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Ending the Honeymoon: Constructing Europe Beyond the Market

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

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In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus becomes a prisoner of inevitability, existentially condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for the sake of seeing it roll back down immediately. His sense of desperation and futility is reminiscent of Europe today. It has become a prisoner of the circularity of stabilizing inherently unstable markets. And each cycle exacerbates the dominance of the economic over the political, the erosion of democratic paradigms, the indifference of citizens, and the divorce between social reality and its political translation. Political discourse is suspended while “technocrats” redistribute societal resources and aspirations in the name of economic necessity. And we, the Europeans, are sidelined and numbed by the repetitive talk of austerity and economic stability, EFSF and ESM, financial leverage and institutional reforms. All presented as inevitable for the health of the market, as a bitter medicine required to cease the pain. Needless to say, it will not; the pain is systemic.

Type
Special Issue - Regeneration Europe
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by German Law Journal GbR