This cannot stand

The Guardian is reporting that the draft Irish budget is making the rounds of German legislators before the Irish people themselves get a chance to look at it. Needless to say, the Irish were shocked by the revelation.

"Loss of sovereignty may be an abstract notion," the Guardian article says, "but this week Irish people were confronted with what it means in reality. Revelations that draft proposals for the Irish December budget had been circulated in a German parliamentary committee were met with horror in Ireland. It has since emerged that they were sent to every finance minister in the EU."

There are explanations and apologies for the leak, of course. But the fact remains that German state legislators are vetting the Irish budget, as they will vet the Greek budget, and the Portuguese budget and, perhaps, the Italian budget. Next will come the Spanish budget and, perhaps, horror of horrors, the French budget.

When one thinks, for even a moment, of the blood and tears expended by the Irish people to shuck off the yoke of British rule in the last century, one can only feel infinite sadness at how easily they have traded away their sovereignty in this century. Whatever their financial misdeeds -- and those are still a matter of debate -- the Irish do not deserve this.

And yet it is also apparent that it cannot and will not happen. The Irish people will not allow it. Nor will the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spanish and, above all, the French.

There may be a way out of this. The Germans may be gifted by a sudden flash of insight; the technocrats may receive an infusion of human feeling; the bond vigilantes may take up butterfly collecting; the world may come to its senses.

Barring those unlikely interventions, however, it is clear that the dream of a peacefully, united Europe has been shattered.



"I think it will be damaging in the sense that it plays to a narrative that Germany is calling shots all over Europe," Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin told Reuters. "It will damage sentient towards Europe and that is a problem."

Do tell.