I was reading the New York Times article "German Leader Faces Key Choices on Rescuing Euro" of September 12 and it got me thinking: Can an SPD-Greens government make a difference in moving forward?
Of course one can now, in retro, say (as I have argued in tweets and posts in recent months) that a continuation of the 2005-09 Grand German coalition (CDU/CSU-SPD) in 2009-2013 would have avoided many of the mistakes of the CDU/CSU-FDP one. That the coalition with FDP has proved disastrous Germany and Europe. The populist mud slinging toxic propaganda against Greece and the rest of the South has helped no one.
Thus begging the question: Can a united Europe be a conservative one, or rather, can a conservative Europe be a united one (in the sense of a real "European Union" not the current wishy-washy institutional monstrosity)?
Or maybe an EPP/PES "grand coalition" national governments in all/most member states is the solution.
Alas not a liberal one in the ELDR sense because some of its members have in effect neo-liberal or even conservative (politically and philosophically) views (eg FDP, VVD) while some have liberal democrat (ie centrist) ones eg D66.
Bottom line: It seems that a united Europe presupposes a progressive majority ie a mix of mostly PES (social democratic) with the truly liberal democratic/centrist/moderate part of ELDR & some progressive EPP elements.
No comments:
Post a Comment