There seems little concern about the continuing rise in unemployment across the euro area. If European leaders were really worried about the situation, they would be planning for the weaker economies to leave the single currency in an early and orderly fashion
Yesterday Italian unemployment figures came in at 8.6%. That is bad news for many Italians, but by euro area standards it was a good performance. An astonishing 23% of the Spanish workforce is unemployed, including 45% of young people. Eighteen per cent of the Greeks of working age, 14% of the Irish and 13% of the Portuguese rely on out of work benefits for their living. Even in France almost 10% of the workforce is without a job.
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John Redwood’s observations are spot on. The leading politicians in Europe are living in the past. They are attached to an ideal of Union that inhibits their solutions to problems. More widely than banking, they are also not recognising the growing uncompetitiveness of their economies measured against Asia at the heart of high unemployment. Of course it is also obviously stupid to have Germany in the same currency and same economic control regime as Greece and all the other weaker economies. We don’t want a rush to the bottom, but many of the socialist ideals at the heart of the average European bureaucrat’s and European politician’s thinking are too expensive or obstructive and hinder business competitiveness. This costs jobs.