Editorial

摘要

Europe's persistent multiple crisis informs several of the articles in this non-thematic issue of the journal. The non-recovery of most of the region's economies, the inexorable rise in unemployment, and in particular youth unemployment, combined with the stubborn resistance of policy elites to any reconsideration of a dysfunctional policy-mix of sovereign debt consolidation, austerity and privatization, have generated both confusion and anger within Europe's civil societies. The 'design faults of European Monetary Union' (Arestis and Sawyer 2011) are being played out all too predictably; above all, the tyranny of a virtually unalterable asymmetry of unelected central bank and fragmented, subordinate national finance ministries pre-programmes the mismanagement of both monetary and fiscal policy and the slow crumbling of consensus within Europe's electorates; Euroscepticism-once confined to the quirky edges of British politics-is increasingly evident in the party systems of many of the EU's member states, both 'core' states and those in the battered periphery.