“The Specter of a Break-up Is Haunting Europe”
Internal Strife and Divisions Blossom in Euro Land.
Since the Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis began, in 2010, Europe’s leaders have faced a Herculean task: keeping the rickety European edifice intact. Now, five years later, there are much more ominous signs of wear and tear. Everyone is focused on the dire threat posed by a vote later this month for British exit from the Union, but Brexit is just one of a dizzying constellation of threats and challenges the EU faces.
The sovereign debt of many nations on the EU periphery has reached wholly unsustainable levels. Some of the continent’s biggest banks look increasingly shaky. And core nations are witnessing an intensifying public backlash against further bailouts and the EU’s mishandling of the immigration crisis.
Things have gotten so bad that even the staunchest of eurocrats are beginning to express doubts. Many people have lost trust in “entire institutions, whether national or European,” lamented European Parliament Chief Martin Schulz. He warned over a possible “implosion of the EU” due to the blossoming Euroskeptic movements in member states.
Now, the eurocrats are not just falling into despondency and despair, they’re beginning to turn on each other.
European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker tried to convince a hall packed with French mayors of the need for austerity à la carte in France. The linchpin of his argument was that France has been allowed by the Commission to repeatedly break Eurozone fiscal rules, not just due to its size and influence over EU policy but also its “reflexes, its internal reactions, its multiple facets” — an oblique reference to the tendency of its workers to bring the national economy to a halt whenever the government introduces measures that are not to their liking, as is happening right now.
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