The Debt Crisis in the Euro Area: Interest and Passions

As long as only a bank, an area of industry, or a neighbouring country were affected, we could pretend to be unaware that the crisis threatened the European Union itself. However, when it hit a country like Greece, a member of the euro group, it became self-evident that while Europe may not be to blame, it could well become the great global crisis’s main victim. This paradox is due to the fact that, fully sixty years after it was first set up and despite its name, the Union is still in an intermediate state between disunity and unity. In particular, it lacks both the powers and the means for managing a crisis situation. This intermediate state can endure under normal conditions, but it cannot hold out under the enormous pressure of such a serious crisis as the one that we are currently going through. It is inevitably forced either to backtrack towards disintegration or to move ahead towards a fully-fledged union.