Euro Area

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It would also cause 'brand' damage similar to that of the US Congress bickering.

Considering the basis of the EU is first and foremost economic and you can't even get that right iff you give up on the Euro.

It would effectively dissolve any future ambitions of being a united Europe.

External nations including Russia, China and the US will be wondering how trustworthy the word of any European nation is if they cannot even look after their own EU members.

What treaty will be worth the paper it is printed on if the modern EU at the first pressure buckles and can't work out it's differences without having temper tantrums more beffiting a nusery "it's my currency not yours", "but I want all the benefit's and none of the hardwork", "I want your cheap labour but I don't want to support the country that makes it possible"

Talk about waving the white flag of surrender and truly putting Europe on the trash heap of the has beens. Do you have anything of value like the Marbles that some up and coming states can buy off you in the next hundred years or so? Maybe reposition your new fractured currencies around your ankles in an attempt to out compete Vietnamese labour for manufacturing outsourced from China.

Chose your long term trajectory now. Either deal yourselves in to the future with the Americans and Chinese or stop bitching about how great you were and will never be again. A united Europe has a future, a fractured one will just prove to the rest of the world that two world wars wasn't enough to knock some sense into such a tribal society.

You're on a cusp where Europe can still be something meaningful in the world. Or it can just be a stop over pit stop for the world shakers. A charming destination for tourist's looking for the charming and kitch "Oh look dear the Orient Express is going through Old Europe, do you remember A ma saying that they used to be world leaders until they started looking inwards and collapsed like the China and Japan of old."

Mind you I live in the world's largest quarry. So what the fudge do I understand about real politik.

All this has already happened, "Merkozy" is now aknowledged as the only actual entity capable of providing a solution, and our stock markets are in a dive because those two won't bite the bullet, every dat the dissultion of the Euro becomes more likely and more desirable. I think we have already passed the point of no return, there isn't time for a new treaty to be drawn up, haggled over and voted through in referenda in order to create actual democratic institutions, and even if there was "Merkozy" would not relinquish their power to an elected European government.

The Euro is toast.

On the up side, the US, China and Russia are also in at least as much trouble. China was never going to rule the world, any more than the Soviets, the US is just past it's sell by date (and what a short date) and Russia is totally dependant on it's Tzar for good governence.

I have heard it would be cheaper for us to do that then the current system of giving the money to Europe straight from our existing taxes. Plus, if it was a straight tax, there would be far more resistance to it ever increasing, and thus European budget could not especially raise it like they do by demanding more money from the nations (which keeps it between politicians and not the tax payer and Europe).

As for Kinship, I feel more kinship with the Scanians of Sweden then I do with the Londoners in the South. Europe Federal Union is something I would encourage and not oppose.

I heard that was a lie. It would just result in more taxation, money would still come from the individual states and the EU would just become more beurocratic. The very idea they should be allowed tax-raising powers when their accountants will not sign the account book as legit is insulting.

as to Kinship, Scandanavians are the Cousins of the English, as are the Irish - it's no wonder you feel kinship - that doesn't mean you should be politically yoked to the Greeks and Italians as well.

Good ideas, Kralizec, both on the transition away from the euro and on possible future institutions. Only in the present climate there is no room and no political will for a complete institutional rehash. Without this bloody euro mistake we might have been able to progress politically and get our house in Brussels in order, for which a Bundestag/Bundesrat (or US Congress/Senate) model might be suitable - and by that I mean workable as well as equitable. I just don't see it happening now.

AII

Maybe, but increasingly I have come to believe that the EU has always been a mirrage, success has been more to do with war-fatigue and the threat of the Soviets and their nukes than any actual inherrent worth in the EU project.