A cure for insomnia

Should nothing else work, a read of the European Parliament website is guaranteed to send you to sleep....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

See: http://www.theparliament.com/home/

However the website has had some critical articles posted on it recently, far removed from the usual fare of balm and self-congratulation.

See: http://www.theparliament.com/latest-news/article/newsarticle/former-eu-commissioner-says-break-up-of-euro-is-inevitable/

http://www.theparliament.com/latest-news/article/newsarticle/eu-sidelined-at-crunch-global-aid-summit/

Could it be that the comatose group, otherwise known as Members of the European Parliament, are beginning to realise something is not as it should be in the European Project.

In this context see:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8933236/Eurozone-crisis-the-US-has-to-ride-to-the-rescue-once-again.html

Angela Merkel is now making seriously uncompromising noises about fiscal union: it is to go ahead, whatever anybody else says or thinks. No more messing. And Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be accepting this – for the moment. But watch this space. Rather belatedly, the European Parliament has woken up to the threat this represents to democratic principle: it has announced that if tax and spending policy is to be decided centrally by the EU, then it, being the only body elected by the people, should have co-responsibility for those decisions with the European Commission. In other words, since fiscal policy will be out of the hands of national governments, and therefore beyond the reach of a population’s own democratic process, it really ought to be accountable to some representative body. (The most extraordinary thing about this is that it was just an afterthought.)