This is the first quake of such a size to afflict the body of the European Union, a union in its prime, seventeen years of age, facing for the first time the difficult responsibilities of life and trying to stand alone on its own two feet. The Greeks had to be excessive in their spending, to the point of what is in the language of budgets called squandering, for the union, born in 1993 from the womb of what was known as the European Economic Community (EEC), to awaken to the fact that theoretical unity, on paper and in constitutions, does not necessarily mean unity in shared values and goals. For the first time, the people of Northern Europe, and particularly the Germans and the French among them, the original founding fathers of the project of European unity, awaken to the fact that there are countries in the South, and sunny beaches, on the edge of Greeks islands, Spanish paradises, Portuguese beach clubs and to a certain extent Sicilian banes, that are not fond of the long working hours in which drown Northerners, who have not been blessed with the sun shining three-quarters of the days of the year. It is true that the dream of being part of Europe has occurred to countries such as these, and with it the dreams of the unified passport and of open labor markets. But what about the responsibilities required for such an affiliation, and the partnership in sharing the burden of spending and the ways and means of living? The difficulties of European integration have not only been limited to such a difference in lifestyles between the frozen North and the sunny South. After that came the issue of Eastern Europe and the hurried desire of having these countries become part the Western world. At the time, such a step seemed like revenge from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it what remained of the dreams of the Warsaw alliance. Yet what followed this step was the worst that could afflict the European project: broad discrepancy in standards of living and the economic situation between societies that had just emerged from under the shadow of communism and others that had only known capitalist systems at one pace or another since World War II, and a broad influx of cheap and unqualified labor mostly to the markets of successful economies in Britain, France and Germany, and with it the problems of what has become known as “immigration”, which is a legal and internal immigration in any case. And at a time when Germany took upon itself, being the largest and strongest economy of the European Union, the rehabilitation of its Eastern half, to the point where one originating from it would become able to assume the functions of Chancellor of the unified country, the European Union as a whole was bound to take charge of rehabilitating the “Eastern” countries that had joined it as members, with what this required in terms of financial burdens. The idea started with “united European states” similar to the United States of America. Yet such a dream, which goes back to 1957 and the Treaty of Rome, was not able to leap over the nationalist feelings that run in the veins of the citizens of European nations. The Greek financial crisis has proven that unified economic laws, which presume seeking to save this country that has reached bankruptcy, thus saving with it the unified currency (the Euro), have not prevented the emergence of objections within the ranks of MPs and law experts, not to mention the common people, wondering whether German taxpayers for examples were supposed to bail out their Greek “countrymen”, who spend half as much time at work as Germans do and look for the first opportunity to retire at full wage! Europe is a successful continent by all measures, and the blessing of such success is only appreciated by those who leave it to other continents, at the four corners of this vast world. But the old continent, which seeks to renew its youth through its union, is not only besieged by its internal symptoms, but also by fierce competition over its economic role by emerging and successful economies, from Asia in the East, home to the three giants, China, India and Japan, to Brazil, that “continent” which occupies the greater part of Latin America, through the United States of course. Indeed, it is no coincidence for the Dollar to be the first to recover at the expense of the Euro's illnesses and the symptoms suffered by Europe's economy.
