The Euro isn't working

The latest European Union unemployment statistics are out. Things are not looking good.

The unemployment rate for the EU-27 was 9.9% in December 2011, up from 9.5% in December 2010.

In the Eurozone the rate is even higher - it was 10.4% in December 2011, up from 10.0% in December 2010.

That is a whopping 23.816 million men and women out of work in the EU, 16.469 million of which live in Eurozone countries.

The UK unemployment rate was 8.4%, well below the EU-27 and Euro average and a full 1.5% below France. If you listened to Labour you would think that we had the highest unemployment in the world. We don't, even after the million+ jobs lost by Labour's Big Recession.

Lets look how the unemployment rate in the Eurozone:

Spain	22.9 percent
Greece	19.2 percent
Cyprus	14.8 percent
Ireland	14.5 percent
Portugal	13.6 percent
Slovakia	13.4 percent
Estonia	11.3 percent
France	9.9 percent
Italy	8.9 percent
Slovenia	8.2 percent
Finland	7.6 percent
Belgium	7.2 percent
Malta	6.5 percent
Germany	5.5 percent
Luxembourg	5.2 percent
Netherlands	4.9 percent
Austria	4.1 percent

Top of the list are the PIIGS countries. They are clearly suffering under the Euro. They have huge budget imbalances and their only hope would be devaluation to bring down their deficit and put people back into work. The Euro prevents them for doing the only thing that could save them.

Near the bottom of the list is Germany. Germany wins big from being in the Euro, but refuses to allow a real fiscal union (the treaty that they just agreed does NOT deliver fiscal union) where wealth would be transferred from rich countries like Germany to poor countries like the PIIGS.

The high unemployment in the PIIGS countries is due to fiscal imbalances, not the failure to meet the EU budgetary rules (remember: Germany and France broke those rules too). The treaty that they just signed just repeats the existing EU budgetary rules, but still has plenty of wriggle room because they still don't apply if there are exceptional circumstances (like a recession or credit crunch).

This is why Germany wants to save the Euro, even though (or perhaps because) it is destroying the competitiveness of the other Eurozone members.

The Euro isn't working. It is time for it to be given up as a bad experiment. Here are 16.469 million reasons for doing so.