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The enemies of Europe

The political powers which set up the most impressive prosperity system of the last 70 years, are now paying their huge communication incapability and their political mediocrity

By: Athanase Papandropoulos - Posted: Friday, September 9, 2016

The great political parties which built a state of prosperity, peace and law the last 70 years, never showed the willingness to emphasize the universality and the great background of their effort. And the question is, why did they neglect this dimension of the European mainstream, during its most important period? The answer is simple though: for political reasons.
The great political parties which built a state of prosperity, peace and law the last 70 years, never showed the willingness to emphasize the universality and the great background of their effort. And the question is, why did they neglect this dimension of the European mainstream, during its most important period? The answer is simple though: for political reasons.

by Athanase Papandropoulos

According to the various surveys, on the one hand 77% of Greeks are against EU today and on the other 9 out of 10 believe that Greece is the main pillar that supports Europe. All these happen after Greeks cashed from the European Union and the former European Economic Community, net subsidies amounting 290 billion EUR, rescuing loans amounting 300 billion EUR and 60 billion EUR of investment support with nearly zero-interest rate. 

In France, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from 1958 to 2014 subsidized the French farmers with 1.560 billion EUR while France derived, through diverse Community programs, 1.110 billion EUR research and investment resources, which enabled the country to be ranked sixth in the global economy index.

Respectively, Italy has absorbed from European funds 2,3 trillions in the last 58 years and the Italian industry was subsidized with 300 billion EUR through diverse programs.

Finland, in 1993 had been literally rescued from a total collapse thanks to Community aid and guarantees.

Ireland, after its accession to the former EUC, managed today to be ranked 8th on a per capita basis comparing to the 103rd position it had back in 1973. Regarding its exports, from 60 USD per citizen in 1975, last year this amount was increased to more than 26.000 USD. During the last thirty years, the country has been subsidized with 64 billion EUR only for research and development purposes.

We could keep on with much more numbers but that would be in vain. Various “quack philosophers” would find arguments in order to justify the euro-skepticism and the new type of the creeping European populism, a phenomenon that nobody would like to approach with seriousness and the necessary depth. Because, beforehand, the modern European problem is about lack of effective communication.

The great political parties which built a state of prosperity, peace and law the last 70 years, never showed the willingness to emphasize the universality and the great background of their effort. And the question is, why did they neglect this dimension of the European mainstream, during its most important period? The answer is simple though: for political reasons. And here’s the explanation.

The Treaties, being the constitutional charter of the European Communities (steel, nuclear energy, single market), were substantially the output of a historical compromise. In the Treaty of Rome, the big bourgeois parties – Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Liberals - decided the implementation of a number of common policies that dulled considerably their ideological differences. Policies that they didn’t want to be widely known publicly. 

Moreover, for these parties, their biggest and most important rival were the Stalinist - communistic parties that were manipulated by the Soviet Union and their purpose was the ideological destabilization of Western Europe rather than their rise in power. So, the ideological contradiction of the bourgeois parties with the Stalinist ones obscured the differences between them, and in countries like Belgium, Netherlands and Germany these political parties became partners in power. 

After 1970 the economy of Western Europe had high growth rates and also was occupying a top position in the world trade on goods and services, so due to that impressive development of the social state there was no space for populism, which used to characterize by far the Soviet communist leftists. 

The far right populism used to have parochial incentives, and found fertile ground into internal divisions. Flemish against Walloons in Belgium, Catalans against Madrilènes in Spain, Corsica against Paris in France and so on and so forth. Thus, slowly but surely, the nation-states which consisted the European core, used to deal with regional problems instead of the important social-economic problems, lowering the dialogue quality. Slowly but surely, the enemies of the European ideal got stronger but without having any sufficient retort.

Nowadays, the populists are the toughest enemies of Europe, having as partners a horrible media system, which is fed with the intellectual misery in all its dimensions. This is the vital European problem, which intentionally remains in the dark, and will continue to be the following years.

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