L’Europe, le pistolet sur la tempe

L’Europe, le pistolet sur la tempe

D’une part, il y a les réactions politiques, d’une politique au jour le jour, qui se satisfait du “plat du jour” et s’en va, chacun à sa façon dans ce camp, célébrer la victoire de ses chères idées. Le monde politique français et la presse-Système qui s’en fait son commentateur zélé, célèbre la sauvegarde de l’Europe avec, – pour certains, la grandeur de Sarko qui est en train de réinventer une nouvelle Europe, au moins d’ici à sa réélection, – pour d’autres, la grandeur de l’Allemagne, qui a imposé ses vues pour la nouvelle Europe. Monde singulier que celui de notre ”presse-Système”, qui traite la grande crise du Système selon le goût du jour. Reste l’avis du syndicaliste, qui n’est pas si bête.

RFI nous en donne un léger aperçu, au goutte à goutte, ce 25 juillet 2011.

«Le Figaro titre sur “les nouvelles ambitions de Sarkozy pour relancer l'Europe” et dans son éditorial il salue le plan finalisé à Bruxelles : “Ce pas décisif en faveur d'un fédéralisme à base franco-allemande est le seul moyen de remettre de l'ordre [...] C'est une idée que Nicolas Sarkozy, artisan décisif de la résolution de la crise bancaire de 2008, avait lancée à l'époque. Il aura fallu près de trois ans pour qu'il arrive à convaincre la chancelière du bien-fondé de ce gouvernement économique de l'Europe”.

»Autre commentaire sur le même thème, celui du Monde qui lui souligne plutôt la part qui revient à Angela Merkel. Pour Le Monde, l'accord de jeudi “porte surtout la marque de la superpuissance européenne” : l'Allemagne et sa chancelière qui “a imposé ce dont ne voulaient au départ ni Paris ni la BCE : la participation du secteur privé au refinancement d'Athènes”.

«Le Monde a par ailleurs recueilli le point de vue de Bernard Thibault, secrétaire général de la CGT (le premier syndicat ouvrier en France). Il rejette en bloc les solutions trouvées par les dix-sept. “Une fois de plus, on tente de nous convaincre qu'on a évité le pire, jusqu'à la prochaine secousse naturellement prévisible puisque rien ne change sur le fond ”.»

Avec Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, du Daily Telegraph, ce 24 juillet 2011, la chanson est tout de même différente puisqu’il s’agit du constat selon lequel “les idéologues de l’Europe ont mis le monde entier au bord du désastre”.

«...They never wavered in their faith that EU states would yield sovereignty to save the euro if push came to shove, that monetary union would force the pace towards joint EU government. So it proves to be, for now. But let us not forget that Europe's ideologues have achieved this only by pushing the world to the brink of catastrophe and holding parliaments to ransom with their great gamble, just as the West's financial elites held parliaments to ransom in the banking crash of October 2008.

«Once yields on 10-year Spanish and Italian bonds had blown through 6pc, global leaders knew we risked a second and more dangerous Lehman-AIG debacle within days. You cannot let two world class sovereign states blow up together. “The situation was really grave,” said Herman Van Rompuy, Europe's president.

»It is why President Barack Obama telephoned German Chancellor Angela Merkel to plead urgency. It is why Britain's well-briefed Chancellor George Osborne abjured the central credo of Tory policy on Europe for twenty years and more or less urged EMU leaders to embrace fiscal union, warning of “the potential for a set of economic events that could be as damaging as 2008.”

»Angela Merkel was steamrolled by events.

»Yielding with a gun held to your head is hardly a fair test of civic enthusiasm for EU integration. Eurosceptics can claim a less tainted vindication. They warned from the outset that EMU was unworkable as constructed and would lead ineluctably to the traumatic choice of break-up or fiscal union, with all the implications for democracy that such union implies. They have been absolutely right. […]

»The revamped fund has headline guarantee power of €780bn, but only part can be deployed under its collateral rules. “It needs to be increased in size urgently,” said Citigroup's Willem Buiter.“There is nothing to properly protect Italy and Spain from contagion. The crisis could strike again today.” […]

»Germany's Social Democrats have agreed to back the summit accord, but will they immolate themselves by voting for this sort of money when the time comes? Clearly, if Spain and Italy are themselves in crisis and cannot contribute, the rising burden falls on an ever reduced core. In any case Mrs Merkel's own CDU economic spokesman, Kurt Lauk, speaks for many is questioning her claims. Europe is advancing “with big strides towards an uncontrolled transfer union. Budgetary power must not under any circumstances be exercised without democratic legitimacy.”

»Otmar Issing, the European Central Bank’s founding star, has warned that events are on a course that threaten the ruin of Germany. “We must not forget that Western democracy began through parliamentary control over tax and public spending," he said. Dr Issing said Greece should be cast into the wilderness if and when it defaults, allowed to use the euro only as a street currency like Kosovo, without EMU privilleges. […]

»Angela Merkel said Europe's leaders had finally tackled the “root problem”. They did no such thing. The root problem is that vastly disparate nations with different growth rates, productivity patterns, debt structures, sensitivity to interest rates, legal systems, wage bargaining practices, and inflation proclivities, were meshed together by Hegelian politicians acting against the warnings of the Bundesbank and the European Commission's economists.

»The magical convergence did not occur, as any historian of Italy's lira bloc, or Spain’s peseta block, or Britain's sterling bloc might have foretold. Fifteen years after the currency rates were fixed in perpetuity, the North-South gap has widened to a point where monetary union is no longer structurally viable. The gap is growing yet wider. A booming Germany still has lower inflation (2.4pc) than a prostrate Spain (3pc) or Italy (3pc), so how is that 30pc deficit in intra-EMU competitiveness going to be bridged?

»One “solution” to this root problem is for the Geman bloc to pay subsidies to the South equal in scale to Versailles reparations, for decades. This is where fiscal union ultimately leads. Or Germania can opt for an orderly departure from monetary union before sinking deeper into this morass. Take your pick.»

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