John Fund explains for National Review Online readers why the recent Greek referendum bodes ill for the future of a united Europe.
It should now be obvious to the Eurocrats in Brussels that their grand project of an increasingly centralized and integrated European super-state will be rejected every time that ordinary people are somehow given a chance to vote on it. If they represented a normal national government, the Eurocrats would resign in shame and embarrassment.
The Dutch, French, and Irish all voted against European super-state treaties, although the Irish were bribed into voting a second time and eking out a yes. The Danes, Swiss, and Norwegians all voted to not join the European Union. Now the Greek people, although many of them profess that they still want to be part of the EU, have effectively blown up any chance they can continue using the euro, the linchpin of the EU’s monetary policy.
I fear that this track record will not sway European Union die-hards. Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of liberal forces in the European parliament, has already called for giving Greeks “a second chance” to stay with the euro.
There will be other calls to forgive Greece its debt in order to keep the troubled country within the euro zone. Doing so would set a terrible precedent for other countries and be patently unfair to the Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese who have suffered under austerity measures over the last five years to pay off their debts.
