Who Lost the Euro?

The arc of Europe’s postwar history is turning toward tragedy. It isn’t just that much of the Continent has fallen into a new Great Depression, or that in some countries things will get worse before they get better. It isn’t even that the whole mess was avoidable in the first place. It’s that the crisis is dividing Europe along the very lines the European project was intended to erase.

Decades of clichés about European “solidarity” and “the European idea” are being held up to ridicule. The notion that Greeks, Spaniards, Britons, Germans, and Italians are instinctive partners whose commonalities transcend their cultural differences and historical enmities—that “Europe” is a real community, not just a heavily worked-over blueprint in Brussels—turns out to be, let’s say, disputable. Ancient stereotypes are as livid as ever, framing conversations about the crisis right across the European Union. Germans are bossy and severe. Italians are idle. Greeks are corrupt. Brits are arrogant. The French are vain. So much for 60 years of European unification.