Brussels’ failings on eurozone and Brexit | Letters
by Letters from on (#49SYY)
Peter Muchlinski says Brussels needs to wake up and offer a cooperative solution to Brexit. Michael Cunningham says Peter Mandelson's endorsement of neoliberalism helped to lead us to Brexit
Matthias Bergmann's piece (My grandfather was a Nazi. I've seen why we need the EU, 20 February) reminds us of the EU's peace-fostering effect. Bergmann also admits that the EU is "far from perfect" but does not tell us how.
The currently precarious state of European politics arises in large part because the Brussels technocrats swallowed the Thatcherite mantra of neoliberal market policies and, in addition, created the euro. That shielded Germany's sluggish economic performance by fuelling cheap credit, provided in part by German banks, in the economically weaker "European south" and Ireland, leading to the eurozone crisis and EU-wide "austerity".
Continue reading...