The EU is not taking Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s advice gracefully. In fact, they’re not taking it at all:
Maybe it was the 35 C heat here on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. Maybe it was the pressure of the crisis he faces back home.
Whatever it was, when I asked European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso here Monday why Canada should risk its financial good name to bail out European banks, Barroso blew a diplomatic gasket.
“We are extremely open and we are engaging our partners but we are certainly not coming here to receive lessons from nobody,” he harrumphed.
That “nobody” is apparently our PM. How dare a mere Canadian politician offer criticism of the European Union, the greatest political achievement of mankind?
In Barroso’s eyes, the fiscal crisis in Europe is not even Europe’s fault. It is the victim in all of this. For that reason, the rest of the world ought bail it out, even though, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper has noted, the so-called euro area of 27 countries is the single largest and wealthiest economic unit in the entire world.
Harper has told Barroso just that, saying that if Canada — or anyone else — is going to kick in to a US$430 billion pool administered by the International Monetary Fund, then Europe is going to have to release the chokehold it has had on the IMF.
And of course, no negotiation with the EU is complete without some hard-to-misunderstand threats from the Eurocrats:
But Barroso wasn’t finished. In the middle of his tirade, he trotted out a thinly veiled threat that a Canada-EU free-trade deal was at risk unless Harper comes to his senses and sends Canadian cash to the continent.
“We are trying to conclude an important agreement on trade with Canada. Why? Because all the other parts of the world look at Europe as a source of possible growth for them. And, in fact, they also have an interest. The sooner the situation is stabilized in Europe, the better for them,” he said.
