Europe 2

The central idea of the EU is to achieve more financial and political stability through cooperation between European countries.  That being said, the EU now has something to prove, not only to themselves, but to the rest of the world as well. The EU needs to demonstrate that they are, indeed, a union and will help their countries in times of need. This allows Greece (who basically committed fraud in releasing the wrong information about its debt) to be able to put its hand out, ask for money, and receive it. Many people tend to forget that it cost money to be in the EU; that money mostly comes from taxes. Because all these countries must support one another, it leave the union vulnerable to having certain “ weaker” countries (who will need to be bailed out) and certain “ stronger” countries who may, or may not want to stick around for the rest of the zone to require bailouts as well. The way they can fix this is by giving the nations who are putting in most of the money having more say in what they want. Subsequently, this means that the weaker countries must abide by rules they may or may not agree with. This may compromise the idea of the EU, however. My hopes is that the countries who are in need of help (Spain, Ireland, Portugal) receive the help they seek and can bounce back with enough momentum to be able to help other countries in their union if they need help in the future (as opposed to having countries one by one sink further into debt with no one making any sort of progression).


 All of this talk on debt crisis reminds me of the United States but reading further into the situation over seas, I can see that the problems are completely different. In Europe the EU is by definition a "economic and political union of 27 member states", which in fact has gone down to 17 member states as of 2012. The problems that arise with the EU are the debt crisis in particular countries as well as the way that they obtain their money which can lead to sucking another countries pocket clean. I think being a "union" all countries involved should have a helping hand towards their neighboring countries. I like to see it as a big family, many would say that the EU can be a negative thing because it initially takes away the power of re-election for the representatives that are in charge of the EU. More specifically, the debt crisis in Greece is concerning many countries as well as its people. From my understanding Greece reached a decision this morning to reduce debt and to close the hole that the European countries think it has caused by cutting pensions and more job cuts around the country. Many could say that Greece is "the problem child" of the EU and have hopes of it falling and taking the whole EU with it. Personally from reading how much the people of Europe dislike the EU, I believe they should get a bigger say in what goes on with the ties of the nations as well as what is happening in their nation. On the other hand I also believe you should not bite the hand that feeds you...if the EU believes that they are doing the best for the countries they are in charge of I don't think they are completely in the wrong.


I think that the debt crisis in Greece, along with many other European countries will be difficult to eradicate any time soon.  They are so far in debt that it will take a a lot of time and money to bail them out.  However, the economies of these nations will continue to rise and fall just as they have been for centuries.  As far as all the other other countries go, I think they should all help each other out in order to prevent more hostility, protests, or even war. I also believe that all the countries should use the euro for currency in order to keep all monetary units equal and make it easier for trading etc.   However, another way, according to Financial Times,  would be to engineer an "orderly default" on Greece’s public debt which would allow Athens to withdraw simultaneously from the eurozone and reintroduce its national currency the drachma at a debased rate. (2004)