Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forum"Get out of EU," ex-French PM Rocard tells Britain
PARIS, June 4 (Reuters) - Former French Prime Minister and fervent EU advocate Michel Rocard accused Britain on Wednesday of having only joined the European Union to serve its commercial interests, telling it to leave before it caused further damage.
The comments by the 83-year-old Rocard came as Britain leads opposition to the bid of former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker to run the European Commission, a post for which he has backing from a number of EU members including Germany.
"Between you and us, the continental Europeans, there is a disagreement that is turning ugly," Rocard wrote in an commentary published in Le Monde newspaper.
"Europe is dying from it," he said.
http://www.trust.org/item/20140604133038-rq7lj/
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Farm subsidies still get top share of EU austerity budget.
BRUSSELS, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Farm subsidies will continue to gobble up the biggest share of the European Union's budget to 2020, despite a 13 percent drop in future agricultural spending, under a deal struck by EU leaders on Friday.
Agriculture's budget supremacy was secured after France and other major farming nations thwarted attempts by Britain and its northern European allies to shift a greater share of EU spending towards new measures to boost growth and jobs.
As a result, farm subsidies will consume some 38 percent of the EU budget for 2014-2020, equivalent to 363 billion euros ($485.7 billion) of the 960 billion total, or around 50 billion euros a year.
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French President Francois Hollande was quick to claim victory in the negotiations, saying that France had managed to maintain its farm subsidies while other nations saw theirs cut.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/08/eu-budget-agriculture-idUSL5N0B82UW20130208
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Personally, I disagree with the whole idea that bigger is better, hence am not impressed with the probability that the EU will work out to be a good thing. Empires serve only the few at the top, and they tend to be expensive to create and expensive to maintain. Look at the quantity of blood and treasure we have pissed away these last 60 years or so in pursuit of vainglory and power, what has it got us except accelerated social and political decline?
The whole idea behind getting bigger is so as to better bully your neighbors anyway.