It would appear that Premiers Sarkozy and Merkel are joining with Gordon Brown in wanting a super tax on on bonuses and, perhaps, further action to prevent banking causing a recession such as we are experiencing at the moment again. On 2008 figures, that’s slightly more than fifty per cent of the EU’s GDP¹, which is a pretty good start.

I do wonder, regardless of the merits of the policy, if the UK would have been able to organise it if our government was not merely Eurosceptic but had told the Europarty of Merkel and Sarkozy where it could go, decried the idea of European governments working together. I do wonder how much leverage we’d have at all.

We’re often told that these things don’t work unless everyone does it. Well, everyone’s not going to do it simultaneously, but if most of the EU comes into line behind a policy that is both popular for sticking it to the bankers and may help alleviate the the deficits floating around Europe, it’d be a damned good start.

xD.

1 – IMF, May ’08. Germany, the UK and France’s shares of the EU’s GDP are 19.8, 15.4 and 15.3% respectively, making 50.5% overall.

Posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Categories: Europe.
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