Eu

While all eyes are fixed on Italy’s ever-increasing borrowing rates, a far larger problem may well be emerging. The EU bailout fund, set up to help countries who can’t borrow, may itself have trouble borrowing very soon. A sale this morning of 10-year bonds by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) had a very muted response, barely bringing in the €3 billion it was meant to. This despite the fact that the offer was priced at a much more enticing yield, some 90 basis points (or 0.9 percentage points in non-market lingo) above a previous sale. Mind you, that’s better than last week’s sale, which had to be postponed due

If the EU comes crashing down as a result of the Euro crisis, one thing is certain: the UK will be at the forefront of re-creating the bloc. Not exactly the way it is now, but not a totally different entity either. The reasons for this are three-fold, simple and are about Britain’s interests. First, Britain derives benefits from being part of, and determining the rules for, the world’s largest market. When the world is entering a “no-Doha” future, where pressure for protectionism will rise, there is no substitute for access to a relatively open market of some 400 million people. Neither transatlantic trade, commerce with the Commonwealth or links

While the Coalition is split over Europe, Labour does not look like they are in a much better position. Ed Miliband told the BBC that he was in favour of the Euro; Ed Balls would presumably tackle anyone to avoid that becoming the party’s policy. Meanwhile Douglas Alexander, Labour’s brainy Shadow Foreign Secretary, has yet to make a game-changing intervention. Their predicament is obvious. Should Labour accept the narrative of renegotiation but opt for different areas to opt out of than those favoured by the Tories? Or should they, like William Borroughs, stand astride history and scream “stop”, arguing for a pro-European position? Seemingly caught between the two views, the

David Rennie (aka The Economist’s Bagehot) has an excellent column in this week’s issue about the difficulties that Britain will face if she tries to repatriate powers from the EU. His main argument, having spoken to a number of senior German politicians and officials, is that if Britain holds up any treaty revisions in the hope of extracting concessions in return, then the other EU states will organise themselves without the UK. The Economist’s former Brussels correspondent also makes the key point that the 10 countries that are outside of the euro are not natural allies for the UK – some, like Denmark, do not want to join the euro,

Confusion has reigned today in Athens, clouding the first day of the G20 summit in Cannes. Reports at midday that the Greek Prime Minister was to resign turned out to be false. Papandreou’s staying put, for now at least. Instead, it seems there will be no referendum on Greece’s bailout package. In a sharp reversal, Papandreou reportedly told his Cabinet: “The referendum was never an end in itself. We had a dilemma – either true assent or a referendum. I said yesterday, if the assent were there, we would not need a referendum.” It seems he may have gained that assent, in that the opposition New Democracy party will support

The British electorate, in a referendum held on Thursday 19th June 2014, votes to leave the EU. On Monday, 23 June 2014, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition send the following joint letter to the President of the EU Council, the President of the Commission and the heads of state and government of the other twenty-six EU member states. Dear Herman, José-Manuel, Angela, Nicolas, Silvio etc. etc. …, UK Resumption of Sovereignty On 19 June 2014, in a referendum, the British electorate voted decisively to leave the European Union. Her Majesty the Queen, in her capacity as Head of State of the United Kingdom, consented to her

Let’s end the working week how it began: with talk of a European referendum. The talk, in this case, is provided by Daniel Hannan, who wrote an article for us in 2008 about his efforts to promote a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty from within the European Parliament. Here it is, our latest excavation from the Spectator archives: For MEPs, public opinion is merely an inconvenience, Daniel Hannan, The Spectator, 22 November 2008 I’ve just done the most pointless thing an MEP can do: I’ve delivered a speech to the European Parliament. Actually, ‘speech’ is rather a grand word for my little soliloquy which, under the rules, had to be

The picture of Nicolas Sarkozy not even turning around to shake David Cameron’s hand rather neatly sums up the Prime Minister’s problems right now. The danger for him is that the 17 Eurozone countries start writing a new set of rules and riding roughshod over the interests of those countries that are outside. This would be bad enough at anytime but with the Conservative party on the warpath over Europe it is a clear and present danger to the Prime Minister. As one ally of the Prime Minister said to me today the PM’s predicament is made even harder by the fact that many of the 10 countries outside the