The Euro Zone Drama: Classical Drama in Five Acts or Reincarnation of an Old Idea?

In 2015, for the first time in the history of the European Union (EU), a populist left party, SYRIZA in Greece, won a major election. Since then, the EU has faced an existential challenge, the solution to which determines nothing less than the collective survival of the EU or its dissolution into single nation-state entities. In this paper, David Hoffmann, intern with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, argues that it is still possible to overcome the disparities between the wealthy northern European member states and their poor southern counterparts - which over the course of the European crisis reached a peak level. But this possibility can only emerge if the EU agrees on a major political shift away from an exploitive and destructive austerity regime and towards a sustainable and solidly united Europe.