No bolt from the blue: the hidden roots of the Eurozone crisis

Busker in Thessaloniki. Ira Gelb/Flickr. Some rights reserved.As for any social and political crisis, a particular revelation force seems to be essential. For the current difficulties of the European Union, this is true as well. By jeopardising the very existence of supranational institutions and by weakening their credibility and legitimacy, the Eurozone crisis discloses the fragility of the integration process and its peculiar ambiguities.

Although the Common market program and the Monetary Union promised almost eternal prosperity, increasing social convergence and stable political cohesion to the people, in reality the opposite occurred: Social inequality deepened tremendously, Europe-wide as well as on a national scale, and especially within the peripheral countries.

Moreover, the political unity of the EU today is in acute danger of disintegration. This, however, is not primarily due to Greece’s difficulties, as public discourse in Europe currently suggests. Crucial aspects on the origins and the dynamic of the crisis are regularly concealed. This leads to a rather distorted view of the real disaster the European Union is facing today. In order to more accurately grasp the actual challenge, which the crisis bears for the integration process and the future of the EU, it is indispensable to broaden the perspective by focusing on the crisis’ causal complexity.