Rise of the Eurosceptics in Germany

From: Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


With the EU scrambling to contain anti-euro sentiment in Italy, there has been a notable rise of euroscepticism in other places, even Germany. Reuters reports One in four Germans would back anti-euro party.

One in four Germans would be ready to vote in September's federal election for a party that wants to quit the euro, according to an opinion poll published on Monday that highlights German unease over the costs of the euro zone crisis.

The poll conducted by TNS-Emnid for the weekly Focus magazine showed 26 percent of Germans would consider backing a party that wanted to take Germany out of the euro and as many as four in 10 Germans in the 40-49 age bracket would do so.

"This suggests there may be potential here for a new protest party," Emnid chief Klaus Peter Schoeppner told Focus.

A new eurosceptic movement called 'Alternative for Germany' (AfD) comprising mostly academics and business people is due to hold its first meeting later on Monday in a northern suburb of Frankfurt.

One of its founders, economics professor Bernd Lucke, told Focus he had no concern that it would be able to raise the required 2,000 signatures in each German region to take part in September's federal election.

AfD's website www.alternativefuer.de has been live since late last week and its Twitter account (@wahlalternativ1) counts 690 followers.

"Let's put an end to this euro!" is the message on the front page of its website.

690 followers is certainly not a lot of followers. This leads me to believe most Germans do not even know about the party. Certainly German mainstream media would like to keep it that way.

If that poll is accurate however, and I suspect it is, there is plenty of time for AfD to spread like wildfire, just as happened in Italy.

In case you missed it, anti-euro sentiment in also on the rise in the Netherlands.

Gates of Vienna: The Robber Barons of the EU

Gates of Vienna has an interesting article about Geert Wilders campaign pledge to get the Netherlands out of the European Union. It looks as if Mr. Wilders has expanded his platform to include the corruption of the bloated bureaucracy.

EU: Hezbollah Is Not A Terrorist Group

From: Jerusalem Post

Despite last week’s terrorist attack in Bulgaria that Israel blamed squarely on Hezbollah, the EU Tuesday rejected Israeli calls to place the Lebanese organization on its terrorist blacklist.

Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou- Marcoullis, whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said at a press conference in Brussels with Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman that there is “no consensus among the EU member states for putting Hezbollah on the terrorist list of the organization.”

Such a move, she said, required unanimity from the EU’s 27 member states.

Liberman, who met Tuesday with his EU colleagues as part of the annual EU-Israel Association Council meeting, had called on the body to put Hezbollah on its terrorist list. Doing so would make illegal any financial transfer from the EU to Hezbollah or to any member of that organization. Liberman said such a move would send a powerful message both to the international community and the Israeli public.

“From ouour point of view it is unacceptable that Hezbollah terrorists meet and talk with Western diplomats in Beirut on one hand, and they pursue their terrorist activity on European soil on the other hand,” he said at the press conference.

Kozakou-Marcoullis, speaking for the EU, plainly refused the request.

“The Lebanese Hezbollah is an organization that comprises a political party [and a] social services network, as well as an armed wing,” she said. “Hezbollah is active in Lebanese politics, including the parliament and the government, and plays a specific role with regard to the status quo in Lebanon.”

Taking this and other aspects into account, she said, there is “no consensus among the EU member states for putting Hezbollah on the terrorist list of the organization. Should there be tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism, the EU would consider listing the organization.”

Cyprus is currently holding a suspect who according to Israeli officials, has admitted under interrogation to being a Hezbollah operative. He was arrested there late last month while allegedly planning an attack on Israeli tourists.

Minyanville On "The European Onion"

From: Minyanville

This morning, Messrs. Barroso, Van Rompuy, Draghi, and Juncker presented a plan for rescuing the eurozone that included creating a closer fiscal and banking union that would, to quote the Telegraph, “turn Brussels into a finance ministry for all eurozone members.”

Put simply, that dog don’t hunt. Or, maybe more appropriately for the eurozone at the moment, that salmon don’t spawn.

I offer the latter analogy given the “upstream battle” I am afraid European leaders now face in proposing a plan that clearly goes against the tide of mounting nationalism across the continent.  What European leaders have repeatedly failed to appreciate with their offerings of one grand solution after another is that, as social mood deteriorates, local priorities take clear precedence over national/regional objectives.  (And one need only look at the stock charts of the DAX (^GDAXI), CAC (^FCHI), IBEX (^IBEX), and Athens Stock Exchange (ATG) to see just how low mood has fallen.)

Israel served as ‘main course’ at EU Dinner

From: Jerusalem Post

Quartet envoys are expected to meet in Brussels at the end of the week amid increasing concern in Jerusalem that the EU hopes to avert a Palestinian statehood bid at the UN in September by, as one senior Israeli official said on Wednesday, “giving something” significant to the Palestinians.

According to the official, the concern was that the EU is pushing for the adoption of US President Barack Obama’s formula of restarting negotiations using the pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps as a baseline, but without pressing the Palestinians to elaborate on security arrangements of any future accord with Israel.

The official also said the Palestinians wouldn’t be pressed to acknowledge Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people as a baseline for negotiations.

Many in Europe feel that something significant must be given to the Palestinians to get them to back down from their bid to get the UN General Assembly to recognize Palestinian statehood, the official said.

This is apparently what Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been referring to in recent days when, in private conversations with foreign leaders, he has said the Palestinians were being treated by some in Europe as a “spoiled child.”

Netanyahu repeated this phrase – first used on Sunday during a meeting with Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov – in a meeting on Wednesday with visiting Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez.

Netanyahu’s point, according to one government official at the meeting, is that the world is habituating the Palestinians to believe that they can gain concessions without giving anything in return.

The Europeans appear willing to give the Palestinians what they have wanted as the baseline for talks, without even having assurances that this will be enough to keep them from taking the recognition issue to the UN, let alone without demanding any flexibility from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the issue of refugees or Israel as a Jewish state, the official said.

Israel’s frustration with the EU, or at least with part of the EU, was highlighted this week when Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who was hosting the monthly meeting of EU foreign ministers, held an informal dinner on Sunday night on the Middle East with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to which he invited representatives from France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Russia, the US, Indonesia, the Arab League and the PA – but not Israel.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, in a blog posting about the dinner, made it clear that Israel was a large part of the discussion.

Bildt wrote that it was evident that “large parts of the Arab world” have now “given up virtually all hope of progress” with the present Israeli government.

He also wrote that a Quartet meeting at the ministerial level “to express the policy that not only Europe, but also President Obama, stands for would undoubtedly be an important step forward.”

What aggravated Jerusalem was that at a dinner dealing with the Middle East, at which Israel, as one official said, “was the main course,” no Israeli representative was in attendance.

Meanwhile, White House Chief Middle East Adviser Dennis Ross said at the President’s Conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday that the greatest risk at a time of sweeping change in the Middle East was to think that this was the time to sit still and “do nothing.”

Ross said that while he understood the impulse to “stand pat” and avoid taking risks, certain realities – such as demographic trends that will present Israel with the dilemma of being either a Jewish or a democratic state – could not be “wished away.”

Ross’s comments seemed a gentle criticism of voices in the Israeli government saying that at a time when everything is changing in the Middle East, this is not the time for Israel to take far-reaching risks, not knowing what will be tomorrow in countries such as Syria, Egypt and even Jordan.

Obama, in his speech on the Middle East at the State Department last month, made a very similar statement.

Ross, who has been in the country for a week trying to find a formula to enable a restarting of Israeli-Palestinian talks, said that while there “are more pitfalls on the path to peace” than he could detail, this did not mean that tackling the challenges was impossible.

Denmark Stick It To the EU

From: American Thinker

One of the crowning achievements of the European Union was the elimination of passport controls when crossing national borders within the Union itself, making the EU analogous to the United States in terms of ease of travel. Yesterday, that edifice started to crumble, when Denmark announced that it would institute passport control . France 24 reported:

Denmark was on a collision course with the European Union on Thursday as it defended a plan to unilaterally enforce stricter border controls, a policy which reflects growing resentment across Europe toward the EU "open-border" policy.

"We see a rise in cross-border crime: drugs, east European gangs, human trafficking, money smuggling... And one of the efficient ways to fight this is border control," Danish Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said Wednesday on Danish television, adding that the enforcement measures would "be put in place as soon as possible."

Danish authorities have planned to invest over €20 million in more customs officers and advanced surveillance equipment to implement a new system of random checks of cars and passports at its borders with Germany and Sweden.

Denmark: Getting Immigration Right

From: Gates of Vienna

Denmark Suspends the Schengen Agreement

C.Cantoni sent this terse announcement a few hours ago:

Denmark has suspended the Schengen treaty and re-introduced controls at its borders with Germany and Sweden. It was announced by the country’s Finance Minister, Claus Hjort Frederiksen. . .

As our regular readers know, the Baron has been following closely the events in Italy as its coast continues to be inundated with boatloads of refugees from North Africa and environs. Besides documenting the numbers of asylum-seekers, he’s also been commenting on the EU’s stunning willingness to let Italy simply drown in effluvia.

Though the bureaucrats in Brussels have offered some limited, limp-wristed assistance and a few sermons, there has been a marked lack of any robust help for Italy during this siege. However, it appears they’re actually worried enough to hold secret meetings about the situation.

The most concise and informative MSM story [I could find] was half a world away, here:

Will the Euro-Elites Listen to the European Voters?

From: American Thinker

Another anti-EU, anti-immigration party now stands on the verge of political power in Western Europe.

In Finland's national parliamentary elections this past Sunday, the spanking-new True Finns Party came in with 19% of the popular vote. That third-place finish virtually ties the National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats for seats in Finland's 200-seat Parliament. The governing, conservative Centre Party lost 16 seats.

Reported results show the following breakdown:

NCP - 43

SD - 42

True Finns - 39

Centre Party - 24

The Economist responded to these results by calling them "TRULY AMAZING." They're not.

What's amazing is the continuing refusal of Western Europe's governing elites to recognize that large numbers of European voters now reject that elite's agenda. The True Finns' surge is only the latest evidence of a wider disenchantment with governance and the governing class across Europe. Germany's Der Spiegel provides a handy chart of the rise of populist conservatives throughout the Continent.

Like Finland, Great Britain, Greece, and Ireland have all ousted governments in the last year. In Spain, now in its third year of 20%+ unemployment, the socialist prime minister just announced he will not seek reelection. Belgium has had no government for several months. And the less said about the state of Italian politics the better.

Bad economies and massive, unregulated Muslim immigration have driven these election results. In Switzerland, voters last year approved a referendum outlawing minarets on new mosques. France has just outlawed the public wearing of the Islamic veil by women. The leaders of Germany, France, and the UK have all pronounced European multi-culturalism to be a failure.

Portugal could require $107 billion bailout from EU-IMF

From: Christian Science Monitor

Madrid

European leaders today postponed the approval of a beefed-up financial rescue package to allow some members to get their internal politics in order, bringing the euro zone's path to economic recovery into greater question.

Finland and Germany are facing critical elections in the next few weeks and their leaders are finding it increasingly hard to continue bailing out fellow European Union members. But the headline obstacle for EU chiefs to approve the “grand bargain” was yesterday's collapse of the Portuguese government over unpopular austerity measures, which brought it a step closer to joining the ranks of Greece and Ireland in requesting funds.

A bailout for Portugal would likely be on the order of $107 billion, Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker told journalists in Brussels on the sidelines of the two-day summit that continues Friday. The EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have already lent $120 billion to Ireland and $156 billion to Greece.

Portugal's collapse, and the EU's inability to find quick solutions to mounting problems, sent jitters across world markets.

EU leaders were expected to produce concrete measures to build confidence that the worst of the European debt crisis is over, including by increasing the effective lending capacity of the temporary bailout fund to $624 billion. That would be enough even to rescue Spain, the EU's indebted fourth-largest economy. The amount would remain in place until a permanent EU rescue fund of $993 billion is created by 2013.

But after today's meeting failed to formalize the package, analysts say, it appears all but certain that Europe is merely buying time before more countries need a bailout and at least one of them inevitably defaults on its debt, Greece being the prime candidate.

“I think a default in unavoidable. The rationale has been one of providing liquidity, denying insolvency, and in doing that they are buying time,” says Citigroup senior European economist Giada Giani.

Portugal collapses

And now a bailout for Portugal looks increasingly likely, too, after the government collapsed. Prime Minister José Sócrates resigned, as he had promised he would, when parliament rejected his proposed fiscal reforms Wednesday.

The measures would have increased taxes for pensioners, personal incomes, and corporations. The measures also sought to trim welfare programs, jobs, and public transportation subsidies. But divisive internal politics have stalled meaningful reforms.

“Every opposition party rejected the measures proposed by the government to prevent that Portugal resort to external aid,” Mr. Sócrates said in a televised address late Wednesday. He will likely remain as government caretaker and indicated he plans to run again in the next election that has to be called within 55 days. Some speculated that his resignation could be a political maneuver to blame opposition parties for forcing a bailout.

The governing Socialist party's coalition partners joined the main opposition party in rejecting measures intended to reduce Portugal's deficit-to-GDP ratio from 7.3 percent in 2010 to 4.6 percent this year, after a record 9.3 percent in 2009.

Ratings agencies continue to downgrade the country’s credit, which is now four notches from junk status. Unemployment has risen to a record 11.2 percent, and the central bank expects the economy to shrink 1.3 percent this year.

In such countries as Portugal, warns Giada Giani of Citigroup, "the level of debt is so high that no matter how much you introduce measures, there is vicious circle." Austerity measures are likely to also undermine job creation and economic growth. Indeed, the Greek and Irish economies continue to shrink despite EU respite.