EU — Chronicle of a Death Foretold / EU — Chronik eines angekündigten Todes

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While I am looking for the left and can't find it, I continue to be perplexed considering that

while the EU is 

• --- a desaster for the working people of Europe,

• --- a situation tantamount to a historically unprecedented subjugation of almost all member states under the interests of Germany, and

• --- the brainchild of a defunct version of neoliberalism - monetarism,

(those who consider themselves to belong to) the left, as well as the governments, and apparently substantial sections of the peoples of the EU's member states, 

• --- continue to be adamantly committed to the EU, and

• --- have been unable — to this day since the 1970s, to effectively articulate and organise resistance to the harm systematically inflicted upon them by an ongoing political coup, whereby the tail (consisting of politicians increasingly removed from popular control) is wagging the dog (300 million inhabitants of Europe).

What a perversion, what a dishonouring of the European spirit.

[Vergebens suche ich die Linke. Die EU ist das anti-linke Projekt par excellence. Sie ist klar gegen die sozialdemokratischen Prinzipien gerichtet, wie sie bis in die 1980er Jahre vertreten wurden. Insbesondere ist die EU klar gegen die keynesianische Fiskalpolitik gerichtet, welche der arbeitenden Bevölkerung die ökonomische Sicherheit und den materiellen Fortschritt der Nachkriegsjahre beschert hatte. Sie ist eine Kopfgeburt des monetaristischen Neoliberalismus, der einmal das Feindbild der Linken war. Und sie hat bewirkt, was nicht einmal Hitler ansatzweise gelungen ist: die freiwillige Unterwerfung ganz Europas, zu dessen Nachteil, unter die Interessen Deutschlands — nein, ich vergleiche die EU nicht mit dem Dritten Reich. Und doch unterstützen die Regierungen, große Teile der geschädigten Bevölkerung und nahezu geschlossen die Linke (die, die sich ihr heute zurechnen) die EU und erweisen sich schon seit den 1970er Jahren als unfähig, dem ihnen durch die EU zugefügten Schaden intellektuell und politisch Widerstand zu leisten — eine Situation, die einem Coup der zunehmend von demokratischer Kontrolle enthobenen politischen Klasse Europas gegen ihre Bevölkerungen gleicht.]

Writes Bill Mitchells,

"... the 1977 MacDougall Report provided sufficient analysis and evidence for one to reasonably conclude that this design would fail.

The – MacDougall Report – involved (p.11):

… a detailed and quantitative study of public finance in five existing federations (Federal Republic of Germany, U.S.A., Canada, Australia, Switzerland) and three unitary states of (France, Italy and the U.K.) … and in particular the financial relationships between different levels of government and the economic effects of public finance on geographical regions within the countries

In other words, the panel sought to work out how a common currency system might operate where there are decentralised government structures with fiscal capacities and a currency-issuing central bank. What sort of fiscal function should be allocated to the federal ‘government’?

A close reading of the MacDougall Report will leave one wondering why the Eurozone was ever created. The major issues they highlighted were clearly still relevant in the 1990s as the European political elites rammed through their ill thought out plan for a single currency.

They are still relevant today.

The MacDougall Report concluded that (p.11):

It is most unlikely that the Community will be anything like so fully integrated in the field of public finance for many years to come as the existing economic unions we have studied.

The MacDougall panel found that per capita income inequality in the European states (9 at the time) was substantial and that the “redistributive power between member states of the Community’s finances, by comparison, is … very small indeed (1%); partly because the Community budget is relatively so small” (p.12).

This was in comparison with what happened in functioning federations such as Canada, the US and Australia.

Significantly, for our purposes, the MacDougall Report concluded that (p.12):

As well as redistributing income regionally on a continuing basis, public finance in existing economic unions plays a major role in cushioning short-term and cyclical fluctuations. For example, one-half to two-thirds of a short-term loss of primary income in a region due to a fall in its external sales may be automatically offset through lower payments of taxes and insurance contributions to the centre, and higher receipts of unemployment and other benefits.

In other words, an effective federation required a strong fiscal presence at the federal level to smooth out economic fluctuations at the sub-federal level.

In that regard, the MacDougall Report concluded that (p.12):

… there is no such mechanism in operation on any significant scale as between member countries, and that is an important reason why in present circumstances monetary union is impracticable.

The factors that the MacDougall panel of ‘experts’ considered in 1977 would have rendered monetary union “impracticable” were subsequently built-in to the Maastricht Treaty."

The source.