The European Council on Foreign Relations

Reinventing Europe: Christine Ockrent

Date: 22nd May 2012 | Author: Christine Ockrent,

As part of ECFR's 'Reinvention of Europe' project, we are running a series of responses from leading thinkers and academics to Mark Leonard's recent paper 'Four scenarios for the reinvention of Europe'. The paper outlined four possible routes towards solving Europe's current crisis, and argued that Europe's main challenge was to solve the acute euro crisis without exacerbating the chronic crisis of declining European power. In the latest in this series we hear from the journalist Christine Ockrent.

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The EU is the product of political will. Forged by a small elite who did not consider it necessary at the time to involve the people, it has grown into a complex, incremental process which political leaders now seek to control exclusively on an inter-governmental basis.

Whatever the need for institutional imagination which we all agree upon and discuss regularly, I believe the

ECFR this week: 18th May 2012

Date: 18th May 2012 | Author: Nicholas Walton,

Categories: ECFR this week ,

Here’s our weekly round up of what we’ve been working on during a frenetic seven days in a Europe still firmly in the grip of the euro crisis:

As François Hollande visited Angela Merkel, we published a paper on the Franco German relationship by Ulrike Guérot and Thomas Klau: ‘How France and Germany can make Europe work’.
The Franco-German relationship was also the subject of a blog post by former German finance minister Hans Eichel, part of a series of blog posts in our Reinventing Europe project.
In the same series, Jean Pisani-Ferry examined the economics of the current crisis.
Sebastian Dullien published an article looking at ‘Two dangerous myths about a Grexit’ – that a Greek exit from the euro would necessarily be impossible for Greece and that any contagion from such an event could be contained.
We published a blog post by Marco de Andreis arguing

Ancora Austerity!

Date: 18th May 2012 | Author: Marco de Andreis,

Categories: Euro Crisis,

Ancora! Cutting public expenditures in the eurozone has yet to begin and cries already multiply against so-called austerity. We need instead decidedly more (ancora) of such cuts if we want to make room for private and public investments that would be capable of reviving growth.

Everybody wants economic growth, of course. Like the perpetual motion machine or the philosopher’s stone, growth solves all problems. Unfortunately, however, it cannot be obtained by just doing away with a fictional enemy called austerity – as the successful Socialist sloganeering during the French presidential elections would have us believe.

Whatever austerity may mean in practice, public spending has been growing steadily everywhere in the EU over the last ten years, in nominal terms as well as a percentage of GDP. The Economist blog “Free exchange” contends that Yes, there is austerity because public

The Europe of the future

Date: 18th May 2012 | Author: Giuseppe Scognamiglio ,

Categories: Euro Crisis,

The economic downturn that began in 2007 in the United States generated by a fall in property prices and the subsequent sub-prime mortgage crisis ultimately lapped over into secured loans. It went global after the failure of Lehman Brothers a year later. The financial emergency forced many governments, though not Italy’s, to intervene with public bank financing in an effort to stave off the collapse of domestic financial systems. Many European countries saw their debt increase massively as a result of these efforts, including Ireland, Britain, and Spain.

At the same time, the new Greek government publicly announced that its real debt was far greater than official figures had suggested, plunging Europe and the euro into the sovereign debt crisis. Increases in national debt outside the euro zone doesn’t by itself explain what happened to the common currency. In reality, the eurozone

Reinventing Europe: Hans Eichel on Franco-German leadership

Date: 17th May 2012 | Author: Hans Eichel ,

Categories: Reinventing Europe,

As part of ECFR's Reinvention project, we are running a series of blog posts looking at particular thematic issues facing Europe as it attempts to deal with the financial crisis.In the third of this series, Hans Eichel looks at the legitimacy of Franco-German leadership.

Merkozy was necessary to maintain the cohesion of Europe and, in particular, of the currency union. The stability-orientated “Northern Europeans”, who have to enter into a significant risk to ensure that the “Southern Europeans” can finance their borrowing at tolerable conditions, can only be kept on board if they are sure that their idea of sound financial policy is shared throughout Europe. Hence the rescue programmes for Greece, the EFSF and ESM with strict conditions and hence the fiscal pact. Merkozy also meant accepting that the ECB could ultimately perform its role unrestrictedly and act under its own

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