John Ward Chinese, EU madness, Merkel, promotion, relegation, Russians, three soccer divisions

EUROZONE SKETCH: Taking a leaf out of soccer’s book

The Slog’s answer to a nonsensical EU:
relegation and promotion.

The gonks atop the EU have decided that the European Project needs a caste system. This from Open Europe’s website today:

‘According to EU diplomats, “it would be possible to divide the 27 member states into three categories for which different sanctions would apply”. These would be the eurozone countries, countries that plan to enter the Eurozone, and the countries, “such as Great Britain and Denmark, which do not want to enter the Eurozone” – for whom no sanctions would be introduced.’

These people are completely mad. I suppose the question one should really ask is why anyone would plan to enter the eurozone without protective equipment approved by Health & Safety. Iceland want to enter the eurozone, but then they’re already broke, so in a way it sort of makes sense for them. But even as it stands, this ‘segmented’ EU has nowhere near enough divisions. A more honest division would list EU membership and wannabe sectors as follows:

* Donors who wish they’d never had the idea in the first place
* Recipients terrified that the donors might think too hard about the above
* Small countries who’d like to lynch Goldman Sachs
* Large countries who’d like to lynch Goldman Sachs
* Late entrants who’d like to get out but don’t know how
* Outsiders who’d still do anything to get in
* Medium-sized countries praying they get baled out before it falls apart

Still, as things have now reached this level of lunacy, we could at least make it entertaining. My best notion to date is to let in Zimbabwe (thus making it a round 30 nations) and then have relegation and promotion battles every year in three divisions of ten.

Each country could have a manager, and an owner. They would have the option to spend very heavily on the institutional infrastructure and welfare while sitting around on the beach all day, but without the winning combo of gdp output and export surpluses, every ‘player nation’ would face relegation.

Relegation would involve a loss of corruption and cheap ECB loan privileges, plus a much lower share of the EU monies available.

This would inevitably mean that hard-working nations got richer and richer while lazy members got poorer and poorer. So these smaller, more idle countries would need sugar-daddy sponsors, and these would of course be Russians, with a smattering of Chinese. (Sharper observers may have spotted that Beijing is already investing big-time in this year’s relegation candidates, Greece.)

What the EU needs (apart from a rectal enema) is a stronger spirit of harmless competition. If anyone has a better idea than this one, please email merkela@bundestag.deu.