As the EU stumbles from crisis to crisis, the German Chancellor has reportedly called for the so-called 'Economics Commissioner' to be given explicit powers to veto the national budgets of member states should they go beyond limits set by the Union. This call has come a matter of hours before leaders of the 20 something member nations are due to converge for a summit meeting which is expected to focus on the proposed introduction of a banking union.
Given the EU's woeful management of its own budget and constant demands for more money to be granted to it, one wonders how anyone can consider such developments to be justified. However, from the perspective of Mrs Merkel, there may be some logic as Germany would clearly gain more power over the states that her country is currently financing, and this would probably go down quite well with elections due in Germany next year. For most of the rest, this looks like the beginning of the end. Should Merkel's plan succeed, a United States of Europe would not be far behind.
No doubt the UK and a few others may object to these initiatives but there must be a likelihood that those members which are in the deepest trouble plus the smaller nations which simply rely on German patronage may well accede. For countries like Greece and Spain, it will be a choice of accepting much greater external control over their affairs and the eventual forfeiting of their nationhood or bankruptcy and consignment to the economic scrapheap. While neither is very palatable, a choice will have to be made.
An aged aunt of mine who was married to an Austrian for many years has repeatedly told me that her husband had a little saying. Germany had lost 2 world wars but it would not lose the third; a German-dominated USE would be a decisive victory, indeed, in the economic war which has been fought ever since 1945.
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