Europe: don’t look to us when sterling collapses
by David Steven | May 11, 2010
UK reluctance to help with the Euro bailout has not gone down well at all:
Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the head of the French markets regulator, said sterling was bound to come under pressure on the markets given the delay in forming a UK government after last week’s inconclusive general election.
Mr Jouyet, a former Europe minister who is close to President Nicolas Sarkozy, indicated that Britain could expect no help from the eurozone.
“The British are most definitely going to be targeted given the political difficulties they have,” he told Europe1 radio. “If they don’t want solidarity with the eurozone, we will see what will happen with regard to the United Kingdom.”
Following its refusal to help its neighbours, Mr Jouyet said Britain had become a peripheral player in the bloc.
There was now a “three-speed Europe”, he said: “Europe of the euro, the Europe of countries that understand the euro, such as Poland and Sweden, and the British.”
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David Steven is a senior fellow at the UN Foundation and at New York University, where he founded the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a multi-stakeholder partnership to deliver the SDG targets for preventing all forms of violence, strengthening governance, and promoting justice and inclusion. He was lead author for the ministerial Task Force on Justice for All and senior external adviser for the UN-World Bank flagship study on prevention, Pathways for Peace. He is a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Risk Pivot: Great Powers, International Security, and the Energy Revolution (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). In 2001, he helped develop and launch the UK’s network of climate diplomats. David lives in and works from Pisa, Italy.
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