‘I am here to defend the single currency, its citizens, its economy and Europe!’ announced President Juncker to the European Parliament as the final strains of the Ode for Joy swiftly passed into oblivion. Would that the hopeless and lost cause of the EU would do the same: note that the single currency comes before the citizens in Juncker’s cri de coeur as it is the bureaucrats’ passport to control.
Juncker’s sentence is a sentence on the whole of Europe. The economically flawed single currency, his starting point for defence, is the one thing that is bringing Europe to its knees: minus growth, record unemployment and the rise of extremism are all as a direct result of imposing the single currency across eighteen separate, disparate economies.
Take France, Mr Juncker, if you can see that far through your bureaucratic shades: growth is reported as a pathetic 0.2 per cent, but this figure is entirely as a result of the EU bureaucracy adding R&D spend back into the figures, disguising the fact that your France growth figure is actually a degeneration of 2.5 per cent. Where does this falsehood show up? Why, at the ECB, now facing a terrifying deflationary threat which it is not allowed to deal with. Why not? Because the Bundesbank wants a higher interest rate than 0.25 per cent to suit its needs!
And it shows up in the most appalling unemployment figures since records began, figures that have refused to drop since the much-vaunted EU recovery which doesn’t actually exist. What is the EU’s policy, President Juncker, for ten year’s time when these unemployed mothers and fathers are taking state benefits out instead of paying taxes in? Hey, President Juncker, who’s going to pay for the hospitals, roads and education then? Your tax-free index-linked pension plan?
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Remember the Maastricht Treaty? The bureaucrats seized foreign policy and were going to create a WDU, a Western Defence Union. ‘I see no EU army!’ said Nelson, raising his telescope to his good eye. Their first excursion into foreign policy was the eurocrats’ ambition to expand the EU, so as to expand their own powerbase (and tax-free salaries and pensions).
Where did they go? East, and destroyed the independent Ukraine with their short-sightedness and complete miscomprehension of post-WW2 history. Now the Russian Bear is threatening to be their enemy again as they have unwittingly created the conditions ripe for Cold War II.
An English MEP called Farage – ever heard of him, Jean-Claude? – pointed these errors out at the time, and you airily dismissed the wisdom of his remarks and made matters worse by signing an agreement to discuss EU membership with the new president of Ukraine. So what are you going to do now for Ukraine, send in the EU army? But you haven’t got one!
When Farage pointed out your name wasn’t even on a single ballot paper across the whole of Europe, you airily dismissed his implied criticism of the lack of democracy in the EU by proudly claiming that it was you who single-handedly worked to save Greece from exiting the single currency in the 2008 crisis – as if that was a great democratic achievement!
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Greece is on the verge of a political and economic collapse in the autumn, which will blow your old rescue plan to smithereens, President Juncker. Hopefully, it might even take your career with it – or are eurocrats immune from the folly of their own blind stupidity?
It will be a great moment of democracy ascending when the peoples of Europe say to you: ‘Go, for God’s sake, go! – for any good that you have done in this place, while you dwelt above us!’
Read more on the economy from Stephen Hill
