Bundesbank President says EU assistance for Greece would be politically impossible

The Telegraph reports that Axel Weber, President of the German Bundesbank and a member of the ECB Executive Board, has said that any EU aid for Greece in response to its economic problems would be counterproductive. He told the German Boersen Zeitung financial paper, “Politically, it would not be possible to tell voters that one country is being helped out so that it can avoid the painful savings that other countries have made”. He added that such a bail-out “is not provided for and, as a general rule, I think such aid, whether it is conditional, or - even worse - unconditional, is counterproductive”.

EUobserver reports that ECB Chief Economist Juergen Stark said yesterday that the state of EU governments’ public finances could lead to further credit rating downgrades and market turmoil. The Commission is expected to give its assessment of deficit cutting measures in four EU member states - Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta - today. The FT reports that Portugal’s government last night unveiled its budget proposals for 2010 aimed at bringing the country’s budget deficit under control, which stands at 9.3% GDP in 2009.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Les Echos, ECB President Jean-Claude Juncker said “I have been arguing for stronger economic policy coordination within the Eurozone for many years, but I never managed to gain support from all Eurozone countries”. He added, “If we want to turn the Eurozone into an influential monetary, economic and political entity, then we must stop giving the impression that we focus only on budgetary consolidation. The time has come for us to set up an integrated strategy to get out of the crisis”.

thanks to Open Europe

Plus WHY EUROPEAN UNION IS NOT AN OPTIMAL CURRENCY AREA: THE LIMITS OF INTEGRATION

Although that the outspoken Irish opponent of the Lisbon Treaty, businessman Ulick McEvaddy (chief executive of Omega Air) likened EU to a “Communist-Moscow-style” dictatorship he did add one important fact, namely that “the EU lacks the KGB, thankfully”.

Well if the EU still does not entail its own KGB/CIA than at least they are working on something resembling SPETSNAZ/FBI.

Following addition is rather old (two weeks) but it fits in this story and in our previous article perfectly: Secret EU security draft to pool policing and give US personal data.

In this article by The Guardian you will learn that there exists so called Future Group of interior and justice ministers from six EU member states - Germany, France, Sweden, Portugal, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

Zey wil protect us.

Article from Jutarnji list:

Amongst the 1000 asked citizens of Croatia only 30% of them share the opinion that the membership in EU is “a good thing”, while 39% are “neutral” or think that “the membership is neither good or bad”.

Quite to the contrary Macedonians (FYROM) would gladly accept EU - 72% are in favour.

Croatia is one year away from technical closing of membership negotiations. Most pressure has been around ZERP (Law on Ecological and Fishing Belt) and around shipbuilding scandals. Also extremely mild attitude from EU against Serbia and its Hague tourists has been detrimental for the Croatian optimism.

In EU member states as Ireland, Denmark, Poland, Slovenia and Netherlands there are between 70% to 80% of those who see much larger benefits than negative aspects.

In lands like Hungary and Austria around half of the people sees EU as “more damage than benefits”.

In Croatia again only 44% believe that possible membership in EU will bring benefits, while 50% of Turks thinks the same for Turkey and in Macedonia(FYROM) 80% of those asked.

It must be that Wallstrom’s Ze Plan for more democracy includes further half-secretive ratifications. Yesterday and today we were pleasantly surprised by the Portugese and German ratifications: