mention its religious tolerance, would not become the norm in Europe for another three centuries. And then there’s Solidarity – a movement Tusk was a part of (along with current European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek) – which is now regarded by many as the initial rumbling that helped set in motion the collapse of Soviet communism, kicked off several years before similar popular movements came to prominence in the rest of the Warsaw Pact.

Is this broad view of Tusk coming too soon for a European Union currently caught up in introspection and blame-throwing? Is his sense of historical perspective a little too visionary for an EU whose leaders have not only spent most of the last two decades tinkering with details, but who are also currently more concerned with short-term worries? And is the six months of the rotating presidency anywhere near long enough to start pushing through any serious reform?

Time will tell. But it is, at any rate, a welcome and refreshing change to hear what to me sounds like a rational optimism coming from someone with real influence in the EU after months of hand-wringing and *years* of stagnation.

Sod Tony Blair as an elected President of the EU – if he handles the next six months well, perhaps Donald Tusk could be our man?

Update: I’m starting to have strong hopes for the Polish presidency. Now this from Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski:

In more general terms, Rostowski argued, politicians have to “start thinking in terms of common European interest” and show solidarity – a mantra of the Polish EU presidency – amid signs of “growing estrangement” between northern and southern member states.

“The short-sightedness of some opposition parties in some countries regarding common institutions and programmes is breath-taking,” he said. “If we don’t hang together, we all hang separately.”

Update 2:Yet more good stuff from Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski:

it is not enough to be optimistic and positive. We also must be realistic. The EU does face painful decisions in the months and years to come. Poland will not accept that the answer lies in less solidarity, or “less integration”. That is the sure path to disintegration, leaving us all worse off – and with new divisions.

…Too many of Europe’s rules and regulations were designed for very different times.

…Europe will make a strategic mistake if it retreats into unhappy introspection.

…Thirty years ago the Gdansk ship-workers led the way and changed the world, as millions of Poles joined the Solidarity movement to insist on their basic democratic rights and freedoms. The Polish presidency wants to help the EU draw strength from the ambition and patient wisdom of that movement. Poland itself is an EU success story.

* Yes, this one still exists too. Branded as the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, as opposed to the Presidency of the European Council (Herman van Rompuy), Presidency of the European Parliament (Jerzy Buzek), or Presidency of the European Commission (José Manuel Barroso).

To note: I’ve always been euro-sceptic.

Yes, that was deliberately hyphenated: I’ve never been entirely convinced of the benefits of a single currency for a group of economies as diverse as those of the EU – and this even before I’d heard the term “optimum currency area“.

That’s not to say that I don’t think that a single currency would be a good thing for Europe *eventually*. But my use of “eventually” when it comes to European integration is normally looking far longer-term than pretty much any politician ever does. I’d expect pretty much everyone capable of reading this to be dead before conditions in Europe are optimal. (And that’s being optimistic…)

Anyway, lest I digress – after reading various interesting, highly contradictory articles from various self-professed soothsayers from all over Europe (and beyond) over the last few days, here’s my ranking of the likelihood of the various “what nexts” I’ve seen mooted, in approximate order of likelihood:

1) Another Greek bailout
2) Greek default & risk of contagion
3) Greece leaves the eurozone
4) Germany leaves the eurozone
5) Dissolve the euro & start again
6) Full political integration
7) Give up and dissolve the EU
8) Britain joins the euro to boost confidence & stability (yes, this really has been suggested…)

Finally, a bit of random reading – I may well keep this updated as I come across more:

Just how serious is the Greek debt problem? – Deutsche Welle asks a bunch of economists what they reckon. Decidedly more restrained than much coverage, with varied viewpoints. A handy overview, and a good starting point for newcomers.

Beware Eurosceptics bearing gifts – one of the most sensible, restrained pieces I’ve seen. From, as ever, David Rennie of The Economist. Key quote: “Pretty much every option looks bad.”

Time for Plan B: How the Euro Became Europe’s Greatest Threat – the article everyone’s been talking about, from Der Spiegel. Worth a read – while also worth noting that it only mentions the word “exposure” twice in what is a *very* long article. The omissions are as important as the (sensible) key point that the way the euro was set up was based not on sound economics, but on political wishful thinking. People who only skim the section-headings (like “The Euro is a fair-weather construct“) are likely to miss the subtleties of the – decidedly German – argument. Fascinating piece, but to be read with a critical eye.

Imperial Germany – eager to bury the euro – a Greek response to that Spiegel article. A strong response – sample quote “Berlin has shown that it wants to distinguish itself through the implementation of a selfish nationalist policy that will break nations and states that are unable or unwilling to follow in its footsteps” – but worth reading.

Banks have £1.6 trillion exposure to ailing quartet of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain – from the eurosceptic Telegraph, scary numbers putting Britain’s likely £1bn contribution to a second Greek bailout (via the IMF, not the EU) into some kind of context.

Greek Debt Crisis: how exposed is your bank? – handy chart showing likely impact (could do with additional ones for exposure to Irish / Portugese / Spanish debt too, in case there’s a domino effect…)

Eurozone debt crisis – to restructure or not? – from the Centre for European Reform, a normally decidedly pro-EU thinktank that’s turning decidedly hostile (justifiably so, some might say) in recent days. Key quote: “All this could poison European politics without resolving the economics”.

Hell, for that matter, *all* the Centre for European Reform’s recent publications on the euro crisis are well worth a read…

Can the Eurozone be saved? – From Foreign Affairs back in April, but still worth a read – especially for explaining in simple terms just why this current crisis is unique and utterly unpredictable: “In the eyes of markets and skeptical observers, the European Union is more than an intergovernmental organization but not yet a state. When the European Union bickers and dithers, the markets have no idea what may happen.”

Wednesday additions – catching up with the blogs:

The gloom of having no good options – Conor from The European Citizen sums up: “At the moment the best option seems to be to accept the bad austerity and bail-out deal and forge ahead with reforms in Greece with at least the thin cushion of EU/IMF loans rather than no loans at all and hope that either (a) the EU gets its act together; or (b) the painful austerity will help Greece just enough so that it can partially default in a more managed way in a year or two when the prospects are better for it and the EU. Neither option is an inspiring or very sellable one.”

Euro(w)s… Democracy versus Sovereignty – A Bit More Complicated… shows how, well, it’s a bit more complicated, giving some much needed historical/theoretical context: “The question is that old point of “no taxation without representation”. In a bailout situation between states, it is not only the taxpayers of Greece who have a legitimate interest in how Greece handles its debts but the taxpayers of the countries providing the help via the IMF and the Eurozone… welcome to the complicated world we live in.”

Greece’s unnecessary crisis – could more decisive action have prevented this situation? Yes, argues George Irvin at the Social Europe Journal blog: “the real lesson of the Greek debacle is not that that peripheral countries should exit the eurozone (although that is now a distinct possibility); rather, it is that the current situation results from the increasingly rightward drift of Europe and the short-sightedness of our political class.”

Delaying tactics are only increasing the costs of the eurozone crisis – the Open Europe blog (rarely somewhere to avoid giving the EU a kicking) seems to agree.

The road to “new European reunification” runs through Greece – The German Marshall Fund blog does a superb job of putting a complex situation into some kind of context, and is worth quoting at length:

“EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn rightly stressed in late May, “There is a certain aid fatigue in all of northern Europe [and] a certain reform fatigue in southern Europe.” Nearly a month later, nothing has changed. Yet both the United States and China have upped the ante by signaling that an uncontrolled debt spiral and string of defaults in Europe could be disastrous for their own economies. So what should the EU do? And, importantly, what will be the lasting legacies of any measures it takes?

…the fear of a financial and economic chain reaction has accelerated the EU’s integration by pushing institutions and member states to quickly decide on issues of governance, accountability, and leadership; essentially to agree on the politics of European economic policy. Through this process, all involved are framing the limits of their powers and responsibilities. This week, European leaders will set the new terms of Europe’s economic union. In a year’s time, they have been asked to agree on strategic decisions they have postponed for decades. Beyond the Greek sovereign debt crisis lies the more profound issue of European political integration; Europe needs a “new reunification,” this time of the North and South. Yet with the economic and social struggles ahead, and in the face of a slow recovery, Europe also needs strong political leadership to look beyond special interests. Only tough political choices today will make the sound policies of tomorrow.

“…It is not just about the economics. Today’s struggles have a lot to do with regulating economic policy and affirming institutional power. In this sense, the “invisible Brussels” might not easily restore public trust in the EU, but profound changes are underway. Hasn’t the ECB already emerged as a central actor to any economic decision? Hasn’t the Eurogroup become the true hub of European economics? Hasn’t the European Parliament used the opportunity of reforming economic governance to promote further Commission oversight of national economies? Whatever one calls it, the EU is in a period of adjustment or transition or adaptation to a new paradigm — there will be a new equilibrium calling for new policies. Europe will be stronger because it will be different.

“…The European debt crisis and its repercussions might be this generation’s tragedy, but it might also be its opportunity to deepen the EU’s integration. It could be its New Deal, its Marshall Plan, its Reunification. European leaders owe their people a political stance — the time has come for a new Declaration, not just another Statement. EU “founding father” Jean Monnet believed that “we only have the choice between changes we are forced to make and those we wanted and were able to achieve.” This week, paradoxically, Europe will be forced to make the changes it always wanted but never dared to achieve.”

Worth reading in full, that one. One of the most interesting pieces I’ve seen on this whole mess.

Norway has oil. Switzerland’s a tax haven. Both have far, far smaller populations than the UK, accounting for their far higher GDPs per capita (and hence relative prosperity). They are not comparable with Britain.

Even if they were – both also have to pay in to the EU budget proportionate to their economies. Norway currently pays c.340 million euros per annum. This is more than many EU member states – especially when you consider the fact that actual members get money back, reducing their net contributions.

In fact, judging from this chart of net contributions, Norway would – if included in the chart – be about the 10th highest contributor to the EU budget, despite not being a member.

Rough maths tells us that, all things being equal, as the UK’s GDP is approximately 5.7 times that of Norway’s, the UK would still need to contribute around 2 billion euros a year to the EU budget if part of the EEA/EFTA. While having no say in what EU laws and regulations we’d still have to follow.

Because both Norway and Switzerland also – without having any say in their formulation – have to abide by 80-90% of EU rules and regulations in order to be part of the Common Market.

Because you know what you need for a Common Market to function? Common rules and regulations.

That’s the whole reason *why* the EEC has been shifting down the path towards elements of political union over the last five decades – you need a certain amount of political harmonisation to enable functional, stable economic harmonisation. The lack of greater political cohesion (especially the lack of a common fiscal policy) is one of the major contributing factors to the current eurozone crisis, FFS.

Also worth remembering – these “we’d be better off in EFTA/the EEA” arguments used to have a third “look how well so-and-so’s doing” country included: Iceland.

We don’t hear much about how well Iceland’s doing in the EEA any more, do we?

You see – it’s all very well saying “let’s leave the EU”. But if you’re advocating ditching the status quo you’d better have a pretty bloody well thought-through alternative plan.

The vast, vast majority of EU withdrawalists, however, seem simply not to have done their research.

(This originally posted as a comment here, and now slightly modified with additional links)

The choice concerning our relationship with the EU is now clear: either we accept being primarily and increasingly governed from Brussels or we decide to abandon membership and negotiate a new relationship with the EU based on trade and, where this makes sense, voluntary co-operation.

*sigh*

Herewith, a very quick and dirty demolition of their “5 key reasons why we must have a referendum on Britain and the EU”, originally written as a comment under that Liberal Conspiracy piece:

Update: The People’s Pledge campaign has responded to this post. Needless to say, they aren’t overly impressed with my responses to their claims – and I’m not overly impressed with their attempts to counter my arguments. I’ve started responding to their (long) response in the comments – and will add in links to the relevant comments below, as and when I finish replying to each point.

1) No one under 54 has had the chance to vote on our relationship with Brussels.

- And no one – full-stop – has had the chance to vote on the role of the House of Commons, House of Lords, Cabinet, Prime Minister, Civil Service, etc. etc. etc. On pretty much any aspect of the British constitution, in fact, since the Acts of Union 300+ years ago.

Update:Response to People’s Pledge objections to this point.

2) The European Union now makes a majority of the laws we must obey

- This is simply bollocks. See, for example, the recent House of Commons Library paper (PDF) on the issue, or my old What percentage of laws come from the EU post. The true figure is more like 10-20% of laws, with regulations coming in at around 20-30%. Both figures are declining year on year.

Update: Response to the People’s Pledge objections to this point, plus part 2 (on EU regulations) and part 3 (on UK Statutory Instruments).

3) The UK has less than 10% of the votes in the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament

- Our representation is (approximately) in line with our population size – with population taken into account on many votes in the Council, giving the UK a very strong position. Would anything other than that be fair on the other member states with whom we are cooperating? And how much relative say do we have in the WTO, NATO or the UN?

Update: Response to the People’s Pledge objections to this point and part 2

4) The EU is costing Britain more and more money

- This is justified by the classic £48m a day claim (it used to be £40m, but the exchange rate’s got worse), which is abject nonsense, based on gross rather than net, and rounded up, as shown in this old post – and is backed up by some nonsense about the cost of the Greek bailout (ignoring the British investment money that would be lost if Greece/Ireland/Portugal had been allowed to go bankrupt), and in any case ignores the wider impact of EU membership on the economy as a whole. Simplistic tosh.

5) The EU wants to give itself new powers of “economic governance”

- Erm… For the Eurozone. Of which Britain is not a member. Britain would only benefit by her neighbours (and major trading partners) being economically more stable and prosperous.

Utter rubbish, all five of them.

Why? Mostly the real world – I’ve just got back from a month shunting aroung the US (for work) and Japan (for pleasure), with other work trips to Dublin, Athens and elsewhere during the last few months as the day job’s got more and more demanding (and interesting).

But it’s also got a fair amount to do with exasperation. The EU as a whole remains in crisis – and remains singularly incapable of doing anything constructive to deal with it. Or, at least, not without a great deal of petty member-state level bickering and infantile knee-jerking to minor issues that have been blown out of all proportion. Nationalist parties are on the rise. There’s a threat of reintroducing border controls. The ongoing euro crisis is still bubbling away, with some countries now (supposedly) considering a return to national currencies.

The European Union exists to make prosperous times more porsperous, but also to prevent crises turning into disasters. The way the various member state politicians have been pathetically beating their patriotic, xenophobic, blame-anyone-but-us drums of late, this latter bit seems to have been forgotten. Instead, the EU – or the euro – is being used as a scapegoat for a whole raft of problems which are almost exclusively due to the incompetence of national-level politicians. Hell – the problems in Greece and Portugal are prime examples: both due to cock-ups on a national level, and neither country (Greece especially) should have been allowed to join the euro in the first place.

In the past I’ve always said that I’ll avoid writing about economics here, as I’ve never felt sufficiently qualified. It’s becoming increasingly clear that neither is anyone else. The sheer idiocy on display whenever I read of yet another British idiot arguing that the UK shouldn’t contribute to the Irish/Greek/Portugese bailouts – desplaying either shocking ignorance of the vast amounts of British money that would be at risk if any of those countries defaulted, or an insane desire to bring about continent-wide economic collapse far worse than anything seen since the hyperinflation of the 1920s/30s – has led me to realise that I actually know rather more about economics than I previously thought.

This is, of course, not so much due to learning much more (though I have been reading a fair few books on international macroeconomics and trade of late, being a total spod) – it’s more that the standards of economic analysis everywhere outside the Economist and Financial Times (neither of which are exactly ideologically neutral) has fallen to historically dire levels of mediocrity.

And the saddest thing? So much of what’s currently happening could so easily have been prevented if anyone had bothered to take a longer view than the usual 5 year timescales in which most politicians seem to think. Greece? An economic basket-case? We’ve known that for decades, FFS. A continental currency with no common fiscal policy not being overly flexible in times of crisis? Who would have guessed? Politicians blaming foreigners as soon as times get tough? Never would have thought it…

Yet the current EU has been built primarily in either economic good times or post-Cold War periods of optimism. When things seem to be going well, there’s little incentive to get ambitious in case you do something to harm the status quo. But as soon as you enter a crisis period, the political will to collaborate starts to fade away.

Am I pessimistic for the future of the EU? Not overly. Not even for the future of the eurozone. If anything, I’m increasingly hopeful that this crisis may continue long enough to finally start pushing at least *some* EU member states towards the kind of radical reforms that I’ve long argued are necessary. But this may yet take a while – and there may well be a few casualties along the way. The eurozone can survive this crisis – the question is whether it should be allowed to without some fundamental reforms. The EU *will* survive the crisis – the question is whether it will survive with its internal relations intact.

We could be on the verge of a major round of reforms, or we could be about to backtrack and stagnate for another decade as everyone tries to recover. It’s very hard to call – and extremely frustrating to watch politician after politician spew out the usual populist nonsense in the meantime.

Which is the other major reason I’ve been quiet here of late – EU watching is usually fairly dull, but for the last few months it’s also been incredibly frustrating and predictable. That’s too much even for my patience to cope with.

It’s worth reading in full to see a few objections and some issues raised – notably about the British balance of trade and the nature of the UK’s service-driven economy.

Below the fold is what started out as a comment reply on that site, but which got too lengthy to post there. It ends with my (little bit) tongue-in-cheek advocation of Britain joining the Eurozone – something I don’t believe I’ve ever done before – simply because the Eurozone is a bit like the Gold Standard.

(And yes, before you ask I *have* read a newspaper in the last year. I’m off to Greece on Sunday, in fact, and spend a good 30% of my day job focused on Ireland…)

—

First, agreed on the misuse of the “60% of UK trade is with the EU” claim as fact by pro-EU types. But no matter which way you look at it, our next biggest trading partner after the EU is the US, with the figures normally given as around 10-20% of our total trade. The various EU member states certainly amount to a lot more than 20% of our trade.

I also think that 60% is likely to be in approximately the right ballpark, (I tend to suggest “more than half” as a sensible alternative) – it makes logical sense for us to be trading most with one of the easiest blocs of developed countries it’s possible for us to trade with, especially when (as you note) we’re so reliant on exporting services. Trading with non EU/EEA countries is simply a lot more expensive – multiple different regulations/standards/exchange rates, plus greater transportation costs due to the greater distances involved, and many more logistical issues due to timezone differences (something I deal with daily, working in London but needing to communicate regularly with colleagues all over the world).

As an aside, the 60% trade claim is also certainly a lot less heinous a figure than the standard “75%-84% of laws come from the EU” claims coming from the other side… But enough of that…

On the two points you say I ignored, a quick reply:

1) Services and UK-EU trade

You have a point there when you say that “Given that the UK economy is largely service-based and that it is, at last count, the sixth most visited country in the world (tourism is an export and, yes, the report does exclude airport transfers), it is not sensible to rely only on goods trading as a measure of the UK’s economic relationships with other markets.”

However, as you brought it up, specifically on tourism there have been a number of reports from within the industry that tourists are increasingly avoiding visiting Britain thanks to it being outside the Eurozone (easier to use one currency on your holiday, after all). This has been partially offset in the last couple of years thanks to the weak pound, but it does sound plausible.

Regarding service industries more widely (and I stress, this is entirely off the top of my head – I’ve done no research into this at all), again the EU is a sensible place for most of our trade to take place. Similar timezone, for starters – you can run your service industry during normal office hours if you’re operating within the EU, while to deal with most English-speaking countries (the other logical customers for British service industries) you’re having to vary from GMT+12 for New Zealand to GMT-9 for Alaska. Of English-speaking countries, only Ireland and (the western part of) South Africa are in the same timezone, so it’s not overly practical.

2) The EU and regulatory costs

You also note that my earlier trade post “also ignores the cost of the regulatory burden on UK business of EU law (both in terms of money spent on compliance and profit foregone), which was estimated by the think-tank Civitas in 2004 at being between £17bn and £40bn a year.”

The reason I didn’t mention it is because I don’t see it as directly relevant, but also because I covered it here – note in particular the mention of the British Chambers of Commerce report, specifically the quote: “By value, EU legislation was only responsible for about 0.1% (£1.9m) of regulatory net costs in 2007/8″

The estimated cost of EU regulations varies wildly, depending on who you choose to believe. Eurosceptic-leaning people tend to believe the higher estimates, which often come from eurosceptic-leaning sources (like Civitas’ figures that you give, or Open Europe’s claims that the EU was responsible for £124bn of regulatory costs 1998-2009), while more pro-EU people incline towards the lower estimates (as I did in that quote above).

The truth is that, as with the trade figures, no one really knows how much of the regulatory burden can be attributed to the EU – and with estimates varying between c.15% and c.75% it’s not even clear whether it’s significant or not (not least because we have no way of telling what percentage of EU regulations would have been introduced even if we were not members). At least with the trade figures the estimates only vary between c.45% and c.65%.

A quick note on the balance of trade

Britain imports more manufactured goods than we export because Britain is no longer a manufacturing nation. So it makes sense to get the best prices we can on those imports.

Staying outside the Eurozone means that fluctuating exchange rates can work to our advantage (we can get cheaper imports if the pound is strong). However, part of the reason the UK’s trade surplus in services dropped from 2008 to 2009 is due to the weakening of sterling vs. the euro. If the pound is strong, Britain’s exports (services as well as goods) bring us less – but we get our imports cheaper.

But we have little real ability to influence exchange rates (short of drastic measures which would instantly set alarm bells ringing with any sensible investors and trading partners, and which could threaten major economic collapse). Which means the balance of trade is constantly shifting thanks to forces beyond our control.

You call on the government to rebalance our reliance on the EU to get a better trade balance. One of the easiest ways of doing this would be to standardise exchange rates with a bunch of our biggest trading partners in one go, thus allowing far better forward-planning. How to do this? Join the Eurozone.

Think of it as a modern-day equivalent of the Gold Standard. (Assuming the Eurozone survives, that is…)