Natalie Nougayrède 23 January 2016
‘Europe today is in such a shambles that it is not absurd to ask whether the US should again do something about it.’ Illustration: Noma Bar
In 1947 George Marshall, the US secretary of state, went to Europe.
He was shocked by what he saw: a continent in ruins, and rampant hunger. The mood in Paris, Berlin and other capitals was resigned and doom-laden. On returning to Washington, Marshall told President Truman that something dramatic needed to be done – and very soon. The initiative would have to come from Washington, he said.
On 5 June, in a speech to students at Harvard, Marshall announced his European recovery programme. It became, in the words of the British politician Ernest Bevin, “a lifeline to sinking men”. The Marshall plan not only helped Europe back on its feet, it laid the groundwork for the cooperation that ultimately led to the creation of the European Economic Community, the European Union’s predecessor. theguardian
Any new Marshall plan will founder in the minds of Europe's hesitant leaders
Mark Mazower 5 July 2011
In the late 1940s every government on the continent ran postwar reconstruction as it had run its war effort, as a national mobilisation with the state as the prime planner, arbiter and coordinator. Ministries of planning were not confined to the Eastern bloc, and their achievements across the continent were impressive. But during the 1970s and 80s optimism about what states can do evaporated. The members of today's political class in Europe are Margaret Thatcher's heirs, not George Marshall's. They find it hard to understand that the markets need to be saved from themselves if Europe is to survive in anything resembling its present form. They forget that Germany itself was allowed to cancel its prewar debts in 1953, one of the preconditions for its subsequent boom, and that when others, such as Poland in 1991, were allowed to write down their debts in their turn, they too prospered.
Right now what is needed is long-term political vision and a new willingness to argue for the benefits of continent-wide redistribution. Barroso has begun to do this, only to find himself bogged down in a shouting match about the size of the EU budget by the cutters in Downing Street. But Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, and Jean-Claude Trichet at the European Central Bank, have so far shown little sign of responding. US exhortations have fallen on deaf ears. The only ray of light is the impending Polish presidency and the new energy and sense of history it may inject into a process so far unable to move forward more than an inch at a time.
This time round the Americans will not ride to Europe's rescue, and the Europeans will have to act for themselves. Are they capable of it? The clock is ticking: in September the next package of aid for Greece will have to be announced. It will be a decisive moment and the outcome will be critical for Greece, and for the union too. theguardian
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