Are we at a crossroads? Is the crisis over? As many officials from Barroso to Draghi are saying and hinting respectively? Today’s picture tends to show optimism. An optimism reiterated in Greece. In a somewhat hollow and, I would say dangerous way. Hollow, because how can the government be so up beat when it knows that the country is not only not coming out of the crisis, but set to enter the worse possible phase of it yet with rising unemployment, deeper recession and a populace pushed just about beyond all endurance. With no remedy in sight.
Dangerous, because all these up beat statements of, recovery will start in the second half, there will be no more measures, we have ensured Greece will not be kicked out of the Euro, are not only very far from the certainty with which the government expresses them, but more than likely not to be born out. (Even the avoidance of Grexit, should everything else go badly wrong, as well it might.)
The hope is that despite the government’s poor performance and even worse propaganda, things might just not go so terribly wrong, after all. But even so, the high optimism and triumphant statements of having saved us yet again will lead to far greater resentment and possible social upheaval, when things do not go as fantasized by the government, than if the statements had remained low key and cautious.
Nevertheless, today Europe looks so much better, in terms of lower borrowing costs for the danger states, in terms of the Euro parity rate rising and… well, not much more. Take unemployment figures for instance. Thing is the whole Euro project never takes unemployment figures into account. They don’t seem to matter. So in the Brussels/Berlin axis view, things are going really well. You see, inflation remains low. Which is the ONLY thing that matters to Germany, hence the only thing that matters to the puppets in the Commission and elsewhere.
However, Alice Ross has tweeted a warning: “Every new wave of the euro-zone debt crisis began after sustained rallies for the euro.”
It remains to be seen whether this will be born out.
There are very many reasons why Europe should stick together and not unravel. But there are many reasons why this is now in danger. And the main danger seems to be that not one of the members has any notion, concern, still less real commitment to “Europe”.
At the moment we have regressed into individual nation states, looking after their own narrow interests to the detriment of the broader European interest. Where national hatreds have flared up, where all that matters is the figures, where the people can just go to hell as far as European leadership is concerned (and that includes, perhaps more than others, the current Greek government).
Will the peoples of Europe rise to the challenge and maintain and improves what they have started, despite current leadership, or will they be too weak and too dispensable to make any difference?