Tag Archives: Europe & Eurozone

The Berlaymont building, Brussels HQ of the European Commission, refracted. Image copyright Jeremy Smith This article is cross-posted from Open Democracy, first published 17th January 2019. It follows up his earlier article from December, “Labour's Brexit trilemma: in search of the least bad...

The main body of the draft Withdrawal Agreement is certainly long and detailed – a tribute to the efficiency of the EU’s legal services – but it mainly contains the sort of provisions one would expect for the terms of the separation, and for issues that straddle the departure timeline.  There is a transition phase to 31 December 2020, which can be extended, when EU law continues to apply, and the European Court of Justice still has jurisdiction. Citizen’s rights (relating to...

PRIME’s co-director Jeremy Smith and Progressive Economy Forum Council member John Weeks analyse the “bar room budget-brawl” between the Italian government and the European Commission, and argue that the Commission’s wrong-footed response threatens to strengthen the far right – to avoid opening the door to fascism, the EU must ditch its bias towards austerity.No one doubts that Italy’s economy is in a mess. It has been for a long time. It was not always so. From 1971 until...

The calls for a “People’s Vote” on the government’s proposed Brexit ‘deal’ (if indeed there is one) grow louder, but are especially contentious for the Labour Party, whose membership is more minded to “remain” than the public at large, which still seems fairly evenly split. But the call for a People’s Vote is not so straightforward, partly now in...

The policy prescriptions of the 5 Star Movement can be found in two main documents, published in 2012 and 2013. The most important is that of 27 December 2012, insofar as it has been posted on the website of the leader of the Movement, Mr. Grillo and, for this reason, it can be conceived as the official programme of the Movement. In general terms, one can observe that this document mainly focuses on environmental issues, while relatively little attention is devoted to purely...

This article was first published on the Prospect magazine website on 15th October 2017“Strong and stable” seems of a world so far, far away.  The recent Daily Mail headline “PM slaps treacherous Chancellor down” portrays a government in political chaos. Thanks to open, unresolved intra-Brexiteer warfare, ministers are unable to agree the basics of how to exit the European Union. This state of uncertainty intensifies just as the risks to British jobs and living standards are...

"A European cultural consciousness exists and there exists a series of manifestations by intellectuals and politicians who maintain the need for a European union: it can also be said that the historical process leads towards this union and that there are many material forces that will be able to develop only in this union. If...

Acknowledgements to wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Historia_del_partido_socialista.jpg Dear readers. The article below was written in April, 2017, and submitted to Spain's socialist party (PSOE) for publication. It remains relevant to wider debates about the collapse of social...

On 30th June 2016, just one week after the EU Referendum, I wrote this:It has swiftly become clear, if it were not already so, that neither the government nor the leaders of the Brexit campaigns had anything resembling a plan for what to do if the people voted in favour of leaving the EU.  As Mark Carney rather mordantly put it in his speech...

What is the Single Market?Last week a cross-party group of MPs tabled an amendment to the Queen’s Speech calling on the government to commit to staying in the EU single market.  As a result of their support for the unsuccessful amendment, three Labour shadow cabinet members were forced to resign.The amendment revealed a possible confusion by its supporters about the nature of the single market and the European Union.  The wording of the amendment, which includes no reference...