I have always tried to avoid making predictions as unlike Mr. Ashdown, I have few hats and no desire to devour any of them. It does seem, however, as though the Greek population have rejected the terms of the latest bailout. The saga of the Greek Eurozone experiment and its travails seems to have gone on rather longer than the Trojan War. How one analyses the blame depends to a large extent on one’s views on economics and the whole …
In identifying three alternative European solutions, rather than the “lethal injection” of unilateral action by Ireland, Paul Gillespie in the Irish Times highlights the wider issues in play. IRELAND BADLY needs a strategy to handle the euro zone crisis, rather than reacting defensively to all its latest twists and turns. This requires a political as well as an economic understanding of the dynamics in play at European and national levels. Most economists here are ill-equipped to provide this because they take …
Another example of domestic political pressure potentially impinging on the “European project”. This time in Denmark, a member of the Schengen zone, where the government has announced the re-introduction of border guards and spot checks “designed to fight crime and illegal immigration”. From the Wall Street Journal report In Denmark, the issue of tighter border control has become a political bargaining chip. The governing center-right minority government, which consists of a coalition between the Conservatives and liberal-right party Venstre, wants to …
