The Brexit and the Greek crisis: end of the EU?

The European Union as we know it today is the result of progress but also failure among the different states within Europe. The road towards such an organisation had not been easy and, the probably more difficult thing to do today is to maintain unity within the Union.

The European Union has been laid out through many decades and has always been struggling with its legitimacy.

As Euro-scepticism has raised during the last years, the European Union is more in difficulty than ever. Besides, the globalisation and the economic crisis have threatened and weakened the European Union, as encountering difficulties always tend to divide groups.

As a consequence, the crisis in Greece has and is going through, divide people and nations to some extent where people start to think more selfishly regarding Europe.

As for Britain, the Euro-scepticism has always been pretty important in one of the leader party, the Conservatives, and in Britain in general since they decided not to enter the European Monetary Union and keep their currency, thinking adopting the Euro would weaken their economy and affect their sovereignty. If we look at Britain relationship with Europe, it seems quite obvious that a referendum “Remain or Leave Europe” would happen one day or another. On the contrary, the issue of it is, somehow, quite surprising.

Those two issues create tensions and disagreements within the European Union and it is clear that we reached a point where we can ask ourselves if we are going towards the end of the European Union.

According to Jean Monnet, an architect of the European Union, “People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them.” That supposes that the change can only be considered when there is a crisis because otherwise people are just not recognizing the necessity of this change. In the introduction of the book “The politics of crisis in Europe”, Mai’a K. David Cross, the writer, is already evoking the end of the European Union. Indeed the story of the EU shows that since its creation in 1957, each crisis seems to put at stake the future of the EU. The writer is also evoking the Greek’s debt in the first page of his introduction. Even though if this kind of crisis basically have an internal origin, it automatically reflects on the EU image and at each one of these crises, politicians and journalists are immediately evoking or even basing their political campaign on the idea of a eventual exit of the EU.

Extremist parties have also played a role in the opinion of citizens that became more radicalized: with the Eurosceptic line of thought. However the Eurobarometer shows that lots of Europeans trust more the EU than their own country. “Ultimately, the EU could cease to exist if crises and Euroscepticism make the degeneration of the European project a self-fulfilling prophecy.” It can also be admitted that European actors seem to use crises as opportunities to shape European order.

Just before Brexit, Mai’a K. David Cross in her book “The Politics of Crisis in Europe” says that none of these predictions of the EU’s demise actually came true. She is also telling that despite the negative image at each crisis, Europe has the largest economy in the world and is important for the United States in terms of trading partner and investor. The different member states continue to sign different treaties. “Politically, economically, diplomatically, and even militarily, the EU as a whole is a global actor of influence. It is a work in progress, a project that is perennially in the middle of its evolution, with no clearly defined end goal.” There is also a disagreement among different countries on the question of immigration. Indeed, they still disagree in how far should it go.

Crises therefore represent opportunities for change thus they are obviously related and are in the heart of the study of politics. We may have first to explain why EU crises emerge and grow more intense. Crises are perceived like as such also because they are to some extent socially constructed. When it is just different politicians of different countries who are arguing on some point, there will not be qualified as a crisis but if we take the example of the Iraq crisis in 2003, there were social key factors.

So as we see there were many different crises in the story of the EU, the question is why the Greek’s one would be different? Why this one would have a bigger impact on the Europe’s future?

In 2000, Greece set up everything to join the Eurozone and ensure to respect the Maastricht Treaty, in order to be part of the European Monetary Union. The problem is that the country was cheating about its real economic conditions giving fake data about its public debt and was hiding the extent of the situation. In 2005, the country had already reached the highest level of public debt within the European Union.

Greece represents 2% of the European GDP, but throughout the years the country started to have more and more debts and so in 2000 the value of its public debt was about €107 billion. At the time, Greece planned on developing its economy thanks to the European financial help. Despite its support, the Greek debt continued to increase every day.

Between 2000 and 2007, Greece had a 4% average growth rate. The country consumed more than it could produce, thus the government soon needed to borrow money. Nevertheless, the fallout of its growth never balanced with its public spending and in 2008 the worldwide financial crisis broke out.

The crisis, which started in the United-States, had an important impact on the Greek economy as it was the most affected European country by this crash. In 2009, Greece got into a recession, since the amount of the debt was about 279 billion euros, its budget deficit constituted 6% of the GDP, and by2010 it would reach 13% of the GDP. So the worldwide financial crisis led to an increase of the Greek debt which was already -pretty- high before that.

The last few years the living conditions of the current population of the country were similar of the 1990s’ one. While the austerity program was supposed to decrease the unemployment and to create growth, in 2016 the unemployment rate was up to 25% and more than 50% among people under 25 years old. Since the beginning of the crisis, Greek population has lost more than 40% of its former average wage. Everyone, workers and retirees, have seen their incomes decreasing and so on. The purchasing power got lower and lower each year and as a result the growth rate stands still.

Since its integration within the Eurozone, the Greek public debt has always been higher than 100% of the GDP. As a consequence, in order to

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