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The European ‘union’ has tried and failed, once again, to lure prey into its web, with offerings of democracy, equality, transparency and western-style welfare, the likes of which are unheard of in closed states such as the Ukraine.
Of course, it is not the EU family and its 400 mln citizens who are to blame, but the fools we have leading this exclusive club, that looks after the interests of founders more than the universal wellbeing of all its 28 members.
Although we have been supportive of EU membership and some of the benefits this has undoubtedly brought to the island, Cypriots remain frustrated, unsure of what it is that that the Union is supposed to have given us. In other words, what did we really get out of membership, apart from the various initiatives to resolve the Cyprus problem, most of which have failed because of other priorities of the European Commission or in some cases, plain apathy on our behalf.
We got a bitter taste of the ‘solidarity’ from our European brothers earlier this year, when the Eurogroup imposed the experimental bail-in/bail-out rescue programme for Cyprus, with variants of the same concept suggested to other EU periphery members.
This proves the theories argued in this newspaper in the past of a two-tier eurozone – the core northern German-led euro area, and the southern ‘cheaper’ euro area – which has also raised the question whether the euro itself is viable as is.
Nobel economics laureate Christofors Pissarides was misinterpreted last week; he did not say that the euro should be dismantled, but rather, that the way it is today, it is just not working.
Efforts to constitute the single European currency as a challenger to the dominance of the US dollar, and to a lesser extent the Japanese yen and the British pound, have floundered on what the euro’s role should in fact be. Is it to help the rich industries of the north or to provide the economic dream to the impoverished of the south? Why not both?
The manic persistence with which western EU governments have pushed to bring Kiev closer has done the opposite: when Ukrainians saw there was nothing tangible from this connection, they turned to their least-favoured but reliable neighbour, Russia.
Once again, the EU has failed, simply because it was desperate to put pressure on Moscow to lower natgas rates, flowing over Ukrainian territory. The EU failed in north Africa and Egypt, it failed in the Middle East and the EU simply ‘participated’ in the Iran nuclear deal. The EU budget is in tatters and alliances are collapsing throughout the continent.
Do we have to wait until after the European parliament elections next May to get rid of this EU ‘leadership’?
