Shadowy bodies, such as the Eurogroup Working Group, exercise enormous power

Prof Lapavitsas learned the hard way as a radical Greek MP during the Athens Spring that it is impossible to pursue radical Left-wing change within the EU. 

The machinery of budget surveillance is against you. Contractionary fiscal policies are hard-wired into treaty law through the Fiscal Compact. 

Shadowy bodies, such as the Eurogroup Working Group, exercise enormous power beyond any accountability.

It is more than odd that Labour continued to cling resolutely to the EU ideal even after observing the fiscal and monetary overkill of the eurozone crisis of 2010-2015, when the EU institutions acted as debt collectors for lenders and incompetently pushed southern Europe into mass unemployment and economic depression.

The policy was to force debtor states to cut real wages via an “internal devaluation” within the euro bloc rather than to pressure creditor states to rebalance the system by raising real wages. 

This asymmetry in the EU’s governing mechanisms remains in place. A shocking number of EU officials and apologists insist to this day that they handled Club Med “disobedience” correctly and successfully.

At some point the Left is going to wake from its trance – perhaps shaken by a president Le Pen – and start to ask whether sovereign self-government might not be such a bad idea.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 22 September 2026

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/09/22/labours-affair-with-right-wing-europe-will-end-in-tears/


Eurogroup Working Group

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/eurogroup/how-the-eurogroup-works/eurogroup-working-group/


Eurogroup

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurogroup


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