• By
  • Charles Forelle

Little is truly new in the Franco-German compromise letter (link in French) on economic governance (or government, or whatever you want to call it). Much of what is proposed–budgetary peer-review, stronger statistics–is material that forms the backbone of the Van Rompuy task force’s announced positions.

There is a new nugget on the testy issue of how to punish budgetary miscreants in the euro zone. Germany has long called for countries that repeatedly run big deficits to lose some of their voting rights at the European Union’s decision-making table.

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Tour de France: A model for EU rule making?

Trouble is, this would require a change to the EU’s treaties, which is a lengthy and unpleasant process that no one is keen to undergo. So the letter proposes an interim step: Other countries could make a political agreement simply to not listen to anything a fiscal scofflaw has to say, either by sending the country to the dunce’s corner during discussions, or by making a political agreement to “neutralize” the vote of that country.


We’re not sure how the neutralization would exactly work. Presumably it would be kind of like the Tour de France, where a cyclist who violates one of the sport’s bewildering rules of etiquette and fair play is later thwarted by other riders from mounting an attack.

Note, though, that the Franco-German proposal limits this schoolyard shunning to matters governed by the euro zone, a comparatively small part of the EU’s rule making.

We shall see.