Thursday, June 02, 2005

More EU Votes

Yesterday, the Dutch rejected the EU constitution, with 61.6 percent voting against, while Latvia's parliament accepted it. I'm not going to even surmise a guess at what will happen next, but there's already talk over at Knowledge Problem that all that will happen is a more honest dialogue between the current nation-states over what the EU really means. (For starters, I could suggest that a 400+-page constitution is not a good idea.) The Capital Spectator seems to think that
There’s no immediate risk to Europe’s currency. Betting otherwise seems like a fool’s game at this point. But that won’t curb the doubts, which carry a bit more resonance in the wake of France’s resounding vote.
In a Bloomberg News article, Guy Stern of Credit Suisse Asset Management says, "We will have a problem with the euro. It could depreciate 5 percent to 10 percent." This is a short-term problem until the EU's direction becomes clearer. But as I've said before, my suspicion is that France sees the EU as a way to eat lunch, and have Germany pay for it. That is, the internal contradictions of the various parties' wish lists is both non-negotiable and irreconcilable at last.

Update: still more from Knowledge Problem.