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that the UK had joined in 1973 became the European Union in 1991, following the end of the Cold War. In 1985, five EC countries had signed the Schengen Agreement, creating a borderless area among them. In subsequent years, more countries joined and, by 2017, twenty-six of the twenty-eight EU members had abolished passport and border controls at their shared borders. But the UK and Ireland never joined the Schengen zone. When the 1993 Treaty of Maastricht called for creation of a monetary union – the Eurozone – the UK did not join. Despite these important
states. After a strong start, the new currency weakened successively against the US dollar and other currencies in 2000 and 2001 – helping exports but also adding to inflation – before firming again in 2002 and early 2003, though in a more difficult economic climate of slower growth in the euro-zone. It was clear that the EU had now taken a major step towards economic and political integration, begging the question to what extent formal political unification would follow that in the monetary field. What is meant by a ‘union’? Since the European Union is, at present
seems significant that it has only broken the surface in the volatile waters of post-2008 austerity. The spectacle of massive indebtedness, flatline growth rates, falling revenues, ageing populations, mass youth unemployment and the ever-looming threat of sovereign default in the Eurozone, undoubtedly represents a new and highly volatile era in the history of European integration. But in a wider
concentrated mainly on their campaign to ‘save the pound’ by opposing Britain entry into the eurozone (Labour wanted to join, subject to certain economic conditions being met). Hague and his colleagues also sought to ‘hit’ asylum seekers ‘hard’ and cut taxes. 51 As Gary Younge wrote in the Guardian , the Conservatives’ opposition to the single currency could potentially have had a ‘broad, popular appeal’. They sabotaged their case, however, by appealing to ‘petty minded patriots, nationalists and assorted
discourse was that the German taxpayer bore the brunt of the bail out and was paying for the irresponsibility of weaker Eurozone economies’ lack of fiscal discipline.57 The German media emphasis was on Irish political ineptitude and profligacy with extensive use of patronising metaphors such as the ‘greedy child’.58 Crude and oppositional depictions of the ‘other’ in Irish and German discourses, which often bordered on the offensive, stereotyped and blamed the ‘other’, in an exceedingly troubling dynamic. The tenor and quality of dialogue at times descended into simple
and political instability: fewer Muslims, fewer terrorists. In Marine Le Pen’s 2017 campaign, she warned of “two totalitarianisms”: globalization and Islamism. 7 A short list of her anti-globalist policies is: leave the EU, Eurozone and Schengen Area; restore French “sovereignty”; reduce immigration to 10,000 per year and carry out mass deportations; hire 15,000 new federal police officers; raise taxes on imports; lower domestic taxes; leave NATO’s integrated command; limit free education to French citizens only; reassert “French cultural identity.” Her campaign
communications technologies) revolution. Spain, another ‘tiger’ in the new euro-zone context, had managed to reduce its unemployment from 16 per cent in the mid-1990s to around 11 per cent in 2002. The UK’s unemployment in 2002 remained at about 5 per cent, even though with large differences MUP_Torbion_09_Ch9 224 22/9/03, 3:41 pm A new European Union 225 between regions. The situation in 2003 was more serious in big Euroland countries like France, Germany and Italy, with rates close to or in the double-figure range. The labour markets of these countries seemed
initiatives such as the Rapid Reaction Force, especially as Britain is not a member of the euro-zone. For Germany, close links with the UK have been important in order to avoid becoming too dominated by France in the EU. It is balance-of-power politics on a miniature scale, with the EU and the transatlantic relationship serving as obvious limits to anything more significant. This outcome has produced a broadly functioning ménage à trois, with Spain and Italy joining in as occasional mediators.15 A seemingly rock-solid ‘special relationship’ holds firm between the UK and the