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the EU’s strategic goals. Largely with taxpayers’ money, banks have been re-financed in order to buy government bonds and preserve the illusion of underlying financial stability. Along the way, certain policies have been jettisoned after their soundness was previously proclaimed by leading European officials, usually without much explanation or even attempts to obtain the confidence of the wider public. By the autumn of 2011, the core EU states were prepared to intervene in the internal governance of some of the most troubled eurozone members in order to assert
more ‘normal’ – that is, more like that of established nation-states such as France, Great Britain and the US. 4 In an attempt to further examine this question, scholars have assessed whether Germany’s foreign policy is still that of a ‘civilian power’, as is so often claimed. Berlin’s increasing engagement in international crises and its role in crisis-ridden Europe have proven key factors in leading some foreign policy observers to doubt whether Germany is still a ‘civilian power’. 5 In particular, the eurozone crisis has pushed the German government into the
quo ideas. The new Europe, as described in the new Pact for budget discipline of the twenty-five, is more conservative, more recessionary, more German, less coherent, and above all, less capable of meeting the requirements of the European social model. Undoubtedly, the successive waves of emergency measures for saving the Euro-zone are reshaping the European Union. The process of twofold construction of Europe, on the one hand through the markets, liberalisation and insistence on fiscal discipline and, on the other, through ‘extra-market’ actions and institutions
Organization (NATO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Eurozone) has provided the organising logic of the post-Soviet state project in Latvia. Every one of these targets promptly replaced the previous goal once membership was achieved, giving a new stimulus for reforms and a way of sustaining this familiar tempo. The idea of a ‘2-speed Europe’, occasionally pronounced in Brussels, is permanently hanging in the air as a threat that, despite all the efforts, ‘the East’ is not going to keep pace with ‘the West’.2 This temporal lag is an idea that
7 The first Memorandum: a medicine with dangerous side-effects Greece was considered the source of the crisis. It was in Greece, therefore, that the necessary measures to prevent it spreading had to be implemented immediately. Intense and challenging consultations between the Greek government and representatives of the Troika (the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF) concluded on 1 May 2010 with a framework agreement. The following morning, that framework agreement was approved by the Greek Cabinet. Later that afternoon the Eurozone ministers of finance
economic concerns were a selling point for the public they were additionally a reflection of New Labour’s internal debates about the relative merits of staying out or joining the eurozone. The second factor has historic roots in the strategies Britain’s leaders have used to generate support for their European policies. Blair was well aware that in the realm of foreign economic policy, and especially controversial initiatives such as this, any argument for the EU had to be couched in terms of the national interest, in this case the national economic interest. On
Winzen, 2012). Thus, the Bundestag has comparatively strong EU scrutiny powers, whilst those of the House of Commons and the National Assembly are considered moderate (Auel et al., 2015). Authors such as Auel and Höing (2015) also demonstrate that during the Eurozone crisis, the most powerful national parliaments operating in the economically strongest EU member states (e.g. Germany, Netherlands, Finland) had the highest levels of parliamentary engagement in EU affairs. This chapter discusses the differences between the British, French, and German parliaments
, the largest net payer, made in 2012 a net contribution of about €11.95 billion; France (second largest payer) made a net contribution of €8.30 billion, and the UK (third largest) €7.37 billion ( www.bpb.de ). Box 10.1 Germany and the Eurozone crisis When the proposal was made that member-states of the EU should move to a common currency (the euro), both elite and mass opinion in Germany were favourable, even though the Deutschmark had a very strong symbolic status for the Germans, and was the strongest major currency in the EU. Germany clearly had an interest
fair euro exchange rate. A reciprocal economy such as this would promote the achievement of sufficiency through participation in the labour market and alleviate the pressure on the distressed economies of the Eurozone and their social services. Hence, with a fair EU economy, social needs would likely be much lower than they are at present. Under such a scenario, the role of redistribution would be relatively marginal, particularly when compared to that of pre-distribution. As I shall discuss later on, this is promising, since it seems politically easier to change a
Cyprus's participation in the EU or the Eurozone in any party manifesto. It was mostly expressed by criticism of the current direction of the EU. EDEK and the Greens, for example, called for a vague ‘progressive re-direction of the EU’ away from neoliberalism, emphasising that the EU ‘remains the context for solving the country's and the continent's problems’ (Omirou, 2014 ). Although European elections are usually characterised by punishment for the incumbent, in Cyprus voters penalised the former governing party AKEL for the