Are the Barbarians at the EU Gates?
The Greek crisis poses an almost existential challenge – and has required such huge sums – because it poses the key question of European governance: can a member state of the EU be allowed to fail? As long as EU leaders cannot answer that question, financial markets will continue to harbor doubts about the euro’s long-term stability.
BRUSSELS – The euro area confronts a fundamental crisis that attacks on financial speculators will do nothing to resolve. The European Council of Ministers had to promise hundreds of billions of euros to its financially imperiled member countries, even though the European economy as a whole is not really in crisis. On the contrary, most surveys and hard economic indicators point to a strong upswing, with the one country that is in really serious trouble, Greece, representing only 3% of the area’s GDP.
BRUSSELS – The euro area confronts a fundamental crisis that attacks on financial speculators will do nothing to resolve. The European Council of Ministers had to promise hundreds of billions of euros to its financially imperiled member countries, even though the European economy as a whole is not really in crisis. On the contrary, most surveys and hard economic indicators point to a strong upswing, with the one country that is in really serious trouble, Greece, representing only 3% of the area’s GDP.