Thread: Crushing blow to EU right wing in france
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Old 04-25-2017, 08:08 AM  
Paul Markham
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Macron is in favor of transforming Europe's bailout fund, the ESM, into a full-blown European Monetary Fund, an idea that has supporters in Berlin. He is also in favor of a euro zone budget and finance minister, ideas that are less popular in Merkel's entourage.

Many express concern about how highly-indebted countries like Italy will cope when the European Central Bank begins pushing up interest rates and unwinding the bond-buying scheme that has kept borrowing costs artificially low.

"If Macron is elected there is an historic opportunity which may not come around again," said Jeromin Zettelmeyer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former top official in the German economy ministry.
Quote:
He proposed the creation of a eurozone budget to finance growth-oriented investments and to extend financial assistance to struggling member states.

However, this would be anathema to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, whose conservatives face an election this year and have faced domestic resistance to bailouts for Greece by hawks who say such payments turn the euro zone into a ?transfer union?.
Will the other 24 countries sit back and allow France and Germany to decide the future of the whole of Europe? Macron thinks so.
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