Europe is being torn apart – but the torture will be slow | Timothy Garton Ash
"If the euro fails, Europe fails": thus spake Angela Merkel. Unfortunately, the euro is failing, but it is failing slowly. Even if Greece grexits, the eurozone seems unlikely to fall apart in the near future, although there is still a chance that it will. There is a much higher chance that it will grind along like a badly designed Kazakh tractor, producing slower growth, fewer jobs and more human suffering than the same countries would have experienced without monetary union. However, the misery will be unevenly distributed between debtor and creditor countries, struggling south and still prospering north.
These different national experiences will be reflected through elections, creating more tensions of the kind we have already seen between Germany and Greece. Eventually something will give, but that process may take a long time. "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation," said Adam Smith. Given the extraordinary achievements of the 70 years since 1945, and the memories and hopes still invested in the European project, there is a lot of ruin still left in our continent.
The structural problem here is that the monetary area is European but the democratic politics are still national
Related: European disunion: Tsipras, Merkel and the conflict at the heart of the EU
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