This is the moment for Europe. It can either keep a failed policy or develop a new one, based on its core principles that have been quietly forgotten over the last decade of indecisiveness and lethargy.
Austerity is a failed policy that threatens the very existence of the European Union, yet it continues because it is in the interest of one nation. Instead of being a union of 28 equal partners, it has become the G27 – that is Germany plus twenty-seven minor players.
The failed policy has been kept alive by the lack of opposition or diversity of opinion permitted in Brussels. The main political groups have colluded together to keep austerity as the one permitted option, a view that has been challenged by the Greek people, who rejected the parties that supported austerity and voted for a party that vowed to stand up for them and end their unjustified suffering.
Many other nations will make the same choice, to support anti-austerity parties even if this takes them beyond the mainstream.
The democratic will of the European citizen is being ignored, but it’s not just Greece or even ‘the south’. The ‘austerity at all costs’ policy it at odds with the wishes of the majority of Europeans.
A new relationship between Greece and Europe will be a sign to all Europeans that there is a real, deep and meaningful reform, not just on finance, but a new respect for the democratic choices of citizens, a sense that Europe is a group of democracies not in hock to one nation and a business lobby.
This would be a real change and it will be one that can turn Europe around. Many people know this, not least Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the one man who will come out of this crisis with an enhanced reputation.
He has worked hard for a new deal, not just for Greece, but one that can lead Europe into a brighter future.
Europe reawakened, revitalised and reconnected to its people.
Or, we can have more of the same and we end up at an evolutionary dead end.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/peoples-revolt