60 seconds with...Sharon Bowles

5 December 2011 | By Robert Thickett

How dangerous is the situation within the european Union and euro?
We’re in a grave situation on the euro unless EU leaders do something substantial on December 9 - the date for a summit where Germany and France will present plans to better integrate the 17 economies that use the single currency. My feeling is that it’s game over if they don’t do something comprehensive so we are potentially facing the end of the eurozone.

If the euro did collapse how would that affect the UK?
It will be devastating - there will be a global problem and last time I looked we were part of the globe. This is going to be a major discontinuity - there will be a lot of uncertainty for businesses that have contracts in euros - they won’t know whether they will stand or fall, they won’t know which currency they will be in. There will be an awful lot of negotiations and it will be a big shock for business and trade.

It will throw us, like everyone else, into recession. We will have all the negative effects as if we were in the euro - we haven’t escaped that by being out of it.

Do you think we will see social unrest as a result of the economic turmoil?
We’ve got problems at the moment because of the austerity programmes in some countries and if we go into a severe recession these things will only get worse.

The German chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that we are facing the greatest crisis since World War II. are warnings of future wars a possibility or just scaremongering?
It’s a bit of both. This is something that has been mentioned by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and by Merkel in the sense of remembering what the EU was for. We’ve all been boasting about how we’ve put the past and wars behind, but we’ve had wars on our door steps. I don’t necessarily think we can happily say that things would never happen again if social unrest got really bad. Maybe one doesn’t do it through arms - now it’s through money, which is what some people have said.

With so much at stake in the EU, do discussions about the mortgage directive seem like a bit of a sideshow?
It does, it feels like deck chairs on the Titanic. The problem is that just as in this country most people don’t understand how much they are at risk and certainly don’t want any money put into assisting the eurozone when we have austerity measures, the feeling is the same in all other member states.

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