Europe Has An Even Bigger Crisis On Its Hands Than A British Exit

[Purveyor]

British people will vote to leave the EU unless offered a new dispensation, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

9:02PM BST 28 May 2014

If Europe's policy elites could not quite believe it before, they must now know beyond much doubt that they have lost Britain. This island is no longer part of the European project in any meaningful sense.

British defenders of the status quo were knouted on Sunday. UKIP won 27.5pc of the vote, or 29pc after adjusting for the negligence - or worse - of the Electoral Commission in allowing a spoiler party with much the same name to sow confusion. Margaret Thatcher's Tory children are scarcely more friendly to the EU enterprise.

Britain's decision to stay out of monetary union at Maastricht sowed the seeds of separation, as pro-Europeans fully understood at the time, though almost nobody expected EMU officialdom to clinch the argument so emphatically by running the currency bloc into the ground with 1930s Gold Standard policies and youth unemployment levels above 50pc in Spain and Greece, and above 40pc in Italy.

European leaders must henceforth calculate that the British people will vote to leave the EU altogether unless offered an entirely new dispensation: tariff-free access to the single market along lines already enjoyed by Turkey or Tunisia; and deliverance from half the Acquis Communautaire, that 170,000-page edifice of directives and regulations that drains away sovereignty, and is never repealed.

Ideological hardliners would prefer to see Britain leave rather tolerating any reversal of the one-way Monnet Doctrine, and some talk of shutting British goods out of the European markets. They are fanatics. Others know that the EU's global credibility would be shattered if one of its largest states - and twin-leader in projecting military power - were to walk away in disgust, as Germany's Wolfgang Schauble has repeatedly warned.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10861252/Europe-has-an-even-bigger-crisis-on-its-hands-than-a-British-exit.html

[Iterate]

1. Why Are Europe's Voters So Angry? It Has Nothing to Do With EU

Why Are Europe's Voters So Angry? It Has Nothing to Do With EU
By Carol Matlack May 27, 2014

Rightist euro-skeptic parties scored big wins in European parliamentary elections on May 25, suggesting that voters were angrier than anyone realized. But while Brussels makes a convenient target, public opinion polls indicate that Europeans are more furious with their own national governments than they are with the EU.

In fact, Europeans don’t seem all that keen to dismantle the Union. A YouGov poll completed a week before the election found that 51 percent of British voters and 71 percent of French voters wanted their countries to remain in the EU. A separate poll completed earlier in the month by the Pew Research Center found that public attitudes toward the EU have improved, with 52 percent of British voters this year having a favorable opinion of the bloc, up from 43 percent in 2013. In France, the figure rose to 54 percent from 41 percent in 2013.

In still another survey, conducted earlier this spring for the EU, 71 percent of voters said they mistrusted their national governments, compared to 59 percent who said they mistrusted the EU. Even in Greece, the country hardest hit by austerity measures, voters had a more favorable view of the EU than they did of the government in Athens.

...

But euro-skeptic forces may not make much headway in Brussels. Despite their increased presence in the European parliament, they’re still heavily outnumbered by center-right and center-left parties. “Paradoxically, you may see the parliament begin to vote even more strongly in favor of Europe,” Persson says, because the mainstream parties “will have a stronger incentive to form a grand coalition.” Nothing inspires a coalition like a common enemy.

... http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-27/what-are-europes-voters-so-angry-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-eu#r=lr-sr