Stephan Kaufmann
Freelance journalist Stephan Kaufmann writes mainly for Berlin daily Berliner Zeitung and Tageszeitung. Specialised in economic issues, he is a member of Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and has published several books critical of contemporary capitalism.
Updated: 19 April 2011
To come up with the money to pay for its crisis, the eurozone has decided to export at any cost, slashing wages across the union, and courting customers abroad. The problem: that’s exactly what the countries in the Americas and Asia are trying as well. 
A spectre is stalking the financial markets: what if the army of unemployed and poor no longer rubber-stamp the policies of the powerful? No wonder neither politicians nor business leaders want to risk too much democracy. 
Pressed hard by the recession and national debts, European governments are rewriting the labour law, whether watering down job protection or cutting wages. And employers are smiling. 
Europe's politicians would like to celebrate the decisions of the 26 October summit as historic. But the euro crisis will be with us a while longer yet. The basic paradox – that states want to buy the trust of investors with money that they don’t have – just can’t be eternally ignored. 
The success of the True Finns party in the Finnish general elections is further proof that eurosceptics are making themselves increasingly heard on a European as well as a national scale.