Review of The Eurosceptical Reader 2 (Hardcover)

This excellent collection of essays on the EU looks at the economics and the politics of the European Union; it finds the EU to be failing on both counts.
Tony Thirlwall explains why the euro would not bring a stable interest rate to aid our industry, nor would it curb the speculators: a single currency may end speculation within euroland, but it increases capital flows between euroland and everywhere else, threatening the euro's stability and therefore interest rate stability.
Mark Baimbridge, Brian Burkitt and Philip Whyman provide a characteristically sharp study of the European Central Bank. They note that the OECD says that for the industrialised economies, the natural rate of unemployment, below which inflation will accelerate, is 11%. So for the Bank, "the focus of monetary policy becomes to ensure, in practice, that unemployment is sufficiently high to reduce price and wage increases." The present level of unemployment across euroland is 11%, so this must be an EU success story: why aren't we applauding?
They show that Britain is not meeting the five tests. The EU's economies are diverging, as Wim Duisenberg has admitted. We have more economic flexibility than euroland does; investment into Britain is rising, the City of London is flourishing, and unemployment is lower than in euroland.
On the political side, many of the essays prove that the EU wants the euro to lock members forever into the planned EU state. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said, "The introduction of the euro was not only the crowning-point of economic integration, it was also a profoundly political act, because a currency is not just another economic factor but also symbolises the power of the sovereign who guarantees it."
And it would be a most undemocratic state, as even the Euro-fanatic Michael Heseltine admits: "The ... notable characteristic of present political arrangements is that they are about as ineffective and unaccountable as they could be ... the institutions themselves are totally incapable of adjusting to that change. We have federalism by stealth ..." Unaccountable, incorrigible, deceitful - he could be describing himself! No wonder he loves the EU.



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