Bloomberg
May 24, 2012
The arc of Europe’s postwar history is turning toward tragedy. It isn’t just that much of the continent has fallen into a new Great Depression, or that in some countries things will get worse before they get better. It isn’t even that the whole mess was avoidable. It’s that the crisis is dividing Europe along the very lines the European project was intended to erase.
Decades of cliches about European solidarity and the European idea are being held up to ridicule. The argument that Britons, Germans, Greeks, Italians and Spaniards are instinctive cultural partners whose commonalities transcend their obvious differences and historical enmities -- that “Europe” is a real community, not just a heavily worked-over Brussels blueprint -- turns out to be, let’s say, disputable.
Ancient stereotypes frame conversation about the crisis. Germans are bossy and severe. Italians are idle. Greeks are corrupt. Brits are arrogant. The French are vain. So much for 60 years of European unification.
Germany in particular is coming in for bashing, not just in Greece, where cartoonists have brushed up on their swastikas, but in Italy, Spain and other countries suffering the stress of a German-directed drive to restore Europe’s public finances.
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