BRUSSELS - “Only three people ... ever really
understood the Schleswig-Holstein business - the Prince Consort, who is dead, a
German professor, who has gone mad, and I, who have forgotten all about
it."
At least, that is what the then British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston is
reported to have said on the fate of two duchies fought over by Denmark and
Germany in the mid-19th century.He could have been talking
about the EU's banking union. The deal between finance
ministers brokered late on Wednesday night (18 December) is a classic
euro-compromise - messy and almost unintelligible to all but a handful of
battle-hardened eurocrats. EU
Observer.