The Week in Bloggingportal: A Storm Over Europe?

A Financial Storm Over Europe? - CC / Flickr (A O K)

I’m not sure about the rest of Europe – but we’ve been having miserable weather for the last few weeks here in Northern Italy. Rain, wind, clouds, lightning and thunder; some of us thought summer would never arrive. Last week, however, the weather turned and the sun finally showed its face.

You’d expect Europe’s bloggers to be outside, enjoying the blue skies and exchanging virtual tweets for real birdsong, wouldn’t you? Instead, we find them hunched over their keyboards in gloom, feverishly pumping out post after post as the crisis in Europe provides just about the most excitment in EU politics we’ve ever had. In other words: it’s been a busy week in the blogs.

It seems like the EU is starting to wake up to the existence of this digital army of bloggers. At least they’re writing us letters now (though it seems the Commission still doesn’t know how to use e-mail if they’re sending digital copies of paper letters. It doesn’t work that way, Commission!). Across the board, the EU gives the impression it is struggling to keep up with the pace of modern technology; from continuing controversy over its digital piracy plans (Google translation here) to the way the internet challenges EU single market law. Personally, I blame Al Gore for inventing the damn internet. What a lot of bother.

In a seamless segue – there’s also been a lot of bother in the UK, recently. For some time, there have been rumours that elements within the British Conservative party might be about to push for a new referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, citing the obscure re-ratification of some protocol or other as an excuse. Is Cameron really going to claw back power from the EUSSR in an almighty bust-up with Brussels? The eurosceptic EU Referendum blog quietly laughs (or weeps?) at the suggestion – pointing out that it’s all a lot of fuss over nothing. Meanwhile, the Love and Garbage blog quietly laughs at Conservative bluster over human rights, and Ralf Grahn quietly laughs at eurosceptic bluster over “refusing to join the Euro.” As Ralf points out, the UK economy is in such a dire state at the moment that it wouldn’t qualify for membership even they begged to be let in.

Not that the UK is likely to beg for Eurozone membership anytime soon. The Eurozone is in permanent crisis-mode; Germany is calling all the shots (without telling anybody), and the usual prophets are to be found on street-corner soap-boxes singing about the end of the EU. A long and detailed analysis of the root causes of the crisis can be found on A Fistful of Euros – but the short version is that things don’t look good.

Is all this doom and gloom just a ruse to sell newspapers? A quick poll of Eurogeeks on Twitter suggests that most EU bloggers don’t think this is the end of the Euro – it’s just that (as Julien Frisch writes) we’ve woken up from the European dream and we’re now living in the European reality. But can we get back to business as usual, or should we follow calls for stronger “Euro-governance” to get us out of this mess? One thing’s for sure: our leaders should consider their options carefully and not run around like headless chickens.

Speaking of headless chickens – what is Belgium’s presidency going to look like without a government?