Nigel Farage has slammed socialist French President Francois Hollande’s “desperate” bid for the revival of old plans for a ‘eurozone government’ as part of a plan to renew faith in the European project. Calling for further integration between member states as a response to the Greek crisis, Hollande said: “What threatens us is not an excess of Europe but a lack of it.”
The Express reports that UKIP leader Nigel Farage labelled the move intended to arrest the weakening of continental stability “an increasingly desperate attempt to hold together the crumbling ethos behind the eurozone.” He added:
“President Hollande, like so many of the Euro-Elite, has no imagination and no foresight. They look at error, and seeing it they wish, not to learn from it to repeat it, and repeat it even more forcefully.”
Opposition to the plan, the revival of an old one first proposed by the former European Commission chief and arch euro-federalist Jacques Delors, is not limited to UKIP. One of David Cameron’s own MEPs, Eastern England’s David Bannerman, had already given his own view tweeting that the plans were: “Clear evidence EU is leaving UK behind as EU member, never mind Brexit: Hollande calls for ‘Eurozone Parliament'”.
In addition to calling for a eurozone government with a “specific budget as well as a parliament to ensure its democratic control” Hollande also suggested greater fiscal ties between European nations saying they should “go further on economic governance.” The Daily Mail reports Hollande has previously called for the 19 eurozone member states to have a full-time president and harmonised tax system.
Developing the point further in his opinion piece published in French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, Hollande said this solution to protecting the faltering euro currency “calls for a strengthened organisation, an advance guard of the countries who will decide on it.”
He also dismissed eurosceptics as being “scared of the world, because they want divisions, walls and fences to return.”
Hollande’s eurozone government proposal was even attacked by his political opponent and probable candidate for the 2017 French presidential election, former president Nicolas Sarkozy. He called for greater cooperation as opposed to actual integration summing up his view: “I do not think we need one more parliament.”
Despite the mixed reaction in his own country, Hollande can count on the support of David Cameron. The Independent reports that in May, just after re-election as Prime Minister, Cameron told Hollande he had “no objection to” and even “supported” the idea of greater economic integration for eurozone countries.
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