Euro crisis - Division will not lead to a solution

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny’s meeting with opposition leaders yesterday, to brief them on agreements reached at last week’s EU summit, was entirely appropriate.

Our situation, and that of every member of the eurozone and of the wider European Community, is so very precarious that something approaching national-government collegiality is called for.

Sadly, the meeting did little to inspire the kind of confidence, or even reassurance, needed right now. How could it? Once again confusion seems to have choked optimism.

The willful detachment of Britain makes a fraught situation even more challenging. Unfortunately the unattractive jingoism unleashed by prime minister David Cameron’s breakaway makes any kind of rapprochement, even in the medium term, seem disturbingly remote.

That the summit did not aggressively address the sovereign debt crisis crippling so many European countries, or make even the slightest gesture of support towards Ireland in our unequal, unjust struggle with debts incurred by private bankers borrowing from French and German finance houses, only adds to the sense of distance and powerlessness felt by even the most pro-European citizens.

This detachment and growing disillusion do not auger well for the kind of national and EU-wide solidarity needed to endure the reduction in living standards most of us can expect before this crisis abates. It also casts a dark shadow over the prospect of having any constitutional amendment passed by a worried electorate unimpressed by the prospect of austerity more or less in perpetuity.

Indeed that remove has already empowered disconcertingly right-wing — and in one instance virulently anti-semitic — political movements in Hungary and in Finland. It has energised groupings to the left of the Socialist block in the European parliament too. Just yesterday the European United Left, who dismiss the parliaments’ socialists as weak-kneed, voted against Kevin Cardiff’s appointment to a €276,000 a year post with the European Court of Auditors.

This sabre rattling, though confined to the political margins at the moment, should warn us all of the tinder-box possibilities that would follow a collapse of the euro or maybe just further polarisation of the EU.

As the three Irish opposition leaders expressed varying degrees of disappointment with the conclusions of what was described as a last-throw-of-the-dice summit, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso yesterday explained why Britain’s demand for special privileges for the City of London’s financial markets could not be accommodated.

Mr Cameron said he had no alternative but to protect his country’s national interests but if that involved ring-fencing the light-touch regulation of banks and financial services that made such a disastrous contribution to the crisis, then it is obvious that the great majority of European states made the right decision.

There is a great sadness and irony in this. Anglo-Irish relations were never on a better footing and it would be tragic if we had to decide between the future a reformed and streamlined Europe might offer and our nearest neighbours.

Let us hope that final point is never reached.