As the Day of Reckoning is approaching for the failing European leaders who have bound their destiny to the British war against Russia and the US umbrella over NATO, the level of cacophony has increased inside the European Union. At the eve of the EU summit of Jan. 12, a split emerged between two conceptions of how “EU Raw Power” should be achieved: Whereas French President Macron adopted suggestions from the Draghi Report and the EU Commission, i.e. financing through Common European debt ("Eurobonds"), the German government bluntly rejected the idea and will present a joint paper with Italy.
The good news is that major elements of the Green Deal are going to be scrapped. The bad news is that no sustainable recovery of European industry is possible with either variant of war economy.
Before the EU summit in Alden Biesen, Belgium, on Feb. 12, a pre-summit with 17 countries, organized by Italy, Germany and Belgium will take place, indicating the unity of intents between Rome and Berlin (Belgium is the host country).The latter was anticipated at the recent Merz-Meloni summit in Rome (the pre-summit will discuss the joint Italian-German paper on competitiveness), as well as, in part, by Friedrich Merz in his Foreign Policy speech in the Bundestag. An ad hoc seminar took place in Leuven on Feb. 4. According to media reports, French president Emmanuel Macron is not amused; he feels being bypassed and might not attend the pre-summit.
The kernel of the coming shift, under the headline of “competitiveness,” should be the reversal of key Green Deal policies, such as the ban on endothermic engines and the Carbon tax on imports. But also defense investments and more integration in some areas are also on the agenda. Meloni had a cabinet meeting yesterday in which, according to the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore, measures on carbon certificates and a review of the CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) were discussed.
At the same time, a “coalition of the willing” was launched two weeks ago at a video conference with six countries, organized by German Finance minister Lars Klingbeil, in which a “strengthened cooperation” was discussed, which called for more supranational powers on issues such as defense, capital markets and raw materials. Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Poland took part.
Macron made his Eurobond proposal in an interview with six European newspapers on Feb. 10. “Now is the time for the EU to launch a common borrowing capacity, through eurobonds,” Macron said.
The German government promptly rejected the idea. Speaking to Politico, a German government official said, “We think that …this distracts a little from what it’s actually all about, namely that we have a productivity problem.”
As Gabriele Guzzi, a young economist whose book Eurosuicide is a best-seller in Italy, commented on Facebook: “Both of these paths…do not seriously want to reckon with what has happened in Europe over these years because of them. They do not seriously want to consider the greatest surrender of sovereignty that advanced states have deliberately agreed to in peacetime—first producing economic decline and now geopolitical marginalization. They are pseudo-reforms that, by skirting the underlying problem, only increase its costs.”
