THE TELEGRAPH: The financial crisis that has engulfed the EU will not be solved by any quick fix, says Jeremy Warner.
As if the formation of the UK's first coalition government in 65 years wasn't enough drama for one week, events have been unfolding on the other side of the Channel that will change Europe's destiny, and perhaps Britain's too, for ever.
The EU's 750 billion euro (£644 billion) salvage package might be born of necessity rather than design. But it is nevertheless a watershed development, which places the Continent unambiguously on the path to full fiscal and political union.
I'm not saying that such a union is inevitable; the euro's eventual disintegration is still as likely an outcome. Nor is there any certainty that the package, which still lacks salient detail, will work as prescribed.
But willingly or not, there is little doubt where the logic of events is driving European policymakers: it is towards a federal superstate, with the power to subjugate individual nations' fiscal sovereignty if it cuts aross the needs of the whole. Never mind the challenges of deficit reduction – as this centralisation imposes itself ever more aggressively, it threatens to test the oddball mix of Britain's coalition of Eurosceptics and Europhiles to breaking point. >>> Jeremy Warner | Friday, May 14, 2010
