I agree re federalism

There is an overweening assumption that More Europe Is Good, and common sense is often discarded. The Euro, for example, makes a lot more sense if you take its economic convergence criteria seriously: but they were weaker than they should have been to start with, because politics, and then countries were allowed to join the Euro who didn't meet the criteria anyway, because politics. It's simply not the case the same monetary policy makes sense in both an economy like Ireland on the one hand and an economy like Germany on the other: let alone the most recent wave of succession countries. It's good that we can stay out of the Euro, and I'd always vote to do so. There are those for whom a stronger federalist drive would seek to create more Euro-like situations; the state of national politics in major member states holds them back, but those attitudes and assumptions are absolutely there.

Posted By: Old Man, Mar 23, 12:34:21