Stan Veuger on Europe Today: Politics, Economics, and the Future of the EU

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2020

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What is the political and economic situation in Europe today? How should we think about contentious issues like stresses in the European Union, Brexit, the migration crisis, and the rise of populist parties of the Left and the Right? In this Conversation, AEI economist Stan Veuger shares an incisive and—against the conventional wisdom—rather encouraging account of Europe today.In support of this assessment, Veuger presents a qualified defense of the project of European integration, noting that in the last decades European countries have successfully warded off violent conflict and have enjoyed greater economic prosperity (despite serious problems with the Euro currency). Veuger highlights the imperfect character of the Euro, but argues that there does not seem to be a plausible alternative to it, today. In contrast to his confidence about the general prospects and benefits of the EU common market, Veuger shares specific concerns about national defense, the migration crisis, Brexit, and the rise of populist parties. However he says he is less worried [about the future of Europe] now than people rightly were five years ago.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	And the Welcome to Conversations, I'm Bill Crystal.
0:17.0	Pleased to be joined today by my friend Stan Boyger,
0:20.0	resident scholar in economics at American Enterprise Institute,
0:24.0	a student of public finance,
0:26.0	teach at Harvard some,
0:28.0	teaching various European universities some.
0:30.0	But we're going to talk more about Europe and less about economics.
0:33.0	Is that okay?
0:34.0	You're from Europe.
0:35.0	You grew up in Netherlands, you went to college there, I think.
0:37.0	Correct?
0:38.0	You stay in close touch, you teach in a couple of places in Europe.
0:41.0	Yep.
0:42.0	So let's talk about Europe, which an interesting topic I think kind of an
0:45.0	important part of the world in terms of the world's history you know I'm old enough to remember
0:48.8	what it was central to world history and maybe you'll explain that it's going to be
0:52.2	central again or could be or should maybe be. And maybe a bit of a stretch, but I think it's certainly important.
0:57.0	And so what's, yeah, so let's, I mean, what's the situation, you know,
1:00.0	conservatives, we mostly hang out with conservatives,
1:03.1	that I guess arguably them a certain amount,
1:05.3	are very down on New York, I think it's safe to say.
1:07.6	You know, it's sort of an example of economics sclerosis
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Conversations with Bill Kristol, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Conversations with Bill Kristol and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.