Would Brexit be fatal for the EU?

According to Dorothea Siems, Chief Economist for the leading German daily Die Welt, the answer to the question: ‘would Brexit be fatal for the EU?’ is frankly ‘yes’. ‘With the Brits, the annoyance over the EU is now so large that the exit of the second-strongest economy in Europe after the referendum is looking ever more likely. But a Brexit would be fatal’. 

However continuing to read her article, it becomes clear that Ms Siems thinks that a Brexit would be terrible for her country, for Germany.  ‘The liberal, market-oriented powers in the EU would lose further influence, and the axel of the EU would turn towards state interventionism as seen in France and Italy as a recipe for all of Europe’. There it is! 

With Brexit, Germany would lose its most important ally in contention with the southern EU members, the weak economies which act as a break on the much needed growth in the EU. It was not for nothing that Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel’s call, during David Cameron’s visit to Berlin, to do everything to keep the UK in the EU, sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of her heart.  

But voila! Help from Eastern Europe is on the way! Hungary signals willingness to find a solution to UK Prime Minister Cameron’s demand to restrict access to welfare. The new Polish government is not unwilling on the same point. However the new rulers in Warsaw asked Cameron in exchange for  their support for new NATO troops on the Russian border. And the Slovakian Prime Minister and the Czech President are also not very enthusiastic supporters of ‘an ever closer union’. 

The prize for the most hilarious remark on why it is so important to keep the UK in the EU, came from the hyper-europhile Verhofstadt: letting the UK leave would be doing a service to Putin!  

Anyhow: there is much work to be done by the current EU Presidency, The Netherlands. Its Prime-Minister, Mark Rutte, told the media that he is expecting results on the subject during the March summit of EU heads of state and government. But take care: Rutte also told journalists that he is a big friend of Verhofstadt…