{"id":2119,"date":"2009-02-28T12:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-28T12:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/?p=2119"},"modified":"2009-02-28T13:03:12","modified_gmt":"2009-02-28T13:03:12","slug":"the-eu%e2%80%99s-weekend-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2009\/02\/the-eu%e2%80%99s-weekend-emergency\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU\u2019s weekend emergency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of my other reasons for pondering a <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/?p=2117\">change in direction<\/a> here (beyond boredom with party politics in the run up to the summer&#8217;s EU elections) is that the other big story in the EU &#8211; hell, everywhere &#8211; is the ongoing economic crisis. What I know about economics could be written on the back of a postage stamp, so comment is best avoided. (Of course, even the supposed experts have been shown to know precisely tit all about what&#8217;s going on with the global economy over the last year, so perhaps economic illiteracy isn&#8217;t such a handicap after all?)<\/p>\n<p>However, people who know infinitely more about economics than I do reckon that this weekend could be the economic crunch point for the EU &#8211; the moment when the sheer extent of the current crisis becomes insurmountable. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/opinion\/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13184594\">The Economist is even suggesting<\/a> that this weekend&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eu2009.cz\/en\/news-and-documents\/news\/invitation-letter-from-mirek-topolanek-to-the-informal-european-council-meeting-10790\/\">emergency EU summit<\/a> could mark the start of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/opinion\/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13184655\">the breakup of the Eurozone, and perhaps even of the EU itself<\/a>. The Guardian&#8217;s David Gow has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/2009\/feb\/18\/european-union-recession-policy\">more along similar lines<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That Economist article and leader have been followed up by a <a href=\"http:\/\/fistfulofeuros.net\/afoe\/economics-and-demography\/sunday-is-d-day-for-the-european-union\/\">couple<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/fistfulofeuros.net\/afoe\/economics-and-demography\/will-it-be-a-different-world-on-the-ides-of-march\/\">posts<\/a> at Fistful that are well worth a gander &#8211; the first containing proposals to get the EU out of this mess, the second looking at the wider, global context.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also worth having a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.euro-area.org\/blog\/?p=198\">this piece at Eurozone Watch<\/a> from last week (rather heavy-going in places, mind) looking at the theoretical\/legal arguments for bailing-out a collapsing Eurozone member, and an overview of the case for <a href=\"http:\/\/central.blogactiv.eu\/2009\/02\/23\/let-central-europe-in-the-eurozone\/\">relaxing Eurozone entry criteria<\/a> to provide a way out of the current crisis from Central Europe Activ (with considerably more detail about how this approach might work from Edward Hugh <a href=\"http:\/\/bonoboathome.blogspot.com\/2009\/02\/let-east-into-eurozone-now.html\">here<\/a>). And for those who still haven&#8217;t had their fill of EU economics, Alphasources has a very useful look at <a href=\"http:\/\/clausvistesen.squarespace.com\/alphasources-blog\/2009\/2\/23\/when-push-comes-to-shove.html\">why it has got so urgent to have a unified European response<\/a> after what seems like months of prevarication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my other reasons for pondering a change in direction here (beyond boredom with party politics in the run up to the summer&#8217;s EU elections) is that the other big story in the EU &#8211; hell, everywhere &#8211; is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2009\/02\/the-eu%e2%80%99s-weekend-emergency\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,76],"tags":[189,178],"class_list":["post-2119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eu","category-new-europe","tag-economics","tag-eu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2123,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions\/2123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}