Social Policy Bonds blog: A European Union without France

31 May 2005

A European Union without France

A European Union without the French and their emotional insecurities and hangups could be a powerful force for good. For a start, there would be one official language, English, instead of twenty. Then the new EU could set about dismantling the Common Agricultural Policy and other corrupt protectionist scams. Then they could start thrashing out genuine common policies, instead of relexively opposing the US and UK. As it is, the French in the EU are behaving exactly as they do in Canada: blackmailing everyone else until they get what they think is in their interest. Perhaps it's time to call their bluff; encourage them to leave, and get on with the job of creating a genuine European Union, responsive to its people, rather than to the French elite's manipulative skills.

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Social Policy Bonds in the media

13 June 2018: my short article Make Social Impact Bonds Tradeable, appears on the website of Alliance, a magazine for philanthropy and social investment.

25 May 2018: a short article on Social Policy Bonds and their possible application in India, appears on Market Express (India). It is by Dr Ashok V Desai and titled Incentivizing welfare.

9 October 2015: An article by Greg Bearup on the genesis of the Social Policy Bond idea, and application of a version of it in Australia appears in the Weekend Australian Magazine. (The article can also be downloaded as a pdf from here.)

October 2013: Professor Robert Shiller of Yale University, is named as one of the three winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics. His Nobel Prize lecture (pdf) delivered on 8 December, mentions Social Policy Bonds. Professor Shiller has for many years encouraged my work on Social Policy Bonds, beginning in late 1996 when he sent me this letter.

3 May 2012: An audio talk by Nobel Prize winner Professor Robert Shiller at the London School of Economics, in which Social Policy Bonds are briefly mentioned, is available here.

18 April 2012: Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, mentions Social Policy Bonds in his new book Finance and the Good Society. He also mentions the concept in a Huffington Post article. It's the eighth of his Ten Ways Finance Can Be a Force for Good in Society, and is also mentioned in a short profile piece about Professor Shiller.