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<\/a><\/p>\nWill European countries, even separated, be able to achieve their dream of prosperity? The same question in different words: is European south the real problem of the north?<\/em><\/p>\n Perhaps this question will impede the European disunion, because it seems that, even as a business alliance, the union of European countries (or rather governments) may have less to gain and more to lose by dissolving into the former separation. It seems that the European middle class will more or less disappear giving its place to a greater distance between the few rich and a mass of the poor.<\/p>\n I won’t agree completely with the views expressed in this article by Jason Kirby and Michael Petrou. Although much of what happens now in Europe seems to point to a separation, there are reasons that make a separation rather improbable for the foreseeable future; the destruction of the European Union will make the rich European countries much poorer and (in many ways) weaker, than they will be by spending to support the European south. It is a duty of the European leaders to calm down the shortsighted reactions of their peoples.<\/p>\n __<\/p>\n Excerpts from “Can the EU be saved? – Europe\u2019s grand experiment seems to be failing” (macleans). Emphasis (in bold<\/strong> or italics<\/em>), added by Ellopos.<\/p>\n Since 2007, when Poland joined the Schengen zone, a border-free travel area consisting of 25 European countries, Germans and Poles have freely criss-crossed into each other\u2019s countries to shop, dine and work. With his call for security checks at the border, H\u00fcbner has challenged one of the pillars of modern Europe: the free movement of people and goods between nations.<\/p>\n Taken on its own, the border squabble in Guben is a seemingly minor concern, but it comes as the twin forces of economic stagnation and surging nationalism threaten to tear Europe apart. Even as European leaders struggle to halt the spread of the debt crisis\u2014a task that they increasingly appear unable to handle\u2014a wider backlash against European integration poses an existential crisis for the continent. Europe is failing, both economically and politically, leading to the question: can it be saved, or is Europe destined for the embalming slab in Guben?<\/p>\n The most immediate threat to Europe is the infectious debt crisis, which some argue will inevitably lead to the collapse of the euro currency zone. After decades of unsparing social programs, not to mention bank bailouts and stimulus measures, many European nations are saddled with massive debt loads and deep deficits.<\/p>\n The European Central Bank is fighting back by aggressively buying up the debt of struggling countries in a bid to suppress rising interest rates. At best that\u2019s a stopgap measure, though. Nor is a bailout for Italy on the table. The total cost to rescue Italy and Spain has been pegged at $1.4 trillion. And so governments have been forced to take a slash-and-burn approach to their budgets. At an emergency cabinet meeting in Italy on Aug. 12, the government agreed to a US$65-billion plan to eradicate the country\u2019s deficit by 2013. \u201cOur hearts are bleeding,\u201d said Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.<\/p>\n Often when countries are faced with hopeless insolvency, they devalue their currencies to make their exports more attractive. Since the PIIGS are tethered to the euro, that option isn\u2019t available. Cardiff University economist Patrick Minford argues that most of the countries in Southern Europe are likely to default whether they stick with the euro or not, so they\u2019re better off controlling their own currencies.<\/p>\n No one is exactly sure how such a process would unfold. There are no written rules to address how a country would exit the eurozone.<\/p>\n It\u2019s often said the EU is like a bicycle: it must move forward or else it will topple over. As the crisis over the euro spreads, the bicycle has all but come to a crashing halt and is tilting dangerously to the side.<\/p>\n As bad as the continent\u2019s debt woes are, Europhiles are even more concerned about the cracks appearing in the most fundamental element of modern Europe: unrestricted movement.<\/p>\n While the call by Guben\u2019s mayor for border controls has fallen on deaf ears in Berlin, in other parts of Europe barriers are already going up. Denmark re-established checks at its land border with Germany and at its bridges and seaports in July with the stated goal of stopping illegal immigrants and criminals who have breached the outer edges of Europe\u2019s border-free zone. Under the Schengen agreement, signed in 1985 and of which Denmark is a signatory, members can only impose controls at inner borders on a temporary basis \u201cin the event of a serious threat to public order or national security.\u201d No such threat exists, yet customs officials have been pulling over random cars. Justifying the new restrictions, Danish Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen alleged: \u201cWe have seen too many examples of violence, break-ins and brutal criminality committed by perpetrators who have crossed the borders.\u201d<\/p>\n The reaction from the rest of Europe has been quick and hostile. Germany\u2019s minister for justice and the EU, J\u00f6rg-Uwe Hahn, urged Germans to vacation in Poland or Austria rather than Denmark. Danish tourism agencies, which usually profit from renting summer cottages to Germans, have reported cancellations and complaints.<\/p>\n Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, describes Denmark\u2019s decision as part of a broader \u201cre-nationalization of political life that is sweeping Europe.\u201d It\u2019s driven, he says, by continent-wide concerns about immigration, the debt crisis, and a lack of leadership from traditional EU powerhouses, particularly Germany. \u201cThe borders of EU member states are effectively coming back to life,\u201d he says. \u201cThe developments of the last three to five years raise very troubling questions about the project of European integration. For the first time, it is reasonable to question whether Europe has reached its high-water mark and will either go no further, or will slide in reverse<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n The first signs of trouble for European integration didn\u2019t start with the economic crisis. Kupchan points to failed referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005, in which voters overwhelmingly rejected the European constitution. Yet the debt crisis has exposed the limits of European togetherness<\/strong> and put member nations on a collision course in ways not seen in decades.<\/p>\n In Germany, resentment is growing at the prospect of more bailouts for spendthrift Mediterranean Europe. Earlier this year, the German newspaper Bild published a photo of a Greek banner that labelled German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy \u201cNazis,\u201d complete with the yellow stars of the EU flag rearranged into a swastika. The headline blared: \u201cWe pay\u2014still we are abused!\u201d Meanwhile, a new survey in the Netherlands found the majority of Dutch (54 per cent) want Greece ejected from the EU rather than continue the bailouts. Fully 60 per cent of respondents said the Netherlands \u201cshould stop lending money to other eurozone countries now.\u201d<\/p>\n The grinding recession in parts of Europe has even led to outright protectionism. With Spain\u2019s unemployment rate at 21 per cent, more than twice the EU average, the government sought to protect its labour market by banning Romanians from looking for work there. While the ban doesn\u2019t impact Romanians already living in Spain, the move opened the door to further restrictions and extensions.<\/p>\n The problem\u2014at least for those who favour the \u201cever closer union\u201d advocated in the 1957 European Economic Community Treaty\u2014is that the process of European integration has always been an elitist project. Most citizens of European countries ignored it.<\/em> But now the EU has become politicized, and in many circles unpopular. \u201cWhat\u2019s so troubling right now is that the trend lines are toward re-nationalization, and no major politician is doing anything about it,\u201d says Kupchan. \u201cPoliticians are being led by the public, rather than vice versa. And the European street is growing increasingly anti-Europe<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n As rising right-wing populism continues to spread, it is likely to lead to even thicker borders. Italy says it is overwhelmed by refugees from North Africa and wants help from other members of the union. Countries such as Germany and France counter that asylum seekers arriving in Italy simply pass through on their way north. Earlier this year, Italy issued temporary residency permits to refugees from Tunisia so that they could travel within Europe, and move on somewhere else. France responded by reinstituting controls on its border with Italy, trapping the Tunisians there.<\/p>\n Piece by piece the European political and economic experiment is failing.<\/strong> Putting it back together will be a monumental if not impossible task,<\/em> says Minford. Yet the cost of failure will be the final end of Europe as an economic power.<\/strong> \u201cThe sad thing about this crumbling of the European dream is that there will be a revival of economic nationalism,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t separate the different bits of this whole experiment in union. If one part goes, the rest will be chipped away at until it\u2019s a patchwork of countries that are increasingly less relevant to the global economy.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As regular visitors recall, long before the current economic crisis these pages have been talking about the danger of Europe returning to its disunited past, judging from the lack of real solidarity, one based on common cultural grounds, and from the formation of the union only for economical gains. It is not difficult for one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[3390,3383,3346,692,167,3393,3396,3394,3398,3388,3387],"class_list":["post-1444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-politics","tag-business-alliance","tag-disunion","tag-economic-crisis","tag-european-countries","tag-european-union","tag-free-travel","tag-germans","tag-guben","tag-middle-class","tag-schengen-zone","tag-travel-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}