Word: easternism
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...chairs meetings of the Eurozone's finance ministers, dismissed appeals by wannabe members to relax entry criteria for single European currency. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown - clearly eying French President Nicolas Sarkozy - denounced protectionism as a "road to ruin". And Sarkozy himself testily denied being protectionist but then accused eastern Europe of putting the entire E.U. at economic and political risk...
...Indeed, the summit was hastily convened after Sarkozy made jingoistic noises last month about pulling French car-making operations out of eastern Europe. The beleaguered eastern members fear 'Old Europe' is on a wayward drift from the E.U.'s core principles of a single market, which could leave 'New Europe' abandoned in the economic vortex...
...summit itself ended in reluctant pledges to help eastern Europeans, but only on a country-by-country basis, as well as repeated mantras about avoiding protectionism. But if the show of unity was unconvincing, the issues are very real. Crashing exchange rates, soaring debts and failing banks: eastern European economies have fallen far faster and harder than their richer, Western neighbors. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek - whose country currently holds the E.U.'s presidency - says the developing recession is "the greatest crisis in the history of European integration...
...they were merely following E.U. recommendations: opening their markets to trade and investment and selling their local banks to western European ones. It helped to drive the export boom of the past five years but left them more vulnerable to the crisis. Western banks have lent $1.6 trillion to Eastern Europe, but the crisis could see them pull back yank credit lines from their local subsidiaries, triggering a domino effect of collapsing financial institutions...
...Eastern Europe now fears the narrow instinct of individual governments will be to look to their own backyards first, only thinking of the European dimension as an afterthought. Without any clear direction, there is also a risk that instability in the east could infect everyone else and drag down the euro. Last week, Moody's Investor Services, a credit-rating agency, warned of default risks for banks in six western European states that are overextended in the east. If that occurs, it could jeopardize one of the E.U.'s finest achievements, the embrace and revival of Eastern Europe...