ATHENS — Almost 10 years have passed since the global economic meltdown crippled economies around the world. In Greece, the harsh struggle continues with 25 percent unemployed and 36 percent living in “financial distress,” according to the Associated Press.
As of August 2016, three unsuccessful bailouts by countries which share the Euro with Greece have failed to stimulate the country’s economy. Greece is now debt-ridden, and its creditors’ hard-line factions are once again calling for Greece to leave the EU or be kicked out. The Guardian notes in an article on Greece’s current economic state that the severely struggling nation is also a flashpoint for the refugee crisis, with nearly one million refugees in 2015 alone having used Greece’s proximity to Turkey as a means to flee to Europe.
Countries like Germany and Britain recovered relatively quickly from the fallout of the global economic meltdown. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), by 2011 Germany recovered all of the wealth it lost from the Global Financial Crisis, and then some.
For myriad reasons, Germany has taken a prominent leadership role within the European Union. In addition to its strong economic recovery and growth, chancellor Angela Merkel has a personal affinity for the West and its institutions, and actively promotes the importance of further EU integration. As Franziska Augstein of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote for the Guardian in 2015, the chancellor has “one overwhelming foreign policy idea: sticking to the United States.”
With that said, it appears that Merkel and others see a great benefit in strengthening Western relationships and further promoting EU integration, especially as lawmakers call for gutting or dissolving the bloc. Right-wing politicians Marie Le Pen of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands and Heinz-Christian Strache of Austria, among others, have all made similar calls for their countries to leave the EU.
Merkel has largely stood fast, and has used her influence and clout to secure bailout deals for Greece three times, despite increasingly influential political winds urging the contrary. In addition, Merkel has become the face for European politicians welcoming refugees into Europe.
The New York Times, in an assessment of Europe’s situation, argues that German plans for Greek bailouts were self-interested, not designed to help Greece. However, Finland’s finance minister, Alexander Stubb, maintains a different position. He argues that Germany views the situation throughout Europe in a long-term way and through a wide-angle lens.
Such long-term thinking is the sort that Merkel, along with other academics and politicians, has in mind when presenting plans for greater EU integration. The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, largely stands by such thinking that a globalized world has “immeasurably” strengthened the quality of personal freedoms enjoyed, the number of those who enjoy them and economic prosperity across the board.
Brookings argues that the current geopolitical climate is something we have never seen before. In fact, in a piece on the increasingly urgent calls for the dissolution of the EU, Brookings fellow Constanze Stelzenmüller notes that at no time have such calls to dissolve the very entity that could have prevented both world wars — had it existed before them — been so prevalent and popular.
“A liberal international order made and upheld by the West after 1945 let us be born into a life of seemingly endless peace, prosperity, and progress. That order is in danger today as never before,” Stelzenmüller writes.
However, seemingly antithetical figures to further EU integration have recently expressed support for some key ideas at the core of the bloc’s existence. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, British prime minister Theresa May and Chinese president Xi Jinping expressed support for free trade and globalization.
“We must remain committed to promoting free trade and investment through opening up, and say no to protectionism,” Xi said. Similarly, May, whose country voted in a June 2016 referendum to leave the EU, asserted that free trade and globalization have had an “overwhelmingly positive impact on our world,” and will not be curtailed.
– James Collins
Photo: Flickr