CITY AND SUBURBAN
Europe of choice, or an early symptom of Chancellor's Itch?
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Ido hope that John Major has not succumbed so soon to Chancellor's Itch. It is, of course, the occupational disease of his job, and the symptoms are ominous. Discouraged by events at home, Chancel- lors flap round the world taking initiatives. Nigel Lawson got it badly, but they all get it in the end: the Barber numeraire, the Healey-Witteveen axis, the Major hard ecu . . . Oh, dear. It is true that there are worse initiatives about, and that the Major ecu serves to send them up. It is also true that to attack them head-on is considered non-Europeah. Mr Major prefers to join in the game (which any number, up to 12, can play) of being more European than the next player. He says: here is this European institution, the ecu, a synthesised version of all the currencies in the European Monetary System. Sterling is part of it, and the British Treasury tries to encourage it by issuing bills of exchange denominated in ecus. (Don't all rush.) There may well be Europeans who would prefer ecus to their own national currencies — which, when you think of some of Europe's less desir- able currencies, is not saying much. All right, Mr Major says, let them. Hoist the ecu up the Euro-flagpole and see who salutes it. This of course goes down badly with those who want to have no choice of flag, with saluting compulsory. Choice or compulsion — that is the core of the argument, and it goes far beyond the tiresome details of monetary gadgetry. The argument will rumble from now until De- cember, when the Community's govern- ments are due to confer on monetary unification. The greatest mistake would be to suppose that some undefined process of historical inevitability has already deter- mined the answer. That is to abjure judg- ment and debase history. The silliest mis- take would be to reach the decision on a casual view of what the slower members of the Confederation of British Industry would find convenient. They would like to enjoy their salaries without having to earn them by worrying about exchange rates as if nothing else would come along to worry them! (They also want competitive pricing and cheap money.) A centralised currency for Europe, as Professor Tim Congdon made clear in last week's Specta- tor, implies centralised decisions, central- ised policies and centralised taxation. The better Europe would be founded on choice.
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