For years Europe has muddled through from crisis to crisis, ignoring the growing poverty the Red Cross has now recorded
The metaphor in which an issue is couched tells its own story. Since the economic crisis began in 2007-08, the ubiquitous image has been a financial storm – a picture with two implications. First, that this is an untamable, natural phenomenon to be endured, rather than – say – a fire, which might call for efforts to dampen flames, not to mention questions about who lit the spark. Second, that this is a passing emergency which should soon be forgotten. But today, as well as producing a battery of depressing statistics about the fall-out from Europe's long recent recession, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies suggests a switch of frames: it talks of the "roots of the crisis" having been "planted", roots which it insists will yield bitter growth for many years yet.
With a hand in dishing out food to the desperate, the Red Cross is particularly well placed to tally up the developing penury at the bottom of the heap – hungry bellies have forced a 75% rise in recourse to such assistance over four years across 22 countries. Beyond this intense hardship, there are the insecure terms and conditions that are such a feature of hard times in Britain and America too. What marks Europe out is unemployment. Although conditions remain, in European Central Bank president Mario Draghi's phrase, "weak, fragile, uneven", the eurozone is technically in recovery. Joblessness, however, remains stubborn at over 12% – five points more than in Britain, and twice as high as it ever got during Japan's 20-year on-and-off slump.
The Red Cross charts problems with mental and physical health, which connect back to this reality. Even more chilling is the concentration of worklessness on the youth, at a stage in life when enforced idleness incurs an economic penalty which endures for decades. With youth unemployment running at 30%, 50% or even 60% in the worst-hit countries, the wages and opportunities of a generation are going to be set back long into any recovery. Sick roots will long lurk beneath proclaimed green shoots. Disruptive cross-continental migration and intolerant politics are among the grisly consequences of Europe's unemployment tragedy, but – for purposes of both immediate cure and future prevention – the most important thing is to grasp the cause.
The orthodox analysis, of course, is all about social protections making the continent a cripplingly costly place to hire a hand. No doubt there are some regulations in some corners of Europe which do protect people with jobs at the expense of workers with none, but the conventional wisdom is awry. For this is not fundamentally a story about minimum wages or maximum hours. If "labour-market rigidities" make a difference, they do so at the margin. The real explanation here is macroeconomic, just as it was in the entirely pre-regulated American economy of the 1930s, where unemployment soared to double the dreadful levels of contemporary Europe. German neurosis about inflation has precluded the same liberal use of the electronic printing presses in Britain and America, so the monetary stance remains tighter. On top of that are the structural problems of a single currency, which imposes a one-size-fits-all interest rate and – for the continent's south – blocks off all means of restoring competitiveness except for outright wage cuts. In so many respects, this is the gold standard all over again.
The long years of European muddling through, from crisis to crisis, have never addressed any of this. The single currency got out of the emergency room in 2012 when Mr Draghi promised to do "whatever it took" to shore up stricken banks, part of an implicit bargain which also involved the south swallowing interminable austerity. Today's messy politics in Greece and Italy, which flow from popular rage about unending retrenchment, suggest that it should not be assumed that the south's acquiescence will last for ever. Whether or not the south's patience finally snaps, the people of Europe will be paying the price for the last few years for many more to come.
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