Having manhandled each other in clinches over a few months, Merkel and Sarkozy have now gone beyond the foreplay stage. And it’s we who are on the receiving end.
According to the newlyweds, the agreement they struck in the last few hours introduces structural changes that ‘go beyond agreements’. Allow me to translate: never mind the prenup, it’s how we feel about each other that counts. Yes, but agreements are, well, legal. And legality matters, Napoleonic code and all that, to say nothing of British laws and those of the few other countries that still observe them for old times’ sake. There is the rub: all the meaningful legal barriers in the way of the happy couple have been demolished. So they’ve just told us what they are going to do:
To begin with, the new EU treaty, which is the greatest part of the trousseau, will now only need the quorum of the 17 eurozone countries, not the wider circle of 27 friends. Ideally, it ought to be all 27, say Angie and Nicky, but at a pinch the wedding party could be smaller. And from then on no single guest will be able to stop the proceedings by showing ‘just cause’. No veto powers — all Angie and Nicky will need to pass any new reform is an 85% majority, and the remaining 15% can just grin and bear it — sorry, ‘hereafter forever hold their peace’.
The message to Britain is clear and boy is it loud: if you want to be invited to the wedding, promise to behave. If you don’t, we can jolly well go ahead without you, see if we care.
This is the main thrust of the joint announcement, even if the bride and groom may deny that it is. The details are to be worked out later, ushers’ uniforms, bridesmaids’ dresses, rings, that sort of thing. In broad strokes, all the members will have to put a ceiling on their deficits, 3% of GDP. Go beyond that, and you’ll be slapped down with automatic penalties, not that Angie and Nicky want to tell you how to run your country. How even such low deficits will serve the purpose of reducing debts is unclear, but then I told you it’s just a detail. The ECB won’t become the lender of last resort, and there will be no eurobonds; the guests will have to pay their own way. Or rather they’ll use the US Federal Reserve in the last-resort capacity, what with its generous offer to pay for the wedding with an endless supply of cheap dollars. The dollars will be indeed about as cheap as the paper they’ll be printed on, but that’s one for the future.
As Angie and Nicky are about to swap paroxysms on the nuptial EU bed, and the servants are finishing off the stale bubbly left in the glasses, Britain shivers outside, her nose to the window. The temptation to toss a brick through the glass, screaming ‘plague on both your houses’ is strong, but the safe bet is that our powers that be will resist it. After all, who’d want to spoil such an auspicious occasion for the happy couple? Our PM has already said there would be no referendum, and you know why: He knows this marriage from hell has been made in heaven. Even if the rest of us don’t.