Can we please have a New Deal – and a new Helmut Kohl for the matter?
Apparently we arrived in a situation where two heads of government plus the president of the EU council apply ‘mental waterboarding’ to a fellow prime minister of a member state.
‘Ghat’s no?’ Swiss German for – transliterally – ‘Are you mad?’
This needs to stop now.
What we need instead is a New Deal and European leaders rising to the occasion.
A quarter century ago Europe underwent an equally seismic shift. The fall of the wall.
For years Helmut Kohl was derided as incompetent (anyone remembers the iconic front pages of magazine Titanic?) and his main quality being the ability to sit out anything.
But when the juncture of events forced his hand he rose to the occasion. Together with Gorbatchev, Bush, Mitterrand and Thatcher they managed the peaceful transition of a bi-polar world into a unified Germany. With hundreds of billions of Deutschmark they rebuild Germany and the East of Europe and gave hope and a life to dozens of millions of people.
Tonight we have 19 heads of governments who seem not to be able to get anything done.
In the nity picky they put at risk all we’ve been working for example in AEGEE – a peaceful, colorful, joyful and prosperous Europe. That is not acceptable and a showing of poor leadership.
Can responsible leaders please rise! It’s about time.
Else we’ll have to rebuild the house.
