Merkel Pushes Greece To The Left

The German sociologist Ulrich Beck opens his latest book confessing how shocked he was when he heard in the news in February 2012 that 'today the German Bundestag will decide the future of Greece'. Southern Europe has become a declining underclass, while Berlin acts as a colonial master imposing brutal austerity. Calling his book German Europe, Beck joins a vigorous debate about the future begun by the German intellectual, Jurgen Habermas. For Habermas and the south Europeans, the question that should have dominated the German elections but did not was 'Will Europe be German or Germany European?' The European vote was clear: 82% of Spaniards, 65% of Portuguese and 58% of Italians rejected Merkel's policies in a recent opinion poll. But the German vote, the only one that counted, went the other way, giving Merkel unparalleled power on the German and European stage.

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