Thread: 'Sovereignty threat' after European parliament adopts flag a

'Sovereignty threat' after European parliament adopts flag and anthem

The European parliament has officially adopted an anthem and flag which were left out of the Lisbon treaty for fears they appeared federalist.

Last Updated: 11:03AM BST 10 Oct 2008

Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the final movement of his choral ninth symphony, will be used to open the parliament after each election and for formal sittings where heads of state are present.

The blue flag with 12 gold stars will be flown on all parliament buildings and displayed in parliament meeting rooms and official events.

While the symbols were agreed on in 1985 by EU heads of state, they have not been formally enshrined lest the union appear too like a sovereign state.

Timothy Kirkhope, a Conservative member of the European parliament, said he would refuse to stand for the anthem at sessions.

"Ode to Joy may be a very nice tune, but so is Jingle Bells and like Jingle Bells it heralds a fantasy - the fantasy that the EU is good for you," he said. "But unlike Jingle Bells, it will damage your national sovereignty and the right to control your own destiny."

Supporters of the symbols said they would send "a political message to our citizens".

The Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff, a European federalist, said opposition to the move was nothing but "petty nationalism".

The Labour MEP Richard Corbett said Conservative MEPs who voted against the symbols were going against the wishes of Baroness Thatcher, who helped choose them in 1985.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... vereignty-
threat-after-European-parliament-adopts-flag-and-anthem.html

With the current infighting over the lack of leadership by this ECONOMIC UNION during this ECONOMIC CRISIS, I think the best days of the EU are behind them. Ireland's NO vote on the Lisbon treaty, followed by the failures thus far, are leaving bad tastes in the mouths of the ORIGINAL members.

Ireland's economy ends long winning run

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK – 5 hours ago

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — Davey McKeever was down to his last bet slip of the night, crumpled in a sweaty fist, at the Shelbourne Park greyhound track. The remnants of McKeever's first unemployment check would rise or fall on the ironically named Nest Egg.

When the jet-black greyhound fell behind at the bend, the recently laid-off plasterer found it too painful to watch. He bowed his head. He looked up again just as Nest Egg crossed the line a frothy-mouthed winner — two lengths ahead of an underdog named So Your Crazy.

"I am going crazy," a flushed, visibly shaking McKeever said as he collected his winnings without pausing for a celebratory pint of Guinness with his friends. His $170 win was already destined for his 35-year mortgage on an apartment bought at market's peak two years ago.

"For the longest time I've enjoyed a night at the races. I've had cash for a social life, for the odd splash-out, for foolish bets," said McKeever, one of more than 20,000 workers laid off this year from Ireland's suddenly dormant building sites. "The dumbest bet I've ever made was on this Celtic Tiger. Now I can't afford to lose."

Tens of thousands of Irish face a financial white-knuckle ride because Europe's longest-running winning streak — the vaunted Celtic Tiger economy — has come to an inglorious end. Last month, Ireland became the first country in the 15-nation euro zone to fall into recession, and economists predict that a familiar era of closing factories and net emigration could return.

"We face stark choices. If we do not make the right ones, it will have catastrophic consequences," Prime Minister Brian Cowen said at a dinner of the country's top businessmen last week as his government authorized an emergency plan to insure the nation's banks against collapse.

The speed of the reversal has stunned Ireland top to bottom. And denial is giving way to desperation.

"We've had this corpse on the kitchen table for a while, and it's just today we've decided that it's actually dead," said Eddie Hobbs, Ireland's ubiquitous investment guru.

Hobbs became a national icon three years ago when he fronted a blunt-spoken TV series called "Rip-off Republic" highlighting the outrageous expense of boomtime Ireland and foreshadowing the crash to come. This month he's featured on an Irish financial magazine's cover in full battle gear and offering street-smart advice on how to survive Ireland's first recession since 1983.

Hobbs' gloomy forecast: property price drops of 20 percent to 60 percent, labor strikes and government cutbacks. He noted that Irishmen and women who grew up in the 1980s or earlier know how bad things might get, but to the Celtic Tiger's cubs "it's about as alien as a moonscape."

From 1994 to 2007, Ireland was one of Europe's brightest stars. Its gross domestic product expanded at nearly triple the European average. Unemployment fell from 15 percent to below 4 percent, and a centuries-old tradition of emigration was turned upside down.

About 1,000 foreign companies, more than half of them American, arrived or expanded in this English-speaking outpost on the EU's western edge. The companies largely sought to exploit a 12.5 percent rate of business tax, the lowest within the euro zone, and took heart from the arrival of peace in the neighboring British territory of Northern Ireland.

Within a few whirlwind years, Ireland shed its status as one of the EU's poorest members and became a magnet for many of Europe's best and brightest graduates in software design, information technology and drug research.

As in the United States, good times fueled a runaway property market, the fastest-growing in Europe. Thousands of Irish-emigre engineers, architects, plasterers and bricklayers came home from as far afield as Sydney and San Francisco.

Sean Six-Packs bought half-built apartments off architects' plans and collected hefty profits selling them a year later. Barmen bought a half-dozen properties on the side. The typical family dinner-table conversation swirled about the next smart development deals from Tipperary to Tuscany, and about how impossible the traffic was getting with all the new houses and cars.

Then the U.S. subprime crisis sent shockwaves across the Atlantic, hitting particularly hard the most America-dependent economy in Europe. International investors cast a cold eye on the exceptional exposure of Ireland's banks to property developers, bad loans and grossly inflated land prices.

The bank-heavy Irish Stock Exchange has shed nearly three-fourths of its value since April 2007. As Dublin bankers' ability to borrow internationally dried up, the government responded with a world-first guarantee for all deposits and borrowings of Irish-owned banks — a liability so big it represents $130,000 per man, woman and child.

The guarantee seemed to work, with a reported $14 billion in new deposits flowing into Dublin this month. But the decision to take on bank liabilities exceeding $550 billion has maimed the nation's credit rating. This is particularly bad timing for Ireland because, after more than a decade of double-digit hikes in spending and fat budget surpluses, the national finances are glowing neon red.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan estimates that Ireland will have to borrow more than $16 billion this year to balance the books, or 5.5 percent of GDP, the worst deficit since the mid-1980s. Economists say the country's lower credit ratings will add around $85 million to annual interest costs on national debt.

Some economists say Ireland had no choice, because it faced a real risk that its six homegrown banks would fall like dominos.

"Had Brian Lenihan not intervened courageously to guarantee all deposits last Monday night, then at least one, if not two, Irish banks would have collapsed last Tuesday," said David McWilliams, an investment banker-turned-commentator who has warned for nearly a decade that Ireland's love affair with property would end in tears. "There simply was no other choice." McWilliams said Ireland's property prices were "nowhere near the floor yet."

For now, the property market remains at a virtual standstill; an estimated 20,000 newly built homes lie unsold and no significant new developments have been launched in the past year.

A few of the country's biggest developers, sitting on half-filled luxury developments on Dublin's posh south side, would rather offer interest-free money to potential buyers than allow their prices to drop officially.

"The property business has been cyclical since Adam was a boy. You have to expect ups and downs. But the up always comes," said Ray Grehan, managing director of major Dublin developer Glenkerrin Homes, which is waging a high-stakes blinking contest with the moribund market.

His Grange development, which includes $3 million penthouses and a 24-hour concierge service novel to Ireland, sold its first 200 apartments rapid-fire in the heady days of 2005. He blamed Ireland's membership of the euro — which delivered interest rates much too low to control Celtic Tiger excess — for pushing up prices too high and too quickly.

"The cheap money was like adding rocket fuel to a fire," he said. "It was an absolute feeding frenzy, especially in 2005 and early 2006. There were queues of buyers at pretty much every development across the city."

Today, Grehan sits in the middle of the unfinished Grange, whose construction hoardings boast images of catwalk models, champagne flutes and the motto "The spirit of gracious living."

Scores of apartments remain unsold, two-thirds of would-be buyers have reclaimed their deposits because of cold feet or credit shortcomings, and a third phase is on indefinite hold. He's dropped prices at least $140,000 and is offering zero-interest loans good for seven years equal to 15 percent of the purchase price.

He employed 1,200 construction workers two years ago, but today just 200.

Grehan, 45, who started out as a tiler 24 years ago, remains reassured and inspired by how far his nation has come. Back then, he said, Ireland was not much better than a Third World country. Now its whole national image has changed.

"We have the youngest, fastest-growing population in Europe, our schools are bulging at the seams, and those kids are going to need someplace to live," he said. "So the Celtic Tiger can make a comeback. But he will be a tamer tiger."


http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jstu ... AD93O31DG0