The National Platform EU Research & Information Centre ☚

“Ireland entered the euro in 1999 and lost control of the two vital monetary instruments: setting interest rates and setting currency exchange rates. Had Ireland remained outside the euro, its bankers would not have gained access to the euro zone’s vast and low interest borrowing opportunities. Without the outlandish credit [...]

“The member states whose currency is the euro may establish a stability mechanism to be activated if indispensable to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole. The granting of any required financial assistance under the mechanism will be made subject to strict conditionality.”
- Amendment to Article 136 of [...]

“By the end of the summer Angela Merkel and I will be making joint proposals on economic government in the eurozone. We will give a clearer vision of the way we see the Eurozone evolving. Our ambition is to seize the Greek crisis to make a quantum leap in Eurozone government…The very words were once [...]

Future historians will surely see Ireland’s joining the Eurozone in 1999 and abolishing its national currency to adopt the euro as the worst policy mistake ever made by the Irish State. It was an act of gross irresponsibility on the part of a political class that had come to see themselves as “good Europeans” first [...]

“We have got a monetary federation. We need quasi-budget federation as well …
We need quasi-federation of the budget.”

- European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, The Guardian, 1-12-2010

“I deeply respect our Irish friends’ independence … but they cannot continue to say ‘come and help us’ while keeping a tax on company profits that is half [that [...]

A public enquiry is needed into how the Irish people have been turned into indentured debtors of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF.
We need to know this if we are ever to recover.  We need to know who was ultimately responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in, trapped inside the [...]

Open Europe
Press Summary Archive
11 October 2010
http://www.openeurope.org.uk/media-centre/summary.aspx?id=1204
The Irish edition of the Sunday Times reported that Edmund Honohan, Master of the Irish High Court, has accused the Irish Parliament of failing to assert Irish legislation over new laws from Brussels and delegating much of the workload involved in scrutinising EU law to civil servants.

http://www.swp.ie/editorial/who-are-bond-holders/3669
Who are the Bond-holders?
SWP [...]

Audio file: Eamon Dunphy (”The Eamon Dunphy Show”: NewsTalk106fm) has Anthony Coughlan on with his panel of guests, to discuss the Irish and European economies, and the trials and tribulations of the Euro☚ (time -19:20; format - M4a/Quicktime/iTunes; date - May 16, 2010);
To access via iTunes, either:
☞ In your browser, click/enter - http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/the-national-platform-eu-research/id372343305 ☜ and [...]

economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/irish-miracle-or-mirage/
Irish Miracle - Or mirage?
Peter Boone and Simon Johnson
Economix
New York Times
Friday 21 May 2010
(Peter Boone is chairman of the charity Effective Intervention and a research associate at the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. He is also a principal in Salute Capital Management Ltd. Simon Johnson, the former chief [...]

www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,695245,00.html
05/18/2010 03:54 PM
Former Central Bank Head Karl Otto Pöhl
Bailout Plan Is All About ‘Rescuing Banks and Rich Greeks’
The 750 billion euro package the European Union passed last week to prop up the common currency has been heavily criticized in Germany. Former Bundesbank head Karl Otto Pöhl told SPIEGEL that Greece may ultimately have to opt [...]

Wolfgang Münchau
Financial Times
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7e114d26-6115-11df-9bf0-00144feab49a.html
Monday 16 May 2010
The eurozone was never under speculative attack at any time. What happened was that investors, European pension funds among them, lost confidence in the system. And while fiscal profligacy was the root cause of the problems in Greece, it is not the root cause of the problems in Portugal and [...]