The problem wasn’t and isn’t austerity. It’s applying it at a bad time when it doesn’t work but yes, austerity should have been what Europe does. Look at Germany, they’re good. They went through twenty years of hard austerity though, while France Spain Italy Greece were like “nah, let’s just abuse a little bit more our national debt”.
I feel like we abused Germany on this because well, since the end of WWII Germany can just STFU, right?
But Germans were probably right to push other countries to follow a plan that is making them the only big European country that has a running and alive economy. We can now STFU and follow them, I think (which is not what the US want because if the entire Europe becomes strong like Germany, they can say bye-bye to China’s support of the dollar. Yeah, humans are nasty). Instead we’re doing nothing, pushing further away what we should have done years ago. France has still this little advantage that Spain or Italy don’t and that’s why it hasn’t exploded in France that much. But it will.
We needed to build a strong politic Europe (everyone has to follow the same rules, starting in ‘86) we didn’t really fail, we didn’t even try!!
“La souveraineté de l’état” sovereignty of the state, is what politics constantly pushed in France. We’re paying and we’ll pay more of this non sense in global and local economies.
Nations in Europe are a thing of the past, I’ve been witnessing it my whole life. And that’s why I’m mad at European boomers: they knew the € wouldn’t be enough. They knew but didn’t give a damn because hey, it wasn’t going to concern them so much.
Wrong.
Meanwhile people of Turkey, a democratic republic trying to get in the Euro club are remembered that human rights are still a big problem with their country.
Social progress is slowing down, no doubt.