
Four Reasons the European Left Lost
The setbacks for centrist parties in the European elections showed that the EU’s crisis is anything but over. Yet the Left’s lack of strategy and identity has hobbled its ability to provide an alternative.
Wolfgang Streeck is a director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. His most recent book is Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism.
The setbacks for centrist parties in the European elections showed that the EU’s crisis is anything but over. Yet the Left’s lack of strategy and identity has hobbled its ability to provide an alternative.
In today’s Germany, Wolfgang Streeck argues, politicians laud “Europe” — while quietly using EU structures to advance German national interests.
When business isn’t intimidated enough to accept constraints on its power, capitalism suffocates democracy.
With the opposition reduced to a dispersed minority, the German government is firmly in the hands of Angela Merkel’s centrist coalition.