Top credit ratings agency declares European Union “unsustainable”
Standard and Poor's (S&P), one of the world's top credit ratings agencies, has branded the current European Union "unsustainable" as it outlined the urgent need for reform.
The UK's vote to sever ties with the other 27 members of the EU is just the latest example of dismay with the system of "pooled" sovereignty where Brussels assumes control over fairly arbitrary bits and pieces of individual nation's affairs, S&P said.
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"The problem is this," S&P stated in a new report out today: "The EU, as it is currently constructed and operates, doesn't embody a coherent 'pooling' of the various dimensions of nation-state sovereignty, and therefore it's unsustainable in its current form."
Brexit can be seen as just one, rather rude, manifestation of the underlying incoherence.
– Standard and Poor's
The report goes on: "There are too many moving parts in the electoral politics of 28 nation states, and too many conceivable random-like events that could push political and economic developments in one direction or another, with impossible-to-predict consequences and timelines."
S&P join the chorus of other leading thinkers and EU politicians, including Jean-Claude Juncker, who call on Europe to either push ahead with integration, to create a more substantial and relevant shared system of sovereignty, or break apart into a "looser form of political and economic federation".