Is the EU Self-Immolating?

Some Crooked Timber bloggers think so:

The measures that the eurozone states have recently decided to adopt will be even harsher, if they make the mistake of following Germany’s example. Germany’s debt brake, which at first Berlin implicitly proposed as a model for other European countries, turns austerity into a constitutional obligation. In theory, it provides some flexibility during hard economic times, but in practice it makes deficit spending as difficult as possible: only the vote of a supermajority of German legislators can relax it. And it rules out debt-financed investment, such as in infrastructure, even though that can spur long-term growth.

As they begin to adopt Germany’s model, or something along those lines, the other eurozone states will find it nearly impossible to use fiscal stimulus in times of crisis. And with monetary policy already in the hands of the dogmatically anti-inflationary European Central Bank, their only means of adjusting to crises will be to stand by as wages fall and unemployment soars. Ireland—with its collapsed tax revenues, massive cuts in government spending, shrinking wages, and skyrocketing unemployment—is the unhappy exemplar of rigid austerity measures in the new Europe.

This approach cannot be sustained for long. The EU has never had much popular legitimacy: many voters have gone along with it so far only out of the belief that their politicians knew best. Today, they are more suspicious. And if they come to think that further European integration is causing more economic hardship, their suspicion could harden into bitterness and perhaps even xenophobia. Ireland’s new finance minister, Michael Noonan, has told voters that the EU is a game rigged in Germany’s favor; editorials in major Irish newspapers warn of Germany’s return to racist imperialism. As economic shocks hit other EU countries, politicians in those states will also look for someone to blame.

...

Resorting to hard Keynesianism to deal with the euro crisis would require making far-reaching changes to the rules and practices of the EU’s economic and monetary union. It would mean both toughening the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact, which governs the euro, and strengthening the enforcement of these rules. As they stand, the Stability and Growth Pact’s bylaws require the eurozone states to maintain budget deficits under three percent of GDP and debt-to-GDP ratios under 60 percent. The system does not provide enough flexibility during downturns: even German politicians ignored these requirements a few years ago, when Germany was suffering from a recession—much as they prefer not to remember this today.

To be more effective, the system needs to be stricter. The Stability and Growth Pact should be strengthened so that it requires countries to put aside surpluses during auspicious years. Since governments are persistently tempted to squander surpluses, a new supervisory institution should be introduced at the EU level. It should be granted access to detailed budget-planning and other economic information from the eurozone states and should be empowered to sanction misbehaving states....

Such an active use of fiscal policy requires the coordination of fiscal and monetary policies. This, in turn, means that the European Central Bank can no longer be totally independent, as it has been since the implementation of the euro. As it stands, the European Central Bank is possessive about its powers. For example, it has resisted oversight by the European Parliament even though it has begun to take on an increasingly important political role through its support for the European banking system. It has assiduously avoided mingling monetary policy and fiscal policy, focusing instead on targeting inflation. But it nonetheless failed to prevent asset price booms, and these could only have been prevented with much more direct institutional control over unsound financial innovations. As the interaction between governments and central banks is unavoidable and the role of the European Central Bank is increasingly political, it would be better to properly define the relations of authority among these bodies. The European Central Bank must be more willing to adjust its policies so that they do not undercut those of elected national governments. Even if this were not necessary economically, it would be necessary politically. Handing the power to destroy national economies to unelected technocrats is simply not politically sustainable.

Comments

[Andrew]

And presto! A comment is posted that precisely proves the point of the article -- that the deepening rifts of suspicion and hostility caused by wrong0-headed EU monetary policy are destroying what little remains of the EU's credibility.

While you're foaming at the mouth about the Irish, it might help to realize that Ireland's boom was financed in no small part by German banks, and that fact is driving EU policy right now...

[Ferdinand Kleist]

So to summarize this:

The European institutional landscape should be tweaked in such a way, that extremly rich countries like Ireland can continue to prosper by offering lower taxes to its citizens than any other country and less regulation to their banks and that when it all blows up and people don't wanna lend them anymore, they can unload their dept upon the country with the highest taxes in Europe, with the lowest wages to productivity and the fastest aging population. Way to go!!! That will make the EU work in the future. The Germans are an obnoxious Nazi bunch. The Eurosystem is clearly only there to profit them. Why not use them as our little slaves. Blow their money in the casino and on lavish lifestyles and then invent the myth that it is all their fault and that they are anti-european.

Sorry, but its a deep hole the irish have dug for themselves in the boom years that they now have to marshall the leftists to defend their turbocapitalism. If there ever was "morally bankrupt", then surely thats it.