A
weekend is a long time in politics. It certainly was last weekend,
especially for the future of the European Union.
Immediately
before the election in Britain, it was no more than a possibility
that the UK would hold a referendum on its membership of the EU.
After the votes had been counted, possibility had shot up to
certainty.
Amid
the VE Day celebrations, the Sunday Times came out with the bizarre
front-page headline: “Cameron launches blitz on Europe.”
The
British prime minister has pledged to hold an ‘in/out’ referendum
before the end of 2017. The result of the referendum will depend
heavily on what Cameron can do between now and then to make the EU
less “big, bossy and bureaucratic.”
His
supposed arch-enemy in the EU, Jean-Claude Junckers, president of the
European Commission, lightened things up by tweeting:
“Congratulations, @David_Cameron for a resounding victory. I am
ready to work with you to strike a fair deal for the UK.”
Still,
by Monday the leader of Britain’s new Conservative government was
reportedly drawing up plans to bring the referendum forward by a year
to 2016 in order to avoid clashing with the French and German
elections in 2017.
Meanwhile,
last Friday the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, said he was
confident his country’s struggle to repay its debts would “soon
have a happy ending.”
Wishful thinking.
On
Monday Greece managed to repay a paltry €750 million in IMF loans
just hours before they were due, but officials in Brussels wearily
reiterated that major issues remain unresolved, distrust still
abounds, and time is running out to prevent the Greek debt crisis
exploding.
Where
does Portugal figure in all this? Well, as the IMF so politely put
it last Friday, “Portugal’s medium-term interests are still
clouded by legacy problems.”
The
prospects of both a Greekexit and a Britexit from the EU are
increasing all the time but a Portugalexit is not on the cards, not
yet anyway.
As
one of the EU’s most vulnerable member states after Greece,
Portugal is keeping its head down and trying to play by the rules.
And yet Prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho made an unusually bold
statement on Europe at a conference in Italy on Friday. He proposed
the creation of a European Monetary Fund to take over any future
eurozone bailout responsibilities from the Washington-based IMF, and
thus provide a purely European solution to such problems.
Neither
of the main parties in Portugal has welcomed the IMF’s latest
urgings for more austerity in the shape of further cuts to government
spending. With a general election coming this September or October,
how the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Socialist Party (PS)
intend to handle the Troika and resolve the economic crisis will be
uppermost in the minds of Portuguese voters.
Passos
Coelho’s ruling centre-right coalition has steadfastly kept to its
bailout pledges, and while the main opposition Socialists are against
austerity they are not proposing a cop out on repayment commitments.
The
Socialists have interpreted this year’s Greek far-left political
transformation as “a sign of change in the orientation of Europe of
how austerity policies have reached a limit and of the necessity of
new policies.”
Both
the main political parties want this country to remain a member of
the European Union, but the union may be on its way to taking on a
very different complexion.
If
a weekend is a long time in politics, imagine if you can what might
happen to the EU over the next year or so.
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