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Since the fall of 2009, the European Union has been struggling with a slow-moving but unshakable crisis over the enormous debts faced

by its weakest economies, such as Greece and Portugal, or those most battered by the global recession, like Ireland.

A series of negotiations, bailouts and austerity packages have failed to stop the slide of investor confidence or to restore the growth needed

to give struggling countries a way out of their debt traps. By August 2011 European leaders found themselves scrambling once again

to intervene in the markets, this time to protect Italy and Spain, two countries seen as too big to bail out.

The crisis has produced the deepest tensions within the union in memory, as Germany in particular has resisted aid to countries it sees as profligate, and has raised questions about whether the euro can survive as a multinational currency, since countries like Greece have been unable to boost their exports by devaluing their own currency.

It has posed great risks to many of the continent’s banks, which invested heavily in government bonds, and forced deep and painful cuts in government spending that drove up unemployment and put several countries back into recession, leading a growing number of economists to call the austerity policies self-defeating.

The economic crisis gradually became a political one as well, leading to the ouster of governments in Ireland and Portugal, dragging the government of Greece to the brink and weakening the ruling party in Spain. Protests by traditional interest groups like public sector unions were joined by crowds of young people who camped out in Madrid and Athens in imitation of

the Arab Spring demonstrations.

  2011 October ,27

  Why the year 2011 has changed Europe 

 Poorly managed, the debt crisis has spread. The use of the printing press now seems inevitable.

Rather than multiplying the euro, Europe has attacked the debt crisis affecting mainly Greece and Italy by multiplying ... the peaks. A default choice. Use money creation to ease the debt burden of the most indebted countries, as do the United States, would have been simpler.

The hypothesis was not consensus within the Union, the richest countries not wishing to pay for the less virtuous. So that the situation has severely deteriorated in 2011. The first Greek rescue plan, designed in 2010, is suddenly seemed impossible at the end of spring 2011, in the light of the deterioration of public accounts of the country.

After the adoption of an austerity plan further by the Greek Parliament in June, European leaders meet on July 21 for a summit expected to be the final time high, and He who was to close the subject, with a new plan aid to the country of over $ 100 billion, and a relaxation of the EFSF (European Financial Stability Fund), created to put out the fires of the crisis of the euro.

From failure to failure

Alas, the decisions taken at the meeting does not convince anyone. The reverse happens. Greek debt holders should forget 21% of the amount of their claims:

an unprecedented opportunity, which plunge over the banks, which drive the stock markets down.

It is the failure of the summit major causes them to multiply. The worsening situation of Greek public finances resulting in a new high, Oct. 27, which proposed to the creditors to sit on half their due. Another failure.

The last of the peaks of last resort, that of December 9, is also the most serious. In proposing a new fiscal pact, which imposes rules of conduct for all EU countries, Germany and France are facing a bone size: the refusal of the United Kingdom, concerned about any additional European integration time when the "euro bashing"

is fashionable to join. "There are now two Europe," said Nicolas Sarkozy. Twenty-six countries have indeed signed the pact outlines legal budget to blur. Placing Europe for its 10th anniversary to be celebrated this weekend in front of a wall. The dreaded contagion occurred, and several countries, including France, probably, should be stripped of their triple-A in early 2012.

The financial orthodoxy decided in late December is too late: "Between two evils, orthodox and insolvency, the market has chosen sides and privileges as the printing press in the United Kingdom, the USA and Japan. The ECB will now adopt the same process as the others! "Says Christophe Brulé, Entheca of Finance.

The debt crisis has plunged Europe into a major crisis of governance. Plunged into recession by the debt burden, she sees herself now forced to implement monetary policy sought to be avoided at all costs, to begin with.

Aline Robert ( La Tribune)