Greece's crisis, Europe's nemesis

by Carne Ross

Guardian
June 28, 2011

With its language of budget cuts and bailouts, the sovereign debt crisis that is now engulfing Europe's economies appears to be a financial crisis. But it is also, and perhaps foremost, a grave political crisis about the postwar European project itself: the European Union. And just as a Greek default will echo globally, the EU's political crisis carries resonance beyond Europe's own unhappy shores.

The travails of the eurozone have revealed a fundamental, and for too many politicians, still inadmissible, flaw in the European Union. Europe's populations have been consulted too rarely in this project. And people feel little responsibility for decisions of which they are not part.

Greek voters are resisting the savage austerity cuts demanded by the IMF and other creditor countries – particularly Germany – to bring Greece's enormous debts under control. German voters are increasingly hostile to the bailouts, paid for by them and taxpayers in other creditor nations, to keep the Greek government solvent.

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