05/06/2012
This happens every time a new treaty is in the offing. All sorts of characters emerge, ideas are thrown up, new ideas emerge, and the whole thing is given a thorough shaking. Only after a while does the pattern emerge that will become the final form.
One thing also must be factored in â not that you would know it from the increasingly parochial English press. France is in the middle of a bitter and increasingly fractious election campaign, which rules out Hollande as a direct player in the emerging European drama â until after 17 June.
Thus, it was to Berlin that our little Maoist Barroso trotted off last night, ostensibly to see Frau Doktor Merkel, and much else besides. Of the crumbs we are
allowed to know, Merkel encouraged EU oversight of banking, paving the way to a more centralised oversight of the European financial sector. Barroso called for an economic union.
It is easy to make out from this that there are differences between the German chancellor and the commission president â and maybe there are. In fact, there most certainly are. But this is also a ritual, pre-treaty dance â not so much seven and seventy veils. We are being shown what they want us to see. In
les couloirs, though, more and different words are being spoken, the likes of which we are not allowed to know.
And right in there is Schäuble, the German finance minister in name, but Europe's man, bought and paid-for. In a
Handelsblatt interview (pictured above), he is calling for a "proper fiscal union". Before there is any discussion of debt policy, he says, a new level of integration is necessary.
However, before we get there, we are dragged into
internal German politics, a place no sane man wants to be. Merkel hasn't even got her fiscal pact approved yet, and for that she is reliant on the Social Democrats and the Greens. But they want a transaction tax, while Merkel's own CDU is vehemently opposed to the idea. With a general election next year, she is not even mistress in her own house.
And on top of that, Germany's Economics Minister Philipp Rösler (not a name we hear very often), has refused again to boost the growth to fund new debt, blocking the idea of increasing government deficits - a direct snub to Hollande.
Into this then intrudes the rump of the English media, with very little idea of what is going on. The
Independent has Merkel at odds with Mariano Rajoy, as opposed to
The Guardian, which has Paris and Brussels responding favourably to Spain.
This, though, is old news and, while London takes another day off, European shares and the euro are falling, as further news is awaited. Meantime, the
Jewish Press is reporting that Russia is ready to lend money and expertise to solve the eurocrisis.
So far, Brussels has not turned to Moscow for help - yet, says this paper. But if the situation deteriorates, that soon might be the case. And then, with
G7 also being dragged in, with hopes of Chinese intervention, we will know that we are really in trouble ⦠as if we didn't already.
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