Europe

How can Cameron protect our interests in Europe in the short term?

Chatting to people in Brussels last week, I couldn’t help feeling that David Cameron’s EU problem is one of timing. The PM will probably be able to piece together a repatriation package that includes measures such as a withdrawal from the over-implemented Working Time Directive and a reduction in the EU budget. But none of this is likely to be enough for his party. Indeed, I suspect the budget won’t be finalised until two minutes to midnight during the Lithuanian EU Presidency in 2013. Add to this the Tobin Tax, where there seems to be little leeway for the British government. Barosso, Merkel and Sarkozy are determined to introduce it,

Cameron cross-questioned

A quick post just to add the Guardian’s interview with David Cameron to your Saturday reading list. It takes the unusual approach of fielding questions to the PM from a range of ‘public figures’ — and, although many of those questions reduce down to ‘why aren’t you giving more money to X?’, the results are still generally engaging and occasionally insightful. And so we learn, after an enquiry by The Spectator’s own Toby Young, that Cameron doesn’t keep a diary. And we also have the PM justifiying his stance on Europe to Nigel Farage; skipping over a question about what he may or may not have inhaled during his time

Without growth, Osborne’s best-laid schemes will go awry

Strikes, Olympic boycotts and obesity league tables — it’s a dreary set of newspaper front covers this morning. But none of them are quite so dreary as the Telegraph’s, which speaks of ‘The return of recession’. According to their story, the OECD has told ministers that its latest set of forecasts, released on Monday, will have the UK economy shrinking for the first six months of next year. They’re not the first forecasting organisation to suggest a double-dip — going by the Treasury’s overview of indpendent forecasts, Schroders Investment Management have economic ‘growth’ at -0.4 per cent in 2012 — but they are the most prominent so far. Shudder ye

Europe’s debt overspill

That Italy is now paying around 7.8 per cent for two-year borrowing, compared to the 4.5 per cent it was paying just last month, is a reminder that the imposition of a technocratic government was far from a solution to the country’s problems. With €8 billion more debt to be sold on Tuesday, there’s little respite for Italy coming up. One does have to wonder how long they can carry on like this.   But Italy’s troubles need to be seen in conjunction with what happened at the German bund auction this week. The problems that even Germany is having in getting its debt away at a good rate is

What kind of Europe?

A couple of weeks ago I tried to lay out what the future of Europe could look like, given that some member states want to create an ever-closer Union while others prefer to remain in a looser kind of club. I wrote that the EU might end up evolving into a much more asymmetric arrangement, with a small group of European states integrating in some areas, while other states remain outside. Later I called this new arrangement the trade the ‘EF’, the European Framework, as opposed to the more integrative EU of today.   Now others have begun offering their ideas. Michael van Hulten, a former Dutch MEP, has gone

Opening Europe

It is an article of British faith that further liberalisation of Europe’s market is a worthwhile goal. But few people realise the boost the UK economy would actually get from the finalisation of the EU’s internal market – especially implementation of the Services Directive, creating an integrated market for energy, modernising public procurement rules and liberalising the digital market. Implementation of the Services Directive alone would add 1.5 per cent of GDP to the EU as a whole in the next nine years, according to European Commission calculations. As the UK has one of the strongest services sectors, this will have direct benefits here. Taken together, progress in all these

The dangers of ever-closer union

Yesterday, Fraser wrote that ‘reporting of European issues tends to ignore public opinion’. Today, Philip Stephens has neatly illustrated Fraser’s point in his Financial Times column. Musing on Britain’s possible exit from the European Union, Stephens writes: ‘I am not sure this is what the prime minister intends; nor, when it comes to it, that British voters will accept such an outcome.’ Stephens’ conjecture ignores the European Union’s own polling, which, as Fraser says, shows most Britons to be hostile to the EU. That said, Stephens’ article is substantial. He argues that ‘fiscal union carries its own remorseless logic: the progressive exclusion of Britain from Europe’s economic decision-making’. The magnitude of George

Sorry, Mr Gul, but Turkey won’t be joining the EU any time soon

It’s not going to happen. That’s what everyone says who knows anything about the subject that we’re going to be hearing quite a bit about this week: Turkey’s membership of the EU.  I’ve heard it from someone who works for William Hague, from a political editor, from a diplomat. Which makes this week’s state visit by the Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, on his three-day state visit to Britain seem pretty well beside the point.  The British government is right behind Turkey’s bid for EU membership, no country more so. David Cameron and William Hague have if anything been even more effusive in their support than Tony Blair and Jack Straw

Fraser Nelson

How ambitious is Cameron on Europe?

Someone forgot to pack his handbag. We heard yesterday that David Cameron has agreed to let Merkel pursue full fiscal union – and in return she will… drum roll please… let him repatriate parts of the Working Time Directive. There’s nothing official from Number 10, but the well-informed Ben Brogan suggests this morning that this could well be Britain’s price for agreeing to Merkel’s deal. If so, this would be an opportunity squandered on a massive – perhaps historic – scale. Let’s recap. Cameron is in an incredibly powerful position: leading a government which is, in defiance of public opinion, giving £9 billion of overseas aid to EU member states each year.

Are the Lib Dems pro-EU?

This might seem a very odd question. A pro-EU position is part of the party’s internationalist DNA. Listen to any EU-related speech by the likes of Nick Clegg or Paddy Ashdown and heartfelt support for the European project is apparent. The Liberal Democrats have also made a virtue of reining in Tory euroscepticism, for example rejecting a call for repatriation of powers in the Coalition Agreement. The Deputy Prime Minister remains, in private and public, pro-EU. And to many activists and MPs, the party’s European stance is what makes it different to the Tories – and is the reason why they are Lib Dems. They see in Tory euroscepticism a

Cameron and Merkel: all smiles but no progress

David Cameron and Angela Merkel were clearly keen to show that, whatever the tensions over the role of the European Central Bank, they still get on. I lost count of the number of times in their press conference that they used the word ‘good’ to characterise their relationship and their discussions. But there did not appear to have been any actual progress on how to deal with the current crisis. Certainly, there was no softening of Germany’s opposition to using the ECB as the backstop for the Eurozone. Merkel conceded that she had raised a European-only financial transactions tax with the Prime Minister but that, unsurprisingly, no progress had been

What does the ‘carbon floor price’ mean? More emissions and fewer jobs

After the Conservative Party Conference, Fraser described this statement in George Osborne’s speech as the Osborne Doctrine: ‘Let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe.’ The Government’s current climate policy clearly fails that test, as I set out for this site at the time, and there is no more egregious violation than the carbon floor price. It is one of those policies that can sound reasonable in theory: the EU Emissions Trading System creates a carbon market. That market produces a carbon price that is supposed to encourage business to invest in

The debate over Europe’s future

We’ve got two interventions by high-profile European politicians in the British papers this morning. In the FT, German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle lays out Germany’s stance, providing a taste of what David Cameron can expect when he meets Angela Merkel in Berlin today. He begins by underscoring the importance of keeping the eurozone together: ‘The eurozone is the economic backbone of the European Union. Its stability directly affects non-euro states and global financial markets. An erosion of the eurozone would jeopardise Europe as a political project, and with it the chance to make our values and interests be heard in the new power set-up of the 21st century. Stabilising the

Alex Massie

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

The symbolism of this is pretty dire. These are still times for bitter melancholy in Ireland and many a Dubliner has rarely felt as republican as he does now that the state’s sovereignty* is, shall we say, not what once it was. This, a friend says, is just another tale of life “under the occupation”: Taoiseach Enda Kenny has rejected reports that details of next month’s Budget, including a planned hike in the VAT rate, were shown to German officials yesterday. Mr Kenny met chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin yesterday after which reports emerged that the Irish Government was planning raise the top rate of VAT by 2 per cent

Some context for the ongoing growth debate

Listening to Ed Miliband’s speech today, you’d be left with the impression that the UK is suffering a huge decline in government spending this year, and that this is to blame for most of our economic ills. The facts are a little different, as the below chart shows. The European Commission estimates that the UK is likely to have the second largest growth in government spending of any of the EU’s 27 members this year, clocking in at a robust 1.5 per cent increase for the year. Yet this has done nothing to help the UK’s relative growth performance. The UK is forecast to be the fifth slowest growing economy

In defence of technocrats

Is Mario Monti’s administration in Italy democratic? Is Greece’s new government? To some, especially in the blogosphere, it is the exact opposite: a technocratic and undemocratic government foisted upon Italy and Greece by (circle as appropriate) Angela Merkel/Nicolas Sarkozy, the Bilderberg Group/EUSSR, etc. But nobody forced Silvio Berlusconi to resign. Nobody sacked him. Under pressure by the markets, he chose to resign. He could have stayed and nobody denied that he had a constitutional right to do so. It would have cost Italy dear, but he could have stayed. In addition, Monti was appointed to the Senate by the Italian president who himself is elected by Parliament in a joint

European champions at last

The UK can now claim to be No.1 in Europe… for inflation. Further to Tuesday’s figures, the EU has now updated its own spreadsheet. And this is what it shows: We’ve been hovering around the top for a year or so, but now we’ve finally touched the summit. Let’s see if we start to plummet down again, as the Bank of England predicts.

Renegotiation reality

Governing is about choices. That goes for Europe too. The government says it can get everything it wants – that’s politics – but the reality is different. It actually faces a number of trade-offs, the biggest being a choice between staying in an EU that reforms but not as quickly or as dramatically as parts of the Tory party wants; or to pull out entirely from the EU.  In his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, the Prime Minister argued that he could both change Britain’s relationship with the EU but remain inside the 27-member bloc. But I can find no serious EU expert or mandarin who believes this is

Cameron shows his eurosceptic side

David Cameron’s speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet last night was a significant moment — the clearest articulation yet of his European Policy. In the crucial paragraph, he declared: ‘we sceptics have a vital point. We should look sceptically at grand plans and utopian visions. We’ve a right to ask what the European Union should and shouldn’t do and change it accordingly. As I said, change brings opportunities. An opportunity to begin to refashion the EU so it better serves this nation’s interests and the interests of its other 26 nations too. An opportunity, in Britain’s case, for powers to ebb back instead of flow away and for the European