NationalPlatform.Org

“By the end of the summer Angela Merkel and I will be making joint proposals on economic government in the eurozone. We will give a clearer vision of the way we see the Eurozone evolving. Our ambition is to seize the Greek crisis to make a quantum leap in Eurozone government…The very words were once taboo.(Now) it has entered the European vocabulary. . . France has fought for a long time for an economic government of the euro zone. We can’t keep having a currency disconnected from economic policy. We have done something historic … There was no European Monetary Fund. We’re not there yet, but we’re progressing, and we have to continue towards that … To arrive at this economic integration we have to work on convergence. Naturally, France and Germany, being the two biggest countries of the Eurozone, have to lead by example.”

– French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Post-Summit Press conference, Irish Independent 22 July; Irish Times 23 July 2011

“With Italy and Spain infected by the contagion that Ireland, Greece and Portugal were unable to recover from, completing the euro project by creating a fiscal union appears to be the only real alternative to preventing it joining failed monetary unions in the dustbin of history. The issuing of eurobonds has consequences far beyond finance and economics. For euro zone states to fund themselves with euro bonds would be a step towards full political union. But this has always been the project’s ultimate end-point. And for good reason … As long as integration is Europe’s destiny, it is Ireland’s destiny too.”

– Irish Times editorial, Saturday 16 July 2011

“Europe will eventually have to operate more like the United States when it comes to raising funds on international markets, but nobody envisages getting to that point for several years at least. But by expanding the European Financial Stability Fund last night, the early outlines of such a system are clearly visible. Europe simply must act collectively when its individual members have critical debt problems and that will eventually mean some kind of Europe-wide debt agency.”

– Irish Independent editorial, Saturday 23 July 2011

“We have a shared currency but no real economic or political union. This must change. If we were to achieve this, therein lies the opportunity of the crisis… And beyond the economic, after the shared currency, we will perhaps dare to take further steps, for example for a European army”.

– German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Open Europe Press Digest, 13 May 2010

COMMENT ON THE ABOVE by Anthony Coughlan

In mid-July British Chancellor George Osborne said that he now favoured the 17 Eurozone States moving towards a fiscal/political union as the best way of saving the euro-currency, but that the UK had no intention of joining that.

This seemed to signal a major change in UK Government policy as it has been for the past half century. It implies that Britain now favours a two-tier or two-speed EU, whereas up to now successive British Governments have always wanted to be in the inner EU circle along with the French and Germans in deciding fundamental policy.

It means too that Britain is happy enough if the Republic moves with the other Eurozone States towards a fiscal/political union amongst the 17, while Northern Ireland stays with Britain in the wider EU of the 27.

This raises the question so far as Northern Nationalists, are concerned why should they support the concept of a United Ireland if in practice it means little more than exchanging a British-dominated monetary and fiscal union for a Franco-German dominated one? And why should Northern Unionists find the latter prospect more politically attractive than their present one?