Prior to WWII, Germany was a debtor State, forced to pay war reparations to the winners of WWI, who were inflexible in their demands. A decade or so prior, Max Weber, in an essay, admirably took on the nexus between capitalism and calvinism, with the "spirit of capitalism" leading to reinvestment of the fruit of one's labors in new economic initiatives. Taken together, these two manifestations inform us what is happening today on the EU Council of States.
Today, there exists a marked division in rationale on the part of creditor States (decidedly Protestant in nature) and those debtor States in the predominantly Catholic Mediterranean basin. At the root of their intransigence are three stubborn knots still untangled by the European Union: The Intergovernmental method for taking decisions, largely by the Commission in primis, The fact that important economic-financial competencies are undertaken by the EU, while social policy is relegated back to member States, and The fact that since 2004-05, after the European Union constitution was unapproved by referendum, European citizens have still not been brought around to the establishment of a common pact in the Treaties set forth.
And so it is, that even during a crisis of epic proportions, these webs of the past continue to inform decisions made by nation States and their division. Northern States do not want to assume the debt of the Mediterranean ones. But if this keeps up, the entire continent could face an economic and social time bomb. Even in terms of welfare policy in this time of crisis, the EU has been unable to make a united front, leaving each State to egotistically provide for its own citizens as they see fit.
Italy's President Mattarella raised the call for the EU institutions to intervene in a decisive and united manner, before it was too late. After all, it was the indebted Weimar Republic that left the doors open to Hitler's rise to power and the devastation of an entire continent at the hands of nazi totalitarianism.
Read the full article on Luiss Open [Italian]