Objections to European Federation

Objections to European Federation

William Pfaff

http://www.williampfaff.com/article.php?storyid=588

       Paris, September 4, 2012 – Europe’s governments seem resistant to the lessons to be learned from what has happened to the European Union. The belief widely held is that enlarged federalism is the appropriate response to the economic crisis provoked by the Wall Street credit crash. Why? Fundamental to the crisis is the degree of federation it already has. Seventeen economically disparate nations bound their fortunes together in creating the Eurozone, and it is exactly this that has thrown the European project into crisis.

Large parts of the populations of Greece, Spain and Portugal have been forced into destitution; the economies of all seventeen members of the Eurozone have been gravely damaged; governments of the weaker countries have been stripped of policy autonomy and placed under the tutelage of a “Troika” of foreigners from the EU Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, who are imposing uniform, highly controversial, and thus far generally unsuccessful austerity programs.