Never before have the struggles among
national elites been as visible to the public as they were in the early
weeks of this summer, when Greece almost left – or was made to leave –
the Eurozone. Never before has an assertion of national popular will, as
expressed in the Greek referendum of 5 July, been flouted so thoroughly
and so quickly by the enforcers of European economic orthodoxy. (There
was an interval of two and a half years between the French and Dutch
‘No’ to the EU treaty in the spring of 2005 and the adoption of the
Lisbon Treaty, which retained most of the constitution the French and
Dutch had rejected, in December 2007.) Never before have the flaws of
the Eurozone been so clearly exposed. We can expect more Greek drama
before too long: the real struggle over the Eurozone – and the EU more
broadly – is just beginning. If nothing else, Alexis Tsipras has
demonstrated to the world that the Eurozone does not operate according
to a system of rules but on the basis of ad hoc deals between national
governments. The continuation of such a system risks a resurgence of the
nationalism that the creation of the EU was meant to extinguish....
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