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Welcome, 77 artists, 40 different points of Attica welcomes you by singing Erotokritos an epic romance written at 1713 by Vitsentzos Kornaros

Saturday, July 2, 2016

EU's new crises raise questions about what more can be done

Though the crises today may be different — Europe's failure to manage a surge of refugee arrivals, Greece's debt mountain and future in the shared euro currency — they raise the same questions about how to make the EU relevant to people, whether they be in Malta or Finland or Germany. [...] it's unclear what Europe might do now that it could not have done a decade ago, as far-right parties cry victory in the wake of Brexit and shout for others to follow the U.K. lead. "The challenge for Europe's leadership is to address the legitimate grievances of people dissatisfied with Europe, without kowtowing to the ideologies of the extreme left or right," said Etienne Davignon, president of the Friends of Europe think-tank. [...] on migration — not the challenge of refugees, but on the key issue of whether citizens of EU nations should be allowed U.K. social benefits like payments to families or unemployment — he is intransigent. Prime Minister Robert Fico, leading a right-leaning Slovak government that has felt dictated to from Brussels over the refugee emergency, has called for "a new balance" between Europe's institutions and its member states, with nations having more say. For Camino Mortera-Martinez, a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, the old continent needs "outsiders — strong, clear-minded leaders and thinkers, with a vision for the continent who were not born and bred within the European bubble."


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.sfgate.com