Euro reaches eleventh hour as Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy hold crisis talks
Rural communities are heavily dependent on EU funds to support land based farming and conservation activities. Pillar 2 funding from the Rural Development Programme makes a real difference to the regeneration of rural communities more generally. The global and more specifically European commercial agendas affecting food and farming all have a major impact on the viability of many parts of rural England. Against this background a genuine threat of the collapse of the Euro could have very significant ramifications for rural England notwithstanding our exclusion from the Eurozone. Other news stories have diverted our thinking abut how grave the situation is and diverted therefore also our thinking about the macro economic threats to rural England from the likelihood of a second major recession across Europe. A recession which could wreck EU monetary union with major ramifications not just for Greece but for Gedney Drove End.
This article reveals: “A group of leading economists wrote an open letter to European leaders warning: “For the first time, the very survival of the euro is at stake.” The 12 economists, including Richard Portes from the London Business School, called for the expansion of the EFSF and for permission for the fund to operate in secondary bond markets. They said: “The important thing is to acknowledge that leaders are out of time. Deciding to not decide could mark the end of the Eurozone as we know it.”
While were at it, we should recognise that there are more manufacturing jobs per head of population in rural England than urban England, another sector heavily dependent on the Euro. This is a big issue for rural England. We should start thinking actively about its likely implications for our “back yard”.