Do you really think that Germany and France and the other more affluent EU member nations are going to keep bailing out Greece and Italy and Spain indefinitely? News reports here in the States during the last round of Eurozone bailouts suggested that Germany, at least, was pretty fed up and that the majority of the German public was against pouring more money into nations that they felt were only dragging their own economy down.
Also, the austerity measures that were required as a condition of the bailouts were/are extremely unpopular in those countries. There were riots in Greece and fairly recent riots in Spain. I know that many Greeks wanted to leave the Eurozone rather than suffer more social welfare cuts (not that it would have helped). To me, countries leaving the EU, either the creditors or the debtors, doesn't seem far fetched at all. If the Russians then stepped in and promised the poorer outcasts some sort of financial aid, maybe gas subsidies or something like that, it could create an even deeper division.
|