My piece about the latest Summit over at Daily Telegraph blogs is up, prompting the usual vivid comments from Daily Telegraph readers:

This piece by Crawford simply comes across as Civil Service gobbeldy-gook and demonstrates that he’s no understanding of any of this. Is that why the Civil Service seem to be so utterly useless when negotiating with their counterparts in other EU countries ?

After all these years, after all these betrayals, after all the secret signings of treaties in darkened closets, after all the lies, the deceit, the obsequious kow towing and u-turns you and others STILL think it’s down to ignorance, incompetence and cock up theory?

We often wonder why countries wish to join the Euro (beyond Dan Hannan’s point that the “club” is highly attractive to any country’s senior politicians). However, why are existing EZ countries so keen that other dissimilar and unconverged economies must share their currency. It’s like the Augean stable cleaner, up to his knees in the smelly stuff, inviting a fresh herd of elephant into a couple of vacant stalls.

Here’s me:

The basic problem for the UK is that the tortuous manoeuvres required to keep the eurozone afloat can impact on us in different ways. In general it suits us if most of the rest of the European Union countries share a viable single currency. Plus if it crashed we would export less to the rest of Europe and end up worse off.

However, the point of the Prime Minister’s insistence (the "veto") that the rescue arrangements take place outside the existing EU Treaty structure was not about that. He wanted to try to establish some sort of legal firebreak, so that measures and norms aimed at propping up the eurozone could not automatically be applied to us if the Commission and/or European Parliament and/or European Court of Justice so decided.

Where are we now after the attempt by EU leaders to calm things down? In a murky but more or less tolerable position. The eurozoners must try to sort out their business via a new Treaty which is not part of the formal EU Treaty structure, albeit an expression of the "enhanced cooperation" provisions which those Treaties allow.

David Cameron has agreed to allow the European Court of Justice to support enforcement of the new Treaty’s rules (no doubt because he wants to help the eurozone reform itself, and any weak discipline is better than none). But quite how far – if at all – any ECJ decisions under that arrangement might (a) read across directly to EU Treaty interpretations, (b) to the UK’s disadvantage remains to be seen…

Plus I added a bit on Poland:

We peer at such EU Summits from our foggy offshore position. But spare a thought for the Poles, whose Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski delivered the mother of all pro-EU federalism speeches in Berlin back in November. The Poles are not yet in the eurozone but (under current management) insist they want to join it. Hence, question: how far should countries not yet in the eurozone but in the queue to join it have a say in eurozone reforms which will impact on them?

The problem here is that the more countries have such a say, the harder it becomes to get things agreed and implemented. Poland has the fastest growing EU economy but its total GDP represents only some 5% of the combined GDPs of the five largest eurozone members. So while the Germans and French will have welcomed the pro-EU noises coming from Warsaw, what they really need is Poland to be "realistic" about its weight in the greater scheme of tough decisions needed.

This explains why time-wasting new configurations for eurozone meetings have had to be agreed, to allow the 17 current eurozone countries to get on with it while trying to allow eurozone wannabes (led by Poland) some sort of input now and again. The Poles gloomily must accept that the key issues will be decided at 17, ie when they’re not there.

Conclusion?

The current core EU leaders are like those BUgs Bunny cartoon characters who reach the edge of the cliffs and keep striding determinedly out into thin air, only to realise in total panic that not much is supporting them. Their current efforts to flail their way back to solid ground are certainly impressive. But will they succeed?