Tuesday 3 February 2015

United we stand, divided we fall

Reading the British news, it seems that Tsipras' election opens a war between Germany and Greece. Not that Tsipras himself and Lady Euro (aka Merkel) and her loyal Gentlemen of the Eurochamber don't enjoy the idea of a battle going on. That's also good for local electorates. Remembering Churchill, as so many have done in the last few weeks, "the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." And a conversation with the German and Greek voters shows that they seem to enjoy this aggressive talk of their prime-ministers.
The problem is, an economic battle between Germany and Greece, like all battles, would just weaken both combatants. Yes, it would weaken Germany as well... It's already doing that. Besides, it's not like we're in the 1960s and the European economy is growing and promising to grow even more. This is the XXI century! The entire EU struggles not to have its economy slump even harder.
What about the UK? British should understand that this is not a problem for Greece and Germany or even a problem of the Eurozone. This is a problem for the entire EU, including the UK. If the economies in the Eurozone slump, so does the British economy.
It's obvious that Greece has a very serious economic problem which the troika recipe of budget cutting is not helping. It's also obvious that Greece is not the only country in EU with economic problems and that it can't expect other countries to help when it passes an image of being a spendthrift. At last, it's also obvious that having the Greek economy go back to growth is in the best interest of all other EU countries.
After the obvious, the less obvious: what to do with these obvious conclusions?
I'm not going to give an answer because I don't have one. But I do know that whatever the solution is, it will need to be given by all member states of the EU.
United we stand... Hopefully!

No comments:

Post a Comment