Nowadays, Europe is not what it was 10 years back. Ten years back, there were more people who felt that they were first “Europeans” and then belonging to one country or another, but the story is now different. Angry nationalist feelings of resentment and dislike bordering on hatred are taking over the mindset of people everywhere.
It goes almost without saying that mostly – if not entirely – this is the fault of the Euro. The currency that brought Europe together in front of the world, the currency that showed unity of a continent and not a country, that made other regions go green with jealousy may now be the undoing of this region. The vicious tornado of anti-European feelings, pro-German and anti-German feelings of the Europeans deserve a bit of attention. Mrs. Merkel is practically pulling the strings of European economies. Needless to say, this has not brought out positive feelings towards her over the past few years. While Germany is pulling the economic strings, it cannot be readily said that the entirety of Europe is benefiting equally, quite the opposite.
Let’s take a look at few incidents over the last weeks to prove this point. The Cypriot protesters storming the streets with placards of “Hitler-Merkel” and the European flags crossed out with an angry red color were hardly something anyone could have missed. Let’s not forget to take a look at the extremist neo-fascist Greek group calling themselves The Golden Dawn. Let us thank the powers that be, that other than this group, the feelings of European resentment have not turned against the immigrants, minorities or others. No, the feeling of the German resentment is stemming majorly from the Greeks and Cypriots, and the feeling, unfortunately, is mutual. If you asked the German people now if they would like their old deutsche mark back, almost a third would say a resounding yes. They were never asked, you see, if they would like to give it up in the first place
While the chance of interstate war in Europe is so low that it feels funny to say the phrase, the chances of a German politician being shot by an angry unemployed Cypriot or Greek is not so slim. If this did happen, we could expect Europe to unite, but should this incident be awaited or preemptive measures need to be taken?
What, then, is the problem? It is in the design of the Euro. While Germany expects everyone to act according to plan, it fails to act itself. If an economic problem is fixed here, it sows the seed for another economic problem somewhere else.
The single mismatch of the Eurozone is between the politics and the currency. Each politician of each country thinks only about his country’s woes before each election in hopes of being re-elected. So, how to solve this problem? Why not synchronize national elections to take place at the same time? Obviously, the politicians disagree. Directly elect the president of the European commission? Even though, that’s probably not going to help much.
For now, it depends on the politicians of the respective countries to explain to their people, in their own language, that is not the fault of “those spendthrift Greeks” or “those heartless Germans.”
If you want an economic scapegoat, take the English. They have done it before; they can do it again. It would be wise to remember that it’s better to keep the European unity alive than to be swimming alone in the economic ocean.
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1 comments:
I think there will be a political drift between north European countries and southern European countries. I wish this will not happen in the future.
economic crisis
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