Re: Even Juncker Admits It's Over
Originally Posted by
bloggsy
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The EU sliding into oblivion!!! Oh Dear
The European Union is moving from one crisis to the other. But the foundation for Europe, the common market, works well.
Those who studied economics at the end of the eighties, early nineties, were told: Japan was the future. Sony would wipe out Philips and Toyota and Nissan would replace the dull European car industry.
Fast forward to 2019. If Japan is in the news now, it is usually about the huge national debt, about the worrying aging of the population or about the economy that has been struggling for several decades. Or it is about the corruption scandal surrounding the French CEO of Renault-Nissan. Pay attention to the order in names: Renault is in front of Nissan, because the French car factory has taken over and saved the Japanese one.
Europe is in a much better position than the doom thinkers are trying to tell us. The fall of the Avondland has been predicted many times; Oswald Spengler published the first part of his classic with that title in 1918 and Europe is a century later richer and safer than ever before. The European Union is the second largest economy in the world. After the United States and the euro, after the dollar, the most used currency.
In spite of the crises, the euro as a currency has held up well, although there are flaws in the system: the southern member states are economically weaker than the northern ones, and that continues to cause tensions. In the past, the Greeks and Italians were able to devalue their currency in a recession and export themselves from the crisis, but that is no longer possible with the euro. In the United States, rich states financially support weaker states in difficult times. But the euro zone is not a political union, so that is much more sensitive in Europe: northern taxpayers do not want to pay for deficits in the south.
It is unpredictable how the North-South discussion will end, but given the events of recent years it will probably amount to a lot of tug of war, many night-time negotiations and many complicated compromises. But the great kladderadatsch, which pessimists have been eagerly predicting for years, seems unlikely.
With all the attention for populists and nationalists, it is good to remember that the vast majority of Europeans are very much in favor of Europe, as was clearly demonstrated in the last elections for the European Parliament. The pro-European parties received 518 seats!