The continuing economic crisis has revealed both the inadequacies and the limits of the process of neoliberal European integration. It is an integration centered on financial liberalization and a monetary union, which is itself enveloped by a mere replica of the German Bundesbank under the title European Central Bank. It is a recession-bias process that accentuates intra- and inter-member-state inequalities and asymmetries, adds to unemployment, and spreads the web of poverty to the lower social classes. It has been more an avalanche of capital against labour than an honest endeavor to promptly resolve the crisis. Continue reading
Tagged with Eurozone crisis
The Deepening European Crisis
The economies of the European Union and the Euro Area both contracted in the 1st quarter of 2013. The renewed contraction in GDP began in mid-2011 and has now run for 18 months on both cases. But, as Chart 1 (above) shows, the recovery from the depths of the recession in both cases was short-lived and at no point was the previous peak in activity of the 1st quarter of 2008 recovered. In reality, the European economy has been in a slump which stretches all the way back to the beginning of 2008 and is now entering its sixth consecutive year. Continue reading
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European Socialist leader sees danger in austerity
Europe’s social democrats need to recognise the consequences of imposing austerity on their own voters. Support is declining, or at best stagnating, as parties fail to offer an inspiring alternative to spending cuts.
But there is evidence in Brussels that some are taking this seriously.
In some measured comments, Hannes Swoboda MEP, the leader of the mainstream Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, has criticised the Troika while urging Greece’s PASOK to open discussions with Syriza. Continue reading
