No 77 - 'Europe in crisis. Crisis in Europe'

We have already entered the fourth year of the global crisis, which at various stages and in different countries has taken different forms, originating from distress on the US housing market, evolving into the debt crisis mainly restricted to Europe, to finally take shape of an increasingly tangible economy and labour market crisis. In the European Union the current affairs have been additionally accompanied by the emergence of the democratic deficit. The problems that we have been facing are no longer of a purely economic nature, they are also political. Pleas for reforms and more solidarity on the one hand, and economic responsibility and financial discipline on the other hand, are accompanied by a growing conviction that simple solutions do not exist. The ambivalence of many suggested solutions is additionally reinforced by the high level of interconnections and imbalances among the EU member states, which make it impossible to introduce changes suitable for all parties. The question that has been in the air since the outbreak of the crisis, Quo vadis Europe now?, has not been answered in any satisfactory way yet. Nonetheless, the essential issues related to the current phase of the crisis in Europe deserve to be recapitulated.