Europa! Europa!
By ROGER COHEN
NYT
LONDON — These are interesting times in Europe, both in Greece, where the sunlit European idea began, and in Britain, where it fizzles in the drizzle.
Greece, facing the tab for a long free lunch, is now the most hated member of the euro club. Germans are canceling their Greek holidays (and reckon Greece should be selling its islands rather than taking their hard-earned money.) North Europeans don’t think they should be paying for Greek retirement at 53.
Britain, having shunned the now parlous single-currency club, has been hit with a European curse, in the form of coalition politics. David Cameron and his Europe-bashing Tories look like they may be getting into bed with Nick Clegg and his Europe-hugging Liberal Democrats: That would make even Israel’s Labor-to-religious-right coalition look ideologically harmonious.
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. There is something irresistibly comical about post-Lisbon Europe with all its talk about punching its weight on the world stage — and the euro was supposed to be a political tool — reduced to a brawl over freeloading Greece, while Clegg tries to persuade himself that Cameron’s rightist Latvian loony allies in the European Parliament don’t really matter after all.
(More here.)
NYT
LONDON — These are interesting times in Europe, both in Greece, where the sunlit European idea began, and in Britain, where it fizzles in the drizzle.
Greece, facing the tab for a long free lunch, is now the most hated member of the euro club. Germans are canceling their Greek holidays (and reckon Greece should be selling its islands rather than taking their hard-earned money.) North Europeans don’t think they should be paying for Greek retirement at 53.
Britain, having shunned the now parlous single-currency club, has been hit with a European curse, in the form of coalition politics. David Cameron and his Europe-bashing Tories look like they may be getting into bed with Nick Clegg and his Europe-hugging Liberal Democrats: That would make even Israel’s Labor-to-religious-right coalition look ideologically harmonious.
It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. There is something irresistibly comical about post-Lisbon Europe with all its talk about punching its weight on the world stage — and the euro was supposed to be a political tool — reduced to a brawl over freeloading Greece, while Clegg tries to persuade himself that Cameron’s rightist Latvian loony allies in the European Parliament don’t really matter after all.
(More here.)
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