Posts Tagged ‘European Stability Mechanism’

Finland Elects Euroskeptic Government

Wednesday, June 21st, 2023

Here’s some underreported news.

Finland’s newly elected parliament on Tuesday voted in favour of National Coalition Party leader Petteri Orpo to become prime minister, as widely expected, ushering in a right-wing government and ending Social Democrat Sanna Marin’s rule.

Orpo will lead a coalition of the conservative NCP, the nationalist Finns, the minority-language Swedish People’s Party and the Christian Democrats, which together won a majority of parliamentary seats in the April 2 election.

The new finance minister will be Riikka Purra, head of the eurosceptic Finns Party, while the NCP’s deputy leader Elina Valtonen will become foreign minister when the government takes office later on Tuesday.

“I warmly thank you for the confidence you’ve shown me,” Orpo told parliament shortly after the vote.

A self-styled fiscal conservative, Orpo campaigned on a promise to reduce the government’s budget deficit by cutting spending while also reducing taxes and seeking to boost private sector job creation.

The new coalition also shifts immigration policy to the right, aiming to cut refugee quotas, raise the bar for work-based visas and make it more difficult for foreigners to obtain citizenship, key priorities for the Finns Party.

Orpo is hardly a bomb-thrower, with previous stints on the boards of the European Investment Bank and the European Stability Mechanism, which are embedded very deep inside the EU’s deep state. Nor will Finland’s new coalition be mistaken for the second coming of Ronald Reagan.

But time and time again we’re told that the EU policies (just like Social Justice policies in the U.S.) are popular, while time and time again EU member states elect government that oppose many of those policies, especially those favoring unlimited Muslim immigration into member countries.

Finally, those who assert that Euroskeptacism goes hand in hand with appeasing Russia will find that they’re mistaken, as Orpo backed Ukraine and Finland joining NATO.

For Finland Russia’s prox­im­ity is a key geostrategic fact, and the war in Ukraine indi­cates how the prob­lems asso­ci­ated with Russia’s aggres­sive behav­iour have mate­ri­al­ized. Russia is defin­ing its inter­ests in a way that threat­ens peace in Europe and creates inse­cu­rity in others. During the past decade, there have been upris­ings in several of Russia’s neigh­bors, which the Krem­lin has sought to violently suppress. Russia seeks a new sphere of influ­ence and wants to halt the demo­c­ra­tic devel­op­ment of other coun­tries. Not NATO, but the people’s will to decide for them­selves seems to be a threat to Putin’s regime.

Finland’s new government, like the old, is firmly in the NATO camp. Funny how fighting the Soviet Union/Russia repeatedly throughout the 20th Century will do that…

Greece and the EU Compromise to…Kick The Can Further Down the Road

Friday, July 10th, 2015

It looks like we have an actual, honest-to-God compromise, in that Greece, in exchange for not having their economy collapse and descend into anarchy and cannibalism, will pretend to implement real reforms, while the Troika, in exchange for those promises, and not being blamed for the impending global recession, will give Greece still more loans, write down some previous loans, and pretend this actually fixes the problem.

So expect to see another round of this dance in six months to a year.

Germany caved on debt relief. Greece?

A cursory look at the “new” Greek proposal to creditors suggests PM Alexis Tsipras may have sold out the referendum “no” vote in a final, desperate attempt to avert an economic catastrophe and the collapse of the country’s banks which will be cut off from ELA as of Monday morning in the event Brussels and Athens do not come to terms over the weekend.

And indeed, the austerity outlined in the latest proposal is more severe than the version voters rejected last Sunday. Among the proposals evidently agreed to: No retirement until age 67 or 40 years of paying into the system. Caveat: Pension reforms don’t actually kick in until October, so they’re still kicking the can down the road on that as well.

Also: “Greece will succeed in transferring bonds currently held by the ECB to the European Stability Mechanism.” If the ESM is truly the euro’s firewall, then they’re about to get an infusion of crappy Communist-era Soviet concrete…

Other Greek crisis tidbits:

  • Earlier Greece had floated their totally serious compromise proposal that didn’t cut any pensions.
  • Faced with impending national bankruptcy, Greece’s ruing left-wing Syriza Party concentrates on the essentials: investigating reporters who opposed them. (Hat tip: National Review.)
  • People in Latvia and Lithuania sneer at spendthrift Greece.
  • Greece demonstrates 150 years of socialist failure.
  • Greek event timelines.
  • Greece probably wouldn’t do as well after a Grexit as Argentina did after their default.
  • The sneaky return of Drachmas? Of course this was before the latest agreement. But wouldn’t it be hilarious if Greece got one final big bailout, then turned around and pulled off a Grexit anyway?
  • UKIP head Nigel Farge had some advice earlier in the week:

    Not in 100% agreement, but there’s a lot of bracing truth in there. But the problem, of course, is that Tsipras, as all Socialists do, does indeed want to have his cake and eat it too…