debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
The eurozone crisis has badly affected the Spanish economy, leading to rising unemployment and large cuts in public spending. Vicente Navarro writes that the crisis has now progressed into a frontal attack against the Spanish welfare state: already the smallest (in terms of spending as a percentage of GDP) among the EU-15 countries. The underfunded and under-resourced [...]
One of the phrases frequently written in economic circles in the United States (and to a lesser degree in Europe) is “the Euro is going to collapse.” Those who repeat that phrase over and over again do not seem to know how the Euro was established, by whom, and for whose benefit. If they knew [...]
A widely held belief in political circles of the left is that a country, like Spain, cannot follow expansionist policies on its own. It is said over and over again that unless the entire EU or, at least, the Eurozone expands, one country cannot do it alone. This was indeed the position of the Zapatero [...]
Introduction: The political context To understand the situation in the countries at the periphery of the European Union, four countries within the Eurozone, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, we have to understand the political context they have in common. All of them were governed by fascist or fascist-like dictatorships (Spain, Portugal, and Greece) or by [...]
All Content