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by Marc Glendening
In Britain any media story about disquiet and resistance to a new transfer of powers to the EU inevitably focuses obsessively on the Tory Eurosceptics.
The BBC, of course, always attempts to explain away opposition to a prospective Brussels power grab as being almost exclusively a 'right-wing' phenomenon.
This is in part a consequence of journalistic laziness, in part a cyncial campaign to try and culturally marginalise those who question EU power.
For many years the Democracy Movement has drawn attention to the nasty McCarthyite flavour of the campaign many on the New Labour left, people such as Denis MacShane and Peter Hain, have run against their opponents on the European issue.
The propaganda fantasy offensive being waged the Euro-McCarthyites will soon be hard to maintain. The real story now emerging is how many on the left across Europe are mobilising against the latest move being driven by Merkel and Sarkozy to give Brussels control over the Greek and other Eurozone economies.
As Ian Traynor of The Guardian commented on January 26 in his front page story: "The treaty would enshrine the German model of fiscal and monetarist rigour as binding on the eurozone, in a move that would, in effect, outlaw Keynesian economics."
Late last year, writing in the New Statesman magazine, the influential left-wing commentator Owen Jones, author of the excellent Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, wrote similarly: "Left-wing governments of all hues will, in effect, be banned by this treaty. If the French or the German left returns to power in the near future....it will be illegal for them to respond to the global economic catastrophe with anything but austerity. An economic stimulus is forbidden - because the treaty has burried Keynesianism."
It is not only in Britain that the left is waking up to the fact that the top-down EU one-size-fits-all power system means the death of democracy in the member countries.
Francois Hollande, the French socialist candidate for president who is the clear favourite in his race against Sarkozy, has promised to re-negotiate the treaty as it makes it impossible for him to deliver on his promises as things stand.
This is why democrats across Europe, regardless of their broader political differences, should hope that the Gallic left do indeeed triumph over the EU-fanatical centre-right.
If Hollande does indeed become president and does deliver on his promise to challenge the undemocratic nature of the treaty, it will be interesting to see if the BBC harp on about the French being 'marginalised' as a consequence and the whole ensuing row being the product of 'right-wing' Little Gallicism.
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written by Marc Glendening
When will our political leaders realise that the action they take when dealing with the European Union will have a direct and significant effect on their success at the polls?
Looking at lists of the issues people prioritise when it comes to voting in general elections, concern about Britain's relationship with the EU tends to linger some way behind the economy, schools, hospitals and crime.
But politicians make a huge mistake if they believe this means that people don't care about the issue.
The most recent evidence that EU policy can have a critical impact on a party's level of support is the bounce in the polls that the Conservatives appear to have enjoyed since David Cameron last month vetoed EU plans for a 'fiscal union' treaty.
Veto boost
An ICM survey for the Sunday Telegraph has given the Tories their highest rating since last year's general election and a six-point lead over Labour, up from two points before the pre-Christmas summit.
The poll puts the Tories up two points since the start of December on 40%, with Labour support sliding by two points to 34%, opening up the widest margin between the two parties in 18 months.
Other polls have confirmed the trend, with a post-summit BBC report highlighting polls by Ipsos Mori and YouGov that also put the Conservatives ahead of Labour for the first time this year.
Questioning people about the EU summit's outcome exposes the overwhelming public support for the Prime Minister's actions that underpins this poll shift. A Populus survey for The Times showed 57% felt Mr Cameron was right to use the veto while only 14% disagreed and another, for the Mail on Sunday, showed that 62% supported David Cameron's actions, while only 19% said he was wrong to use the veto.
Ed Miliband's response in the immediate aftermath of the summit, accusing the Prime Minister of being "out of touch", couldn't have been more ill-judged.
Poll threats
But this latest shift is far from the first time time polls have reacted sharply to how politicians act on the EU.
When, back in October 2007, Gordon Brown confirmed his support for the Lisbon Treaty and it became clear that he would not extend his party's previous promise of a referendum on the EU Constitution to the revised document, the result was an abrupt end to his honeymoon as the new Labour leader.
Brown actually increased his party's support through the September 2007 eruption of the Northern Rock crisis, when polls showed a three-point Labour lead mid-month widened to nearly eight points by the end of September. Even the events of early October that year, when the Conservatives unveiled a new inheritance tax policy and Brown was accused of having 'bottled' an early general election, resulted in him conceding only a slight lead to the Conservatives.
So far, not so bad for Mr Brown. Until, that is, later in October 2007, when he agreed to the final text of the Lisbon Treaty and made a statement to Parliament on the 22nd of that month. By the end of that week, Conservative support was growing again and Labour's ratings started a precipitous fall, ending the year at a punishing ten point deficit on the Conservatives as Gordon Brown turned up (late) in Brussels to sign the treaty.
The fact that this poll gap then remained broadly the same until late April 2008 shows that Labour's hair-raising fall in public support over a few short weeks between the end of October and mid December must have been due to some very particular event after both the peak of the Northern Rock bank run and the fallout from the party conferences.
It's impossible to dismiss that this was the period during which the deceit of the process of re-naming the EU Constitution as the Lisbon Treaty became crystal clear and Gordon Brown confirmed that he would not grant us the EU referendum we had been promised.
But Brown has been far from alone in suffering at the polls as a result of his EU actions. Later, in November 2009, David Cameron suffered a similar fate when he also dropped his "cast iron guarantee" of a vote on "on any EU treaty" emerging from the negotiations that came up with the Lisbon Treaty.
The Conservative leader also suffered an immediate drop in public support that, as we speculated at the time might turn out to be the case, did indeed re-balance the polls in a way that resulted in Mr Cameron's failure to secure a clear majority at the general election, forcing him to form accede to coalition government.
Arguably, the Liberal Democrats have suffered the worst of all from this trend in public opinion. Languishing in the polls and seemingly looking down the barrel of an electoral gun, the party's leaders still don't seem to realise where they have been going so wrong.
Referendum opportunity
This clear and growing pattern in how EU policy moves public support to an extent that affects electoral fortunes should provide much food for thought for any party aiming to improve its chances of obtaining a clear majority at the next general election.
Obvious focus should be placed on where party policy is at stark odds with public opinion and where better does such an opportunity lie than over whether there should be a referendum on Britain's EU membership?
The Sunday Telegraph's ICM poll also confirms that people do not back Mr Cameron's decision to rule out a public vote on whether Britain should stay in or leave the European Union. A majority of 59% to 25% (pdf, Table 5) say that there should be a proper in-out vote and most (51%) wish to see one in this Parliament.
If one veto, to unknown effect, can deliver a four-point boost in the polls, it's not hard to imagine the electoral rewards awaiting the party that grants that EU referendum.
A recent EUobserver article has highlighted how the 'fiscal compact' deal agreed at last week's EU summit could yet be scuppered by referendums and legal delays in numerous participating countries.
The deal is designed to extend EU control over the tax and spend policies of the elected national governments of its member countries by transferring greater power over national budgets to EU institutions.
Due to David Cameron's veto, the deal will now have to be agreed between the 'euro-plus' group of participating countries outside the institutions of the EU.
But according to EUobserver, "serious obstacles are beginning to materialise in Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Romania and Denmark, while Finland, Latvia and the Czech Republic may also present the process with additional hurdles."
Treaty hurdles
In Ireland, aspects of the deal are being put to the country's attorney-general for a verdict on whether a referendum is required, but the Irish Europe minister, Lucinda Creighton, has fed speculation by saying there is a 50/50 chance of a public vote.
Today the Irish government has said that a decision on a referendum will not be made until March, once a final text of the deal is agreed.
In the Netherlands, prime minister Mark Rutte has insisted that a referendum would not be needed. But with a highly EU-critical party as his partner in a coalition government and the opposition Labour party saying that new elections would be required if the deal amounts to a transfer of power to Brussels, Mr Rutte may face problems getting the deal through the Dutch Parliament. The country's Socialist Party and the Greens have also called for a referendum.
In Austria, government officials have also indicated that the creation of a fiscal union would require a referendum and, in Romania, while supporting the deal, President Traian Basescu has said that a new treaty would need a two-thirds majority in the Romanian parliament and approval in a public vote.
In Finland, prime minister Jyrki Katainen has dismissed any talk of problems in ratifying the deal. But the country's constitutional committee has ruled that replacing unanimity by majority voting on the EU's bailout funds would be unconstitutional, since it could result in a loss of parliamentary control over Finland's financial contributions. According to EUobserver, a Finnish official has said that it would be "impossible" for the government to negotiate this problem away.
Denmark’s new prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, has so far not commented on whether the deal would provoke a Danish referendum, but leaders of the other two parties in her governing coalition have said that a vote might be needed. Crucial to a Danish decision may be the Red-Green Alliance, a key part of the governing coalition, which is a strong opponent of the EU’s "neo-liberal policies".
Denmark rejected euro membership in a referendum back in September 2000, so moves to allow the EU to govern the country's economic policy may be seen as a breach of this settlement.
In Latvia, the government has signed up to the 'fiscal union' deal, but many politicians have voiced a sense of betrayal over the imposition by the EU of strict austerity measures and cuts in EU structural funds. Raising the spectre of a referendum as a bargaining chip to win additional EU aid would only take the votes of 50 of the 100-member Latvian parliament.
Finally, the Czech Republic is of course home to Vaclav Klaus, the national president who caused the EU so much trouble over the Lisbon Treaty. While a referendum would not be automatically required on the changes, President Klaus has the power at least to delay the law-making process by holding back his signature, which must be applied to all new legislation.
Navel-gazing
It looks like the EU could well be in for yet another lengthy period of introspection over their bid to create 'fiscal union' and, even if the hurdles above can all be overcome, the deal still does nothing to address the core underlying problems of the scale of debt and low growth causing problems in several eurozone economies.
It's precisely because the EU seems far more interested in itself than in advancing the measures European countries need in order to prosper in the fast-moving, 21st century world that calls in Britain for an EU referendum - such as are being advanced by groups like the People's Pledge campaign - and support for a new deal with the EU are only likely to grow.
Why should the EU be given the right to govern and tax (arguably out of existence) what is, in Europe at least, a predominantly British-based industry that makes a huge contribution to our economy?
That's the question critics of David Cameron's actions at the recent EU summit will have to answer, if they hope to make a case against the Prime Minister's use of Britain's veto.
In a remarkable move during the EU's latest bid to resolve the bloc's debt crisis, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have chosen to risk their ability to quickly implement measures that would increase eurozone fiscal discipline over an attempt to impose EU regulation and a transaction 'Tobin' tax on Britain's financial services industry.
Confronting Britain in this way and provoking use of our veto over a bid to gain control over, and income from, the majority of Europe's financial sector that is based in Britain is an extraordinary demonstration of misplaced priorities from the EU at a time when the urgency of eurozone restructuring is paramount.
If the EU is serious about finding quick solutions to the eurozone debt crisis, they would surely have dropped such intrusive demands to interfere in another country's affairs in order to use the far speedier existing treaty mechanisms available?
But instead of coming away from this latest summit with a deal to calm market fears of national defaults and the disintegration of the euro, the determination of the 'Merkozy' partnership to regulate Britain's financial services industry has introduced a delay of more than three months for replacement 'fiscal compact' structures to be planned.
UK industry
A look at how vital financial services are to the UK economy shows clearly why David Cameron had to resist this arrogant 'Merkozy' push to take over and tax the City.
Referencing a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report, a recent Open Europe study highlighted that in the 2009-10 tax year the UK financial services sector made a tax contribution of over £54 billion, or 11.2% of the government's income from all taxes during that year.
The industry also contributed a £35bn trade surplus in 2010, playing a critical role in Britain's trade balance and, according to TheCityUK - an independent membership body promoting the UK financial services sector - nearly 2 million jobs are at stake.
Euro greed
But it's also clear from the same Open Europe report why other EU leaders want to force Britain to concede to EU government in this area. The City hosts a huge proportion of European and indeed global activity in many financial markets.
It's home to the largest foreign exchange market in the world, the largest insurance market in Europe, dominates the private equity industry and around 80% of the European-based hedge fund assets are managed in the UK.
There is clearly little point in a European financial transactions tax, the proceeds of which EU institutions hope to pocket, and proposed regulation if the UK is excluded.
New structures
Unless the EU relents on its stubbornness over financial services, a separate deal outside the EU's architecture will now have to be established by the countries who wish to participate in the new eurozone 'fiscal compact'.
This will not just set down new rules imposing stronger EU controls over national budgets but also how to enforce them. No mean ambition. Either other EU leaders will realise the scale of the task ahead of them in respect of putting together such an inter-governmental deal and will conclude that it was stupid to push Britain away over financial regulation.Alternatively, the countries who have expressed a wish to participate in the new 'fiscal compact' will forge ahead regardless and the result will raise new questions about how that will affect the balance of power between Britain and the other 26 EU members.
Should such a new voting block, doubtless also working informally within the European Union institutions as well as outside, be willing to consistently out-vote Britain in a range other EU policy areas, this will only feed demands for a proper reconsideration and referendum on the totality of Britain's membership of the EU.
If it becomes clear that we have even less influence over EU law-making than is already the case, then there is no remaining reason why we should wish to accede to the rules that come out of the EU nor pay the billions of pounds every year that Britain contributes to the EU's budget.
Beneficially, the result of this latest summit could be that holding an 'in/out' EU referendum - such as the one demanded by the People's Pledge campaign - and forging a new, 'free trade plus voluntary co-operation' deal will start to look all the more appealing.
The EU is this week limbering up to reveal a last-ditch 'masterplan' to save the euro.
Over many months, a succession of summits have invented ever bigger sums of money the EU intends to throw at the eurozone debt crisis without any concept of how to achieve them.
So far the EU's only strategy seems to have been to try to intimidate the markets into submission rather than come up with a coherent solution to the euro's glaring flaws.
Clearly, and unsurprisingly, that hasn't been working. Not only has the lack of detail behind every EU pronouncement failed to convince, but the perpetual indecision by the EU has demonstrated amply what has for some time been a central tenet of eurosceptic thought.
Namely, that the EU as a decision-making structure is too rigid and incapable of acting with the dynamism required to secure Europe's success and prosperity in our fast-moving 21st century world. The EU, being a 1920s idea founded on a 1950s view of the world, has never looked more out of date.
In this context, it's hardly surprising that the ratings agencies have continued to criticise and downgrade the credit-worthiness of euro member countries.
Flawed auto-sanctions
But this week, the EU has finally changed tack. Talks led by the 'Merkozy' partnership of the French and German leaders have shifted from broadcasting fantasy funding plans to discussing 'refounding' the EU through treaty changes that will enforce 'fiscal union'. The plans are being touted as what the eurozone needs to survive in its current form.
More details will emerge later this week, but one of the key measures already being proposed is the idea of automatic sanctions against those countries that breach eurozone borrowing rules - particularly the rule that budget deficits should not exceed 3% of GDP.
Yet, 23 EU countries, including 14 eurozone members, are already in the EU's 'excessive deficit procedure' as a result of breaching this 3% rule which, under the current Stability and Growth Pact, should already have provoked sanctions.
This is despite the fact that the rules of the original Pact were softened in 2005, with 'exceptional circumstances' being permitted for deficits above 3%, 'other relevant factors' allowed to be taken into account before a deficit is considered excessive, and longer deadlines for corrective action.
According to the EU Treaty, sanctions can include requiring euro countries to publish additional information before issuing bonds and securities; inviting the European Investment Bank to reconsider its lending policy towards the country; requiring the country concerned to give the EU a non-interest-bearing deposit until the excessive deficit has been resolved; or, finally, imposing fines of an "appropriate size".
If auto-sanctions are approved in the looming negotiations, unless made retrospective, only Finland, Luxembourg and Estonia would potentially be subject to them as only those countries are not currently in the excessive deficit procedure.
This would render the proposal effectively usless towards having a short term impact on problem countries nor, in any case, will they be any solution to the underlying debt and growth problems of economies in difficulty. They simply punish, don't resolve.
Key questions
Now EU leaders are lurching back towards toughening the Pact up again, this provokes a series of further questions.
Firstly, given sanctions for excessive deficits have been available to the EU since the euro launched, why exactly have none ever yet been applied under the current Stability & Growth Pact rules?
Secondly, will the 14 euro countries already suffering 'excessive deficits' be let off auto-sanctions until they get back on track and then fined only after future transgressions? How much will future breaches cost them?
More broadly, how will automatically imposing financial sanctions on these countries help them get out of their debt and low growth problems that tend to provoke excess deficits in the first place? Won't such sanctions simply make their economic problems worse, and is that why none have ever yet been applied?
Referendum unlocked?
Finally, this proposal also provokes a key political question for David Cameron on the question of a referendum, since what is being proposed, in respect of auto-sanctions at least, is basically a beefing up of the existing EU Stability and Growth Pact.
Despite not being in the euro, Britain is subject to the Stability Pact rules and committed to "endeavour to avoid an excessive government deficit", although we are not bound by the penalty clauses should our endeavours fail. This was a key element of our opt-out from euro membership. We are, however, one of the nine non-euro countries also currently listed as being in the excessive deficit procedure.
If the mooted treaty changes centre on amending the Stability Pact clauses, the Prime Minister had better ensure our euro opt-out protocol is amended to exclude Britain from the new measures. If we are drawn into the new auto-sanctions, it will impossible for David Cameron to avoid holding a treaty referendum, since his 'referendum lock' will have been prised open.
Reality check
As Conservative MEP Roger Helmer put it this week, asking whether the euro can be saved "is like asking a cancer patient how we save the tumour. The euro is the disease, not the patient."
Prosperity and democracy on our continent are what needs to be saved and that's more likely if the rigidity of the euro is abandoned for at least several of its current members.
It's time for Europe's political leaders to drop attempts to save their ill-judged euro project, admit it's doomed at least in its current form, and start instead planning how to mitigate the effects on the financial system of several departures.
by Marc Glendening
The European Union has always boasted that it is a force for democracy; a guardian against a return to the authoritarian politics that have haunted various parts of our continent.
This, of course, as recent events in Greece have confirmed, is total nonsense. The EU elite power system is, and always has been, the major post-war threat to liberal, democratic values.
The whole edifice was designed, as John Laughland demonstrated in his seminal book The Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea, to limit the capacity of citizens to hold their rulers to account.
The idea of a pan-European government was driven in its early, post-war days by prominent individuals who had been associated with the fascist politics of the inter-war period. People such as Robert Schuman, who was an official in Petain's Vichy government, and Paul-Henri Spaak (active in the Belgian fascist movement).
The European Commission's original name, revealingly, was 'the Higher Authority'; a non-elected body that was meant to preside over the elected member governments; as indeed it does, albeit together now with the European Council, the grouping that brings together the political heads of government.Post-democracyThe EU is now returning the peoples trapped within it to a pre-democratic situation. Recently, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has articulated very directly what is expected of the governments and the peoples within the Eurozone.Referring to the short-lived decision by the Greek prime minister to consult his people in a referendum as to whether or not they wanted to proceed with the EU/IMF bailout programme, he came out with this piece of typically Euro-Orwellian 'double-think';"Giving people a voice is always legitimate, but [here we go] the solidarity of all Eurozone countries is not possible unless each one agrees to measures deemed necessary."
Deemed necessary by who? EU leaders who have no electoral mandate whatsoever in Greece? Further demonstrating the thinking inside the Brussels machine, an EU official who refused to be named commented in a similar vein;"We are at war. The crisis is that bad. And its time that Greece put party politics aside and demonstrate national unity."
The logic of these sinister authoritarian statements is that no electorate should be given the ability to contradict the priorities of the Euro-elite, who will decide all the key policies relating to public expenditure levels, which industries should be in the state and private sectors, rates of taxation and so on.
'Party politics' must be put aside, apparently. Where and when did we last hear these sentiments in Europe?Regime changeBBC Newsnight's Paul Mason also alluded to the fact that the Euro-elite is now explicitly engaging in 'regime change' when he took on the French president at a press conference last week over the democratic implications of what was taking place. He asked Mr Sarkozy;
"It's evident that you and Angela Merkel, the two most powerful governments in Europe, are trying to change the governments of Italy and Greece. How is that just? And once started, where does it stop?"
This was met with an outraged response from Mr Sarkozy about Mason coming from an island and "not understanding the subtleties of the European construction". It would only have been marginally less crass had Mason come back with insults about Sarkozy sharing an obsession for pan-European government because he comes from the same country as Napoleon.
Mason also revealed rumour that, during the week prior to Italy accepting IMF oversight of its public finances, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had phoned the Italian president to explore the possibility of a change of government and that, according to Mason;"EU officials have certainly been in contact with the Greek opposition to explore the creation of a national unity government."
EU placemenNot content with imposing an austerity programme on the Greek government, the Euro-elite have also evidently been intervening to help to manufacture a revolt within the Prime Minister's centre-left PASOK party designed to remove him from office and bring about a new coalition government.
The aim was clearly not just to block the bailout referendum that George Papandreou had announced but also to prevent an election being called that might have thrown up results inconvenient for the Euro project.
To replace Papandreou, the EU elite have been pushing for Lucas Papademos, a former official in the European Central Bank and also wants another of its trusted old boys, former commissioner Mario Monti, to replace Signore Bunga-Bunga in Rome's hot seat.
The plan is now to concentrate new powers with the Euro-elite and to do this in a way that means there is no requirement to hold referenda or even, in most countries, debates and votes in national parliaments.No say
Article 352 of the EU treaty will be invoked to force through most of the proposed changes, including Commission surveillance of national budgets, while it is likely that the EU will in December also have to announce a new mini-treaty for bigger measures like the Financial Transactions Tax.
Heads of government, including David Cameron, hope that by bringing about the forthcoming transfer of powers this way, calls for an EU referendum will be neutralised. The argument will be that the treaty is too insubstantial to amount to a constitutional change.
Of course, Sarkozy and his fellow anti-democratic elitists have form in this area, having himself back in 2005 ignored the overwhelming French rejection of the EU Constitution in a referendum and then used his majority in the French assembly to steamroller through the tactically renamed Lisbon treaty.
The exact same thing happened in Holland following a vote of 62% against transferring new powers to the EU and, on two separate occasions within the past ten years, the Irish people have voted against new EU treaties only to be told that they must vote again.
Yet with its new policy of regime change, the EU's anti-democratic inclinations are now being taken to new, extreme heights. So when the European Movement next go on about their beloved institution's great commitment to democracy, just laugh out very loud, please.
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written by Marc Glendening
Another day, another eurozone rescue.
We have, of course, been here before. Today's deal is similarly long on rhetoric and short on detail, but that won't prevent the markets bouncing and the media once again reporting that the crisis is solved.
Yet, in a few weeks time, they will again all realise that the latest 'solution' is far from that at all.
Just as happened back in July, many crucial details of the deal are yet to emerge and have the capacity to cause a rapid unravelling.
How exactly the European Financial Stability Facility will be leveraged from its remaining €250 billion to an extraordinary €1 trillion (£880bn) - whether by the provision of risk insurance or a special purpose investment fund into which countries like China and the Gulf states will be asked to contribute - will not be revealed until the end of next month.
Similarly, will banks be able to find the required extra €106bn in capital? And whether private investors will actually swap their Greek bonds for those with a 50% repayment reduction also remains to be seen.
According to the BBC's Robert Peston, the agreement of the banks "in principle" to slashing what Greece owes them by half came at the last minute. But yesterday's Irish Times highlights unsurprising scepticism that what is being asked of them with respect to Greece represents "an exceptional and unique solution" and does not set a precedent for what may happen should the difficulties in other countries worsen.
Investors could yet decide that the warm words of EU politicians and appointees about Greece being a special case are too wafer thin relative to the economic forces that could yet come to bear on the far bigger economies of Spain or Italy.
Even if the banks go through with the deal, many observers doubt that the resulting reduction of Greece's debt to 120% of GDP by 2020 (ie. the same as Italy's) is in any case going to lighten the country's burden sufficiently to enable a rebalancing of its economy.Economic union
A bigger problem in how today's deal is being reported is how the media are once again too hypnotised by the glittering numbers to look at the small print.
What many are missing this time are the details under the summit conclusion headings (pdf) 'Economic and fiscal co-ordination and surveillance', 'Governance structure of the euro area' and 'Further integration' which cover the EU's growing power-grab over taxation and how euro members run their economies.
Back in July, commentators made the same mistake. A far greater focus was applied to the new repayment terms for Greece and the possibility of increased funds for the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) than on the real gem of the package for EU leaders.
Namely, the granting of permission for EFSF money, guaranteed by eurozone members, to be used to recapitalise the worst-afflicted banks in particular countries - a responsibility that would normally have to be fulfilled by national treasuries.
Obscured integration
Again today, dazzled by completely unqualified numbers, the media are overlooking the far more significant passages of the latest deal that relate to deepening economic union, greater EU powers to interfere in the budgets of member countries and the introduction of EU taxes.
See Paragraph 27a, which says that "for euro Member States in excessive deficit procedure, the Commission and the Council will be enabled to examine national draft budgets and adopt an opinion on them before their adoption by relevant national parliaments".
Far from applying to one or two financially irresponsible cases, 13 of the 17 euro member countries are currently in the EU's excessive deficit procedure. So this represents a substantial extension of the influence of the unelected EU Commission over national parliaments with respect to the politically highly sensitive tax and spend policies of euro member countries.
Paragraph 29 goes on to discuss the "Pragmatic co-ordination of tax policies in the euro area" as a "necessary element of stronger economic policy co-ordination" and confirms that "Legislative work on the Commission proposals for a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base and for a Financial Transaction Tax is ongoing."
And Paragraph 35 instructs the European Council to bring forward an "interim report" in December 2011 on "strengthening economic convergence within the euro area, improving financial discipline and deepening economic union" with a report on how to implement agreed measures including "the possibility of limited Treaty changes" due by March 2012.
Flaws not fixed
Ultimately, even if today's uncertainties pan out as the EU desires, the reality is that this latest deal will still not be enough to cement the euro's cracks.
The reason is simple. There is no solution to the eurozone's problems other than for the most indebted countries to break the fixed exchange rate system and leave the euro, to restore competitiveness and growth to their economies. But of course, EU politicians and especially its employees refuse to let go of their flawed single currency project.
While the markets are bringing some realities to bear, the question is for how much longer can Europe's political elite get away with putting off the inevitable crunch, in the process worsening the mess they have created and now flushing almost incomprehensible sums of public money to protect the failing euro?
In Britain any media story about disquiet and resistance to a new transfer of powers to the EU inevitably focuses obsessively on the Tory Eurosceptics.
