As we learned late last week, the International Court of Justice will issue a decision on the case of Macedonia vs. Greece over Greece’s blocking of Macedonia’s NATO membership in 2008. I would love to write about that this week but it will have to wait until next week when we know the answer (hint: I suspect the court will uphold Macedonia’s position – we have seen in the past few days Greek media preparing the Greek people for a loss because the Greek media and politicians know that Greece is wrong on this issue).
So, we’ll just to go with the EU’s troubles – once again – this week.
A November 23 Wall Street Journal blog began with this pithy statement: “If you’re anything like us, you just can’t get enough of this whole euro-zone meltdown. What a joy it has been to spend the past two years keeping daily tabs on the rumors, lies and idiocy constantly flowing from Europe, with nothing less than the fate of the free world hanging in the balance.” Granted, the writer is referring to the EU fathers and bureaucracy when mentioning “…idiocy constantly flowing from Europe,” not the average European, within the EU or not.
If you follow the mess that is the Euro and the EU (read: Brussels) you know that Greece is now a sideshow – the main event has now moved on to Italy and beyond where key statistics (the main one being interest rates on 10 year bonds) show that Italy is likely to need a bail out too. As well as Spain. To say nothing of a poor performance by German bonds in a recent sale with lackluster sales.
Regardless, the markets and the pundits continue to bet that Greece will leave Euro first (if not the EU itself). But the talk of giving up sovereignty among the current EU members (and Euro members) is now not only much more in vogue but is also taking on speed. According to a November 18 article in the UK’s Telegraph, a leaked German Foreign Ministry memo lays out the steps necessary to bring about this transfer of power from member states to the faceless EU:
“The leaked memo, written by the German foreign office, discloses radical plans for an intrusive new European body that will be able to take over the economies of beleaguered eurozone countries. It discloses that the EU’s largest economy is also preparing for other European countries, which are too large to be bailed out, to default on their debts — effectively going bankrupt. It will prompt fears that German plans to deal with the eurozone crisis involve an erosion of national sovereignty that could pave the way for a European ‘super state’ with its own tax and spending plans set in Brussels.”
It gets worse: “The six-page German foreign ministry paper sets out plans for the creation of a European Monetary Fund with a transfer of sovereignty away from member states. The fund will have the power to take ailing countries into receivership and run their economies.”
A November 27 Financial Times article sets forward three things the EU must do, now, to save the Union one of which is: a loss of sovereignty. “The third decision is a fiscal union. This would involve a partial loss of national sovereignty, and the creation of a credible institutional framework to deal with fiscal policy, and hopefully wider economic policy issues as well. The eurozone needs a treasury, properly staffed, not ad hoc co-ordination by the European Council over coffee and desert.”
The Telegraph’s Economic Editor says that the Euro-crisis is the “new normal,” and that the EU will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis. He also lays out three possible scenarios: “There are two main schools of thought when it comes to fixing the eurozone debt crisis at the moment. The first is that matters will come to a head around Spring and a solution will be found. The second is that matters will come to a head around Spring and the euro will implode, pitching the world into another great recession…. But there is a third scenario. That the current stalemate persists throughout the year and deep into 2013, when the permanent European rescue mechanism is finally launched.”
Let me go out on a proverbial limb here – global government or global governance (one world government in other words) will only come about because of a global crisis. A global crisis which will affect nearly everyone on earth adversely, in such a way that the people of earth will clamor for a one world government. That crisis could be precipitated by natural disasters of one or many kinds but will most likely come about due to economic crisis in one or many places at the same time. What we are witnessing here is part of that process. And it will not be pretty. Think about that, Macedonia, as you contemplate EU membership.