It is important that the House considers the European Commission’s work programme, as we have done before.
The Greek presidency has the potential to make a major difference to the EU at this critical time, and we should have every hope that it will attempt to make those changes, bearing in mind the recent history of the Greek Government. Greece is arguably one of the greatest victims of the bungled “integration at any price” agenda of those behind the European project and should be well placed to showcase the dangers of recent approaches. This was an opportunity for European integration to change course, but the message from the programme of the Greek presidency is that that process of political integration and state building continues apace regardless. This document and agenda do little to address the very real concerns of ordinary voters across the EU and convey that detached superiority of a complacent unaccountable elite. At a time when Europe teeters on the brink, this work programme presents an agenda for ever-more integration, justified in language that would cause even the most cynical to take note.
We are promised that the Greek presidency will
“reverse the current trend of youth unemployment”
as part of the effort on economic growth and job creation, but it seems that the main output is to
“enhance the implementation of the Compact for Growth and Jobs”,
whose relevance is worthy, to say the least, of deep scrutiny. If we want to reverse the trend of youth unemployment as well as put right many of the wider ailments of the European economy, we need to revisit the entire economic model on which the European project is based. Instead of a burdensome, overbearing single market driven by a social model that is neither desirable nor affordable, we need a much lighter, more flexible and trade-focused agenda for wealth creation and prosperity.
That is not, however, the priority of the Commission. Instead, we are promised a further push on the integration of the EU and the eurozone. The work programme undertakes to push hard on banking union, and promises to
“create a well coordinated Economic and Monetary Union with a view to ending the instability and uncertainty observed in particular in the ‘periphery’.”
Are they talking about the fastest-growing economy in the world when they talk about the periphery? One wonders whether that is how they see Britain.
Perhaps of the greatest concern is that we are promised
“a particular focus on the social dimension”
of European monetary union,
“which, for the first time, will be integrated into the European Semester cycle”.