I’m French. Unless something major changes, I hope we will be out before the UK comes back. I don’t see how anyone can be in favour of the EU after the Greek debt crisis.
I’m not too surprised about my original comment being downvoted while being entirely factually true. It was a bit much from me to expect people to understand the underside of running too much intermittent energy sources and how this is currently dealt with (the braindead part). I invite the champions of solar to explain to me the current plan of the EU for actually running the whole grid past 2050 while phasing out the coal and gas (hint: there is none).
Anyway I invite everyone to take a look at what the EU used to do nuclear, how it was purposefully omitted from the definition of clean energy for years, how they used to fine France despite its energy being clean, how it forces the French energy operator to sell at a loss, how it impedes France properly managing its dams and then look at who actually pushed for these policies while buying Russian gas and burning coal. The whole thing is a complete joke. At least they apparently saw the light on nuclear. That’s a start.
Even Flamanville is basically German industrial sabotage by the way of Siemens. Without their stupid bureaucratic "security" requirements the project would have been completed much faster and cheaper.
It seems insane to me that we agreed on partnering with a country that was aggressively against nuclear for a nuclear project.
It has been a long time since the last war now and everybody seems to have forgotten how Germans can be dangerous arrogant ideologues. The influence they yield on the EU is crazy and I don't think there is a way to properly balance it now. They are actively committing acts of war by the way of their political institutions but we do nothing.
Inevitably the past will repeat itself...
Hard to tell. We could devaluate. That would help with both the debt situation and our exports. The UK is not doing that bad at all.
That’s a risky bet but I personally prefer that to the current situation. I would honestly be ok with staying in the union if we could exit the euro while staying but I don’t think it’s possible.
> Hard to tell. We could devaluate. That would help with both the debt situation and our exports. The UK is not doing that bad at all.
1. It is widely recognised, and irritates the poorer countries, that Germany and France benefit from the relatively weak Euro for their exports.
2. If you left the EU and obviously the Euro and devalued your currency, you end up with wild inflation. If there is anything a population hates, it is high inflation. Given your political situation in France currently, no government would last a year in that scenario.
3. Devaluing obviously causes bond rates to rocket, which means rolling over your current debt because extremely serious.
4. On top of that, mortgage rates rocket, people hate that too.
There is a reason countries don't just print money and devalue all the time. If it was that easy, everyone would do it.
> That would help with both the debt situation and our exports.
But the debt is denominated in euro. If you leave euro and create a new currency, the bonds will still be in euro, while your new currency will be worth much less. It's basically easier and less painful to default on the spot than to go through this.
I honestly can't understand the urge to get bankrupt. France is already famous for the revolution and eagerness to protest but this looks like you want to cause chaos just for the sake of it.
Entirely depends how on we leave. We could convert the debt when we exit. That's unlikely to please our debtors hence the gamble but "c'est la vie".
Anyway, independently of the debt, the euro is a huge weight to drag for the French economy, technically for pretty much all the economies of the eurozone part for Germany.
Yes, converting the debt more or less equals a default.
I don't see French economy being very dynamic without the euro. If the thought is to take on lot of debt denominated in local currency and then inflate it away (faster than what happens with euro), that only makes things volatile, not dynamic.
> Yes, converting the debt more or less equals a default.
It's not technically a default but it would definitely have a negative impact on France ability to borrow after so I get your point.
> I don't see French economy being very dynamic without the euro.
The French economy dynamism was doing mostly ok before the current wave of political instability. France still has great infrastructures, a highly educated population and cheap energy if we exit the european energy market which is artificially tying our energy price to gaz thanks to the shortsightedness of our neighboors. Plenty of advantages we could leverage.
Devaluation would solve the issue of the population being politicaly unready to lower its standard of living to lower labour costs on top of helping with the debt burden.
Then, there is the obvious political benefit of untying us from people we share neither the culture nor the vision. The argument that pulling sovereignity to gain power is a charade. The utter failure of the commission negotiation with the US revealed what should have been apparent from the start: the emperor has no cloth. Why agree to be in an union which only apparently serves to prop up Germany?
> which is artificially tying our energy price to gaz thanks to the shortsightedness of our neighboors.
There were plenty of opportunities to reform the price-setting mechanism of EU energy market, wonder why that never happened. There are several - frankly probably most - countries that are unhappy about it. I don't really understand why nobody makes it a top priority agenda.
> Devaluation would solve the issue of the population being politicaly unready to lower its standard of living to lower labour costs on top of helping with the debt burden.
Ah yes, make people poor in addition to making the state poor. How could that go wrong.
It’s me being dramatic for useless flair. I edited it out a minute after posting because it adds nothing to the discussion but you read it before I did.
Different situation. France has only itself to blame for the current situation and has plenty of things it can still do to avoid a crisis. Plus the debt holders are very diversified.
The Greek crisis is very different because the debt was mostly held by German banks - the German did to do something of all these excess savings and the Greek economy suffered a lot from the euro. Reforms were needed but the way the whole thing was handled is a disgrace.
I frequently see this sentiment but it's not really very informed or informative. Greek creditors took huge haircuts on the debt - that never gets mentioned.
Then, Greece had a choice, just like every other country always has a choice when faced with a debt crisis: Accept the terms of people who will bail you out, or default. It is always like this, because no-one is going to bail you out if it is apparent that the situation will just repeat. The Greek people voted to reject the terms of the bailouts, which meant leaving the Euro, printing their own currency, and accepting that the global capital markets would not be buying their bonds for the foreseeable future. The Greek government saw the choice and ignored the people, because they knew the alternative to the bailout was far, far worse. The only reason they ran that referendum was to try use it to bargain for better terms, they never had any intention of defaulting.
That's not me being misinformed. That's you intentionaly misrepresenting the situation.
The question is not if the Greek could refuse. The question is was the terms put forward by "the Greek creditors", that is to say Germany, were fair and in the interest of the union as a whole. If I put a gun to your head, no one will listen if I tell them I gave you a choice you could have refused. You just had to take the bullet.
Germany basically refused to Greece what they themselves got in 1953 despite the situation being in part caused by their own complete mismanagement of the economy, a situation they have yet to fix by the way.
I don't know what is more repugnant: what they did or that there is people defending it and having so little shame they pretend others are misinformed.
I’m not too surprised about my original comment being downvoted while being entirely factually true. It was a bit much from me to expect people to understand the underside of running too much intermittent energy sources and how this is currently dealt with (the braindead part). I invite the champions of solar to explain to me the current plan of the EU for actually running the whole grid past 2050 while phasing out the coal and gas (hint: there is none).
Anyway I invite everyone to take a look at what the EU used to do nuclear, how it was purposefully omitted from the definition of clean energy for years, how they used to fine France despite its energy being clean, how it forces the French energy operator to sell at a loss, how it impedes France properly managing its dams and then look at who actually pushed for these policies while buying Russian gas and burning coal. The whole thing is a complete joke. At least they apparently saw the light on nuclear. That’s a start.