European Student Think Tank

As another expec­ted Euro crisis unraveled in Cyprus, a con­sec­ut­ive round of crit­ical exam­in­a­tions of the com­mon cur­rency is required. Instead of repeat­ing the same man­tras of lost inde­pend­ent mon­et­ary policies or severe dif­fer­ences in the European eco­nom­ies’ busi­ness cycles, another approach is needed. Per­haps the incon­veni­ent truth and the neg­at­ive unin­ten­ded con­sequences of the com­mon mar­ket are the fact that with one cur­rency, fluc­tu­ations in the European Union min­imum wage are inher­ently cre­at­ing det­ri­mental imbalances.

The euro crisis has taken the form of a suc­ces­sion of national crises threat­en­ing the integ­rity of the mon­et­ary union. The response, each time, involves heads of European states meet­ing in Brus­sels or Ber­lin to agree on a res­cue plan and hes­it­antly approv­ing the neces­sary improve­ments in European gov­ernance. After Ire­land, Por­tugal, Spain and Greece, does it even mat­ter who’s next on the cliff’s edge?

No other coun­try aspired mem­ber­ship to the European Union for such a long time as Tur­key. It’s been twenty-five years since EU-Turkey nego­ti­ations began. Dur­ing this time, the EU was able to exert much pos­it­ive influ­ence on the coun­try. The social, eco­nomic and polit­ical sys­tem of Tur­key has fun­da­ment­ally evolved and now resembles the European model more closely than ever. Also the EU would, eco­nom­ic­ally and polit­ic­ally, bene­fit enorm­ously from Turkey’s acces­sion. How­ever, many issues remain. The New Federalist’s Florian Grün­wald and Sarah Dejae­gher take a look at EU-Turkey relations.

Ten­sions in the Eastern–Mediterranean area are escal­at­ing: A short time ago, Cyprus begun to con­duct drilling for oil and gas in its exclus­ive eco­nomic area, facing the con­tra­dic­tion of Tur­key. Tur­key claims a share in the “con­tro­ver­sial” Block 12.