What effect has greece had on your decision to leave euro?

[unbeliever]

Has anyone suggested that NATO had nothing to do with it? I certainly haven't. But it's definitely good that there have been economic reasons why conflict has been unthinkable rather than having to rely on the threat of NATO intervention in member states.

 

All that was required was a free trade agreement. Not a grand project to turn Europe into a single state.

[Obelix]

Given that Iceland isn't in the EU then how come that still isn't happening?

 

We have bigger boats than them ?

[truman]

we have bigger boats than them ?

 

....................

[DrNorm]

Stay in the EU.

 

Stay out of the €uro.

 

Roughly how I feel.

 

Does anyone on here feel strongly enough to attempt to influence opinion beyond SF? Maybe you already do?

[unbeliever]

None whatsoever.

 

Kick the Franco-German eurotechnocratic establishment up the backside (twice) and renegotiate the UK's membership on more favourable terms.

 

Stay in the EU.

 

Stay out of the €uro.

 

Leave the Greek problem to the €Z, but feel free to point and laugh at both (€Z and Greeks).

 

I'm not convinced that will be practical.

I think the reality is a choice between low speed integration in a 2 speed EU and out.

I don't trust them to deliver on a 2 tier EU. I think it will be a 2 speed EU in disguise. Always has been before.

[I1L2T3]

Yup. Rules were broken allowing Greece and others to join the Euro.

 

And then when it all went t*ts up, rules were broken rescuing them. As Christine Legard, then French Finance Minister and now head of IMF, said in 2010 "We violated all the rules to save the euro".

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/18/us-france-lagarde-idUSTRE6BH0V020101218

 

So in the EU a rule is a rule until it becomes inconvenient; at which point it stops being a rule.

 

It's sort of hard to buy into an organisation that carries on like that.

 

Very good points. In 2001 some very clever accounting sleights of hand allowed Greece to join. In 2010 when it all when wrong, similar tricks were used to protect German and French banks from exposure to Greek debt - the ECB effectively transferred private debt held by German and French commercial banks into public debt that was dumped into the Greek public finances. Arguably Greece should have exited in 2010.

 

After the events of the last week I dislike the EU ever more. Certain parts of it are rotten and I'm wondering whether some of the most prominent technocrats involved in the fiscal side of things in 2001 should be on trial. It's got to be fraud, or at least aiding and abetting fraud because those derivatives that the banks conjured up in 2001 to enable Greek entry to the Euro will have made some people an awful lot of money through the years.

[Guest]

Yeah, as long as you ignore the Napoleonic Wars, 1823 French Invasion of Spain, The Liberal Wars, Ten Days Campaign, First, Second and Third Carlist Wars, Galician Slaughter, Hungarian War of Independence, First and Second Schleswig Wars, Wars of Italian Independence, Austro-Prussian War and Franco-Prussian War, all of which involved either civil wars, or conflicts between states (or their modern successors) who have only had peace with each other since their mutual membership of the EU.

 

Apart from the fact that we're all grown ups these days, NATO is the reason, why war will never break out between European countries ever again, nothing to do with the EU, that's just laughable scaremongering.

[tzijlstra]

The problem there is that the election of a government that is fully compliant with the EZ core is not guaranteed, as we are seeing. Such governments aren't as you say compatible with what the technocrats want. If governments must be compliant then democracy is at risk. Follow the logic through then maybe you would start to question the point of elections if a country must always have a certain type of government to be compliant with the EZ?

 

Not good.

 

Are you saying Greeks do not get the chance to vote for MEPs?

[apelike]

Are you saying Greeks do not get the chance to vote for MEPs?

 

The Greeks get a chance to vote for their MEP's but there is a problem with proportionality as the number of MEP's each country has is based on population. Therefore the larger the countries population the greater their influence on the structure of the EU.

 

The country with the greatest number of MEP's is Germany with the maximum of 96. France, UK, Spain and Italy all have around 73 and Poland 50.

 

Greece on the other hand has around 24.

 

So the countries with the most MEP's can easily stand together to pass laws and have the main control which smaller countries have no chance to challenge. They are also the main money lenders.

[I1L2T3]

Are you saying Greeks do not get the chance to vote for MEPs?

 

Of course they do.