VIVE LA FRANCE! (We need someone to laugh about)

One of the arguments used by Swedish advocates of the Euro for a vote in favor of the single European currency was that it would give Sweden a seat at the EU’s top table for economic decision-making. This was always a hopelessly naïve point of view, but all credit to the French for a recent demonstration of quite how naïve the ‘ja’ camp were being.

The cornerstone of the EU’s currency regime is something known as the ‘growth and stability pact’. Amongst its provisos are limits on public sector deficits as a percentage of GDP. In principle that’s fair enough for any number of reasons, but the pact’s limit (roughly speaking, three percent) underestimated the importance of counter cyclical spending, particularly in a climate where the worst threats are deflationary not inflationary. The French government has now said that it will ignore the limit until, ahem, ‘around’ 2006. As France’s prime minister explained, “my first duty is employment and not to solve accounting equations and do mathematical problems until some office or other in some country or other is satisfied.”

The longer term implications of France’s declaration of economic independence are uncertain, to say the least, and will, I suspect, make a lot of speculators very rich, but Raffarin is right to stress that, when it comes to economic self-interest, France should put its needs (even if we disagree with how Raffarin defines them) ahead of the gimcrack structures of Brussels’ corrupt, undemocratic and xenophobic ‘union’.

Sweden's No deals serious blow to the euro
Euro vote: Yes 42%, No 56% (with 97% of votes counted)
By Stephen Castle in Stockholm
15 September 2003

Sweden delivered a crushing "no" verdict to the euro last night, defying expectations of a pro-single currency sympathy vote after the murder last week of Anna Lindh, the Foreign Minister, who was a prominent "yes" campaigner.

The result represents an extraordinary grassroots rebellion against Sweden's political and economic establishment, which largely backed membership of the euro. It also sends a powerful message to Brussels, underlining the fact that the EU is seen by many of its citizens as remote and elitist.

With almost all the votes counted and the "no" camp clinching victory by 56 per cent to 42 per cent, the Prime Minister, Goran Persson, of the Social Democrats, conceded defeat. The outcome was "very clear" and therefore "easy to respect", he said, adding: "This reflects the profound scepticism of the economic and monetary union project. With the wisdom of hindsight, you could have said that we could have held the referendum at a more auspicious time. We are in the midst of a recession and two or three [eurozone] countries have significant deficit problems."

Ulla Hoffmann, leader of the anti-euro Left Party said the vote was "a signal to Europe that it must democratise".

Young, first-time voters and women were prominently represented among those who rejected the euro. The turnout in the referendum was more than 80 per cent.

The result is bad news for Britain's beleaguered supporters of membership and illustrates to Tony Blair how difficult it is to win a referendum. Chris Bryant, chairman of the Labour Movement for Europe, said that people should not assume that a British referendum would produce a similar result. "Many of Sweden's trading partners are not in the euro or even the EU, like Norway, whereas with Britain, more than half of our trade is with euro countries," he said.

But Michael Ancram, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said that the vote "strengthens our view that for us to oppose the euro for the UK is right". He added: "This demonstrates the extent of doubt that exists in Sweden and is increasingly reflected in other parts of Europe."

Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, described the result as "worse than expected". When asked if Sweden would lose influence within the EU as a result of the vote, he said: "Certainly, yes."

More than seven million Swedes were eligible to register their views in yesterday's vote, which was overshadowed by the assassination of Ms Lindh.

Eurosceptic celebrations were muted. At the headquarters of the "no" campaign run by members of the Social Democrat Party, which is divided on the euro, the evening began with a minute's silence. The five cabinet ministers who defied party line by backing the "no" side were not at the meeting.

Both camps had called on voters to turn out in large numbers to show that democracy cannot be thrown off course by violence. But the "no" supporters seemed to benefit more as the expected "Lindh effect" failed to materialise. One theory is that the trauma of the murder encouraged voters to opt for the status quo. Another is that the "no" camp benefited from the high turnout with more of its supporters voting than had been expected. More than one million Swedes are thought to have cast their votes by postal ballot before Ms Lindh's death.

"Yes" campaigners blamed their failure on lack of preparation and divisions within the Social Democratic government

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=443497

In essence your statement is inaccurate. Pride and an attempt to grab wealth by Europe were in play with the Saudi's just 12-months ago. Certain Saudi investors pulled approximately 120B out of the US markets and dumped them into, primarily French and German markets, during Chiraq's and Schroeder's relection "lie" campaigns, which signaled the anti-american EU campaign. This allowed these two economies to limp through the election cycle before the current deficits came to light. In this play was a public brissling by the these three countries to invoke Euro Dollars, at a time when the US dollar was about 1.03-1.05 to the Euro for oil contracts. Bush has made them pay:) Shortly after this economic attack and public currency/market ploy - the US struck back by ensuring that imports to the EU and exports from the EU cost much-much more, all the while dollar pegged values would allow more exports to the EU and not from. The weapon of currency is in full play with France and Germany - who took the EU for a ride.

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