How European Elites Lost a Generation

The European Union is in bad shape. Not only is the common currency in a shambles and the economies of many member states moribund, but young Europeans no longer see how the EU helps them. Millions of them are taking to the streets to demand a future. By SPIEGEL Staff

When Kostas Dekoumes, a 24-year-old Greek, is asked about Europe, he launches into a rant about German Chancellor Angela Merkel. When Oleguer Sagarra, a 25-year-old Spaniard, is asked the same question, he says that Europe represents the only chance to find work. Karl Gill, a 21-year-old Irishman, responds to the question by railing against the banks.

And when Jacques Delors, 85, is asked about Europe, he says things like: "Europe needs a pioneering spirit," and he asks: "Do the men and women of this era truly want this Europe?"

Delors, together with former French President François Mitterrand and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was one of the driving forces behind the European Union, and under his leadership as president of the European Commission, treaties were signed that would be impossible to forge agreement on today.

Delors represents a time when Europe inspired the imagination of statesmen. The goal was to secure peace in Europe and prosperity for the continent's poorer countries including jobs, education and justice. Europe was a promise. When Kostas Dekoumes, Oleguer Sagarra, Karl Gill and hundreds of thousands of other citizens protest in the squares of European cities, it is to demand that governments and politicians make good on this promise. In their opinion, Europe is in the process of making them poor . In response, they are speaking out and exerting pressure on their governments, just as the financial markets are doing.

A Look at the Zeitgeist

When Delors, an elegant man with a soft face, worries about the common European currency -- a monetary union which in recent months increasingly resembles a teetering house of cards -- he talks about the debt crises of individual countries, and he says that the markets are testing the EU "because they are convinced that it is not capable of taking action." All of this is very disconcerting, says Delors, but it isn't the real reason for the scope of the crisis.

"We are talking about the Zeitgeist, aren't we, about the 'mood'?" says Delors. By that he means that two crises are unfolding at the same time in Europe today. On the one hand, there is the debt crisis faced by individual nations. The second crisis, and the more dangerous one, is a crisis of meaning. Do Europeans -- the citizens and their political elites -- even want the historic project of a European Union anymore?

The search for an answer to this question inevitably leads to those places where agitation is at its most intense, where citizens are fighting for the future, even if is only their personal future. It leads to Barcelona, Dublin, Athens, Lyon and Lisbon, to the rebellious crowds full of rage but not necessarily full of hope.

Spaniard Oleguer Sagarra is no revolutionary. He is a conscientious young man who wears eye-catching glasses. He has lived in Montreal and Sydney, speaks fluent French and English and is trained for complex data analysis. Sagarra used to think that he wasn't the kind of person who took part in demonstrations. Such a person is made for work.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,769831,00.html

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