Dr Marek Neuman - Is the EU a neoliberal project?

George Monbiot has an article in the Guardian today as to why the UK is better off staying in the EU because he says the Brixitors just want to push the UK towards s more corporate, neoliberal system with closer ties to the US. He might be right, but I said in CiF that the EU is neoliberal too. I got some stick for that in the replies so I posted this video by Dr Marek Neuman who captures how the EU is going neoliberal. This is an old video so things are worse now. KV

Dr Marek Neuman explains the consequences of European economic integration on the economic and political powers of member states and why some scholars, practitioners, and citizens have been criticising the EU as a neoliberal project.

Video embedded. 

Dr Marek Neuman - Is the EU a neoliberal project?

I just added this to the Guardian CiF.

Thomas Palley - June 2013

Europe's Crisis without End: The Consequences of Neoliberalism

Abstract

This paper argues that the eurozone crisis is the product of a toxic neoliberal economic policy cocktail. The mixing of that cocktail traces all the way back to the early 1980s when Europe embraced the neoliberal economic model that undermined the income- and demand-generation process via wage stagnation and widened income inequality. Stagnation was serially postponed by a number of developments, including the stimulus from German re-unification and the low interest rate convergence produced by creation of the euro. The latter prompted a 10-year credit and asset price bubble that created fictitious prosperity. Postponing stagnation in this fashion has had costs because it worsened the ultimate stagnation by creating large build-ups of debt. Additionally, the creation of the euro ensconced a flawed monetary system that fosters public debt crisis and the political economy of fiscal austerity. Lastly, during this period of postponement, Germany sought to avoid stagnation via export-led growth based on wage repression. That has created an internal balance of payments problem within the eurozone, which is a further impediment to resolving the crisis. 

There is a way out of the crisis. It requires replacing the neoliberal economic model with a structural Keynesian model; remaking the European Central Bank so that it acts as a government banker; having Germany replace its export-led growth wage suppression model with a domestic demand-led growth model; and creating a pan-European model of wage and fiscal policy coordination that blocks race to the bottom tendencies within Europe. Countries, particularly Germany, can implement some of this agenda on their own. However, much of the agenda must be implemented collectively, which makes change enormously difficult. Moreover, the war of ideas in favor of such reforms has yet to be won. Consequently, both politics and the ruling intellectual climate make success unlikely and augur a troubled future.

https://academic.oup.com/cpe/article-abstract/32/1/29/366698?redirectedFrom=fulltext