MEP FIRMLY REJECTS JOINING THE EURO
05 January 2009
Traditional Unionist MEP Jim Allister has spoken out strongly against any suggestion of the UK joining the Euro, warning that such would result in irreversible loss of key economic control at a time when the economy needed good and responsive management.
In a statement Jim Allister said:-
“The UK's relative prosperity over the years, with higher growth and lower unemployment than in the Eurozone, has been the result of national government policies, including interest rates and taxation regimes, and not just an accident of the economic cycle. Such national control and direction would be surrendered on joining the Euro. Instantly, we would lose the right to set our own interest rates, with that passing to the ECB.
Often, particularly at a time of threatened inflation, interest rates are the prime corrective tool. National, rather than EU bank control is essential.
Moreover, good economic management requires coordination between monetary and fiscal management. There is currently little common fiscal management across the euro countries. It seems very likely, if not inevitable, therefore that pressure will arise for a common tax system within the Eurozone, and some European politicians and bankers have already called for this.
Thus, the ultimate logic and outcome of joining the Euro is to lose control over your own interest rate and taxation regimes. Such is very definitely not in the UK’s interests.
I, therefore, stand very firmly in support of retaining the British pound and the national economic control which it guarantees. Whatever, the present currency fluctuations, there are no tenable and durable reasons to join the Euro. An inevitable consequence, as happened elsewhere, would be higher prices and rekindled inflation, but then without control over the corrective mechanism of interest rates. Thus, I will continue to resist the folly of joining the Euro.”
