Things appear to have come to a boiling point at the G20 Summit in Mexico last week, with the emerging economies gleefully lecturing their former instructors in the European Union. This editorial from Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland hopes the humiliation serves as good medicine for a European Union ‘disintegrating amid bickering about national interests.’
The Financial Times Deutschland editorial starts off this way:
As European Commission president, one can become quite thin-skinned, especially if, after all the effort of the past few months, Europe has heard nothing but niggling, complaints and mockery.
“We are not here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or how to run an economy,” a clearly-peeved Jose Manuel Barroso informed attendees at the summit of the 20 largest industrialized and emerging countries.
But it’s no use fighting it: Europe’s humiliation at the G20 Summit is deserved. It is understandable. And perhaps, ultimately, it might even be helpful.
Europe deserves it because for over two years, one of the richest regions in the world has failed to bring the debt crisis under control – and every day, the risk grows that it will pull the global economy into its downward spiral.
READ ON IN ENGLISH OR GERMAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Founder and Managing Editor of Worldmeets.US