Eu

Thursday

Douglas Murray

‘Banging on about Europe’ doesn’t seem so dumb now, does it?

As we watch the Eurozone catastrophe enter its latest ‘final phase’ one phrase keeps recurring to me.  That phrase is ‘banging on about Europe’.  Does anybody else remember when those words were used (at least since Maastricht I think) to dismiss absolutely anybody who was worried about the overreach or mismanagement of the whole EU project?  Europhiles from the three main parties loved the phrase.  Whenever they wanted to portray a political opponent as a tedious, fringe obsessive the words sprung to their lips.  For instance, whenever he wanted to paint the Tory party as a right bunch of nutters, Nick Clegg would portray them as the type of bores who

Ramita Navai

Ali Baba and the 300 hostages

In the heat of the midday sun, the fields and woodlands between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia look idyllic: birds sing, the grass is smudged with wild poppies, all seems quiet. But this picture of pastoral peace is, I’m afraid, an illusion. This is Greece’s Wild West, a lawless and desperate place known as ‘The Jungle’, where people are beaten up every day. ‘It’s dangerous out there,’ says the fat Greek policeman standing with me, just north of the village of Idomeni. Then he waddles back to his car. The predators in this jungle are Afghan people-smugglers, their prey the poor migrants who have struggled here from all over

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Greeks just want to keep what they’ve got

We were breakfasting outside on the morning of the Greek referendum. The result could only be guessed at and all the polls were saying it was neck-and-neck. I thought ‘yes’ would win because surely Greek people believe in membership of the EU. Our friend Marie, however, who is French, announced that it would be a decisive ‘no’. Marie is neither a left-winger nor a Europhobe. ‘Why?’ her husband asked, ‘how do you know?’ ‘Avantage acquis,’ she said. Few of us were fluent French speakers, but I made a guess: ‘You mean people’s sense of continuing entitlement to something they have already got?’ Yes, she said, such things are very hard

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Forget the EU – we need the Hanseatic League

I think it is time to put into effect my plan for the re-shaping of the European Union. A somewhat scaled-down European Union: Greece wouldn’t be in it, for a start. Nor Portugal or Spain or France or indeed Italy south of a line which I have just drawn on my Times Atlas of the World in felt-tip pen, stretching east north east from Genoa to Trieste. And even that northern bit of Italy (Venice in, Bologna definitely out) is there on a sort of probation — and on the understanding that they take their orders from the German-speakers in the new capital Bolzano (or Bozen, as it will become

Tuesday

Matthew Parris

You’ll never understand Greece from a God’s eye view

We were breakfasting outside on the morning of the Greek referendum. The result could only be guessed at and all the polls were saying it was neck-and-neck. I thought ‘yes’ would win because surely Greek people believe in membership of the EU. Our friend Marie, however, who is French, announced that it would be a decisive ‘no’. Marie is neither a left-winger nor a Europhobe. ‘Why?’ her husband asked, ‘how do you know?’ ‘Avantage acquis,’ she said. Few of us were fluent French speakers, but I made a guess: ‘You mean people’s sense of continuing entitlement to something they have already got?’ Yes, she said, such things are very hard

Steerpike Steerpike

Crowdfunding campaign to bail out Greece fails to meet its target

After the people of Greece voted against the bailout terms on offer in Sunday’s referendum, the likelihood of the country staying in the Euro is beginning to diminish. Now, they have received yet another blow. A crowdfunder campaign, started by Londoner Thom Feeney to raise the full €1,600,000,000 needed, has been closed down after failing to meet its target. The IndieGoGo fundraiser claimed that since ‘all this dithering over Greece is getting boring’ it was time to forget the European ministers working on deals and instead let ‘the people just sort it instead’. Alas, it seems out of the 503 million people across Europe, only a small percentage wanted to take part.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Greeks haven’t exactly got negotiations off to a good start

Eurozone leaders are holding a summit later today to discuss the Greeks’ proposal for dealing with their debt that was to be put before the Eurogroup this afternoon. But that summit might be a tad short. The Greeks haven’t turned up with any new ideas. They have instead made an oral presentation, and may table a paper tomorrow. If this is true, then it hardly gets the new negotiations off to a good start. It had looked yesterday as though Syriza was keen to give it another shot by removing Yanis Varoufakis as finance minister at the behest of the Eurogroup, but on his first full day in the job,

Monday

James Forsyth

Merkel strikes an uncompromising tone as the ECB tightens the squeeze on the Greek banks

François Hollande and Angela Merkel have both given brief statements to the media ahead of their dinner this evening. Hollande was keen to stress that the door remained open to Greece for negotiations and struck a generally more emollient tone. Merkel, though, did not sound so emollient. She claimed that the deal that the Greeks rejected was ‘quite a generous one’. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank—the key actors in this drama—have kept the emergency lending assistance they are offering the Greek banks at the same level. This means that the Greek banks will not be able to re-open. The ECB has also said that it will ‘adjust the haircuts on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Time running out for a Greek deal warns Osborne

Right now, Britain is sitting on the side-lines waiting to see if there is, to use George Osborne’s phrase, an ‘11th hour’ deal between Greece and the rest of the Eurozone. Britain isn’t part of the Greek bailout or the Eurozone so is peripheral to this process; David Cameron isn’t invited to the emergency Eurozone meeting on Tuesday. But Osborne has just told the House of Commons that the UK government expects the Eurogroup to discuss a new proposal from the Greek government at tomorrow’s meeting. As Osborne pointed out, the problem is that the political timetable for a deal isn’t moving as fast as the financial timetable in Greece.

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Does anybody still believe that the EU is a benign institution?

Ever since Margaret Thatcher U-turned in the dying days of her premiership, there has been a kind of agreement between Left and Right on what the European Union is. Most Conservatives followed the late-vintage Thatcher. They stopped regarding the EU as a free market that British business must be a part of, and started to see it as an unaccountable socialist menace that could impose left-wing labour and environmental policies on a right-wing government. As many critics have said, the Tory version of British nationalism that followed had many hypocrisies. It did not want foreigners infringing national sovereignty when they were bureaucrats in Brussels but did not seem to mind

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cheer up! The Greek crisis shows you were right all along

I don’t know whether the joy on the right was worse than the preening on the left last night but as the result of the Greek referendum swept across social media I found myself thinking that any result so cheerfully welcomed by Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn and Sinn Fein can’t be thought altogether cheerful. Of course you needn’t judge a cause by its followers but when a cause is followed and endorsed by such a collection of rogues, crooks and cranks it’s wise to begin to wonder about it. All this glee seemed especially shabby since, really, it didn’t really seem to be about Greece at all.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Greece says No, will Germany now try and kick it out of the Euro?

Greece has voted No in the referendum and resoundingly so. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, No is leading 61% to 39%. The result is a massive humiliation for Eurozone leaders who have spent the last few days telling the Greeks to vote Yes and warning them that this was really a referendum on whether the country should stay in the single currency or not. Tonight, Syriza have been making clear that the Greek government intends to remain within the Euro. However, the German government is making clear that it is not interested in further negotiations with Athens or a new bailout deal. Sigmar Gabriel, the deputy

David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

Alexis Tsipras asked if people were happy. The answer was always going to be ‘no’

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has just done something unthinkable. He has won the Greek referendum. And make no mistake, it was him that won it. It was his decision to call a referendum just over a week ago and send the EU into a panic. The last Prime Minister to try that was George Papandreou in 2011 before he was forced to backtrack rapidly. He resigned shortly after. But winning the referendum isn’t what is so astounding – opinion polls were neck and neck throughout last week and once voting closed at 7pm Greek time it became almost immediately apparent that the No side would win. What makes his feat so

James Forsyth James Forsyth

German rhetoric suggests that they are preparing to try and kick Greece out of the Euro

Greece has voted No, and resoundingly so. But the reaction from Berlin tonight does not suggest that Germany is prepared to have any further negotiations with the Syriza government. The vice chancellor, and head of the SPD, Sigmar Gabriel has declared that “With the rejection of the eurozone’s rules of the game, which has been expressed in this majority ‘no’ vote, negotiations on further multibillion euro programs are scarcely conceivable.” Given that the SDP is more doveish than the CDU and the CSU on the Greek question, this sounds like Germany has given up on trying to strike a deal and now wants Greece to leave the Euro. Indeed, one

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Greek voters say Oxi, what will the Eurozone do now?

With half the votes counted, the No side in the Greek referendum is leading by 61% to 39%. With this lead for No at this stage in the count, it seems certain that it has won. The question now is how the Eurozone will react to this result. Before the vote, the Eurozone powers made clear that they wanted Greece to vote Yes. The Germans, French and Italians all repeatedly warned the Greeks that this was effectively a vote on whether to stay in the Euro or Not. Jean-Claude Juncker even hinted that this was a referendum on whether Greece should stay in the EU or not. So, what will

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Greeks have voted ‘no’. Now, the real crisis will begin

In a landslide vote, the Greeks have said ‘no’ to the latest EU bailout deal – and, perhaps, to the Euro itself. Alexis Tsipras will stay as Prime Minister, and treat the result as a mandate to negotiate a better deal. But that’s not how the Germans see it: their economic affairs minister, Sigmar Gabriel, has just told the Tagesspiegel newspaper that the Greek ‘no’ has just ‘torn down the last bridges on which Greece and Europe could have moved towards a compromise’ and furthermore: ‘With the rejection of the rules of the eurozone … negotiations about a programme worth billions are barely conceivable.’ So events may now well spiral out of anyone’s control. Here’s what we’re facing… 1)

Ed West Ed West

Globalists v localists: the new reality of 21st century politics

Tonight it looks like the Oxi’s have it, and Greece’s fraught relationship with the Franks has reached a new phase, with possible Grexit coming; that’s assuming the exit polls are correct and that this whole torturous episode doesn’t continue. Whether Grexit takes place or not, though, the whole episode has fundamentally damaged the European Union by undermining the very idea it was built on – solidarity. If you ever get Irish people on the subject of the Great Famine, the essential point they always make is that had the potato blight hit Yorkshire, no one would have starved because London would have come to its aid. Yorkshire is the example

Saturday

James Forsyth

Which way will Greece vote?

This time tomorrow, we’ll have had the first projections from the Greek referendum. We will have an idea as to whether the country has said Oxi or Nai. At the moment, the polls make the referendum too close to call. Whatever the result, there’ll be no quick deal between Greece and its creditors. But if the Greeks vote Oxi, then the country could be forced out of the Euro by the ECB cutting off assistance to its banks. If that were to happen, then the Eurozone would have to move to integrate very quickly to prevent Portugal, Italy, Spain and even France being pushed towards the Euro exit the next

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Does the EU want the Greeks to vote for Golden Dawn?

If Greece does vote Yes, and Mr Tsipras has to go, who is left to run the country? The voters have tried all the main parties, only to find them broken by the demands of the eurozone. The only category left is the extreme right, so there would be a sort of desperate logic in electing the repulsive Golden Dawn party. Otherwise, there really doesn’t seem any point in having any more votes at all. Greek citizens — or rather subjects — might as well invite the satraps of the troika formally to take up the reins of power, sit back, and see how they manage. If they do not like

Friday

Ross Clark

Free movement isn’t an inalienable right. Just look at Calais

The right to free movement of people and goods across the EU is, as we keep being told when the government proposes to trim benefits for Romanians, a fundamental and inalienable principle of the Treaty of Rome. Why then does the European Court of Justice show no interest in the French ferry workers whose strike has led to 30 miles of tailbacks either side of the Channel? There could scarcely be a more brazen example of free movement being thwarted, and yet there seems to be no sign of ferry workers, their union or the French government being taken to court, ordered to let the lorries through or subjected to any