Matthias Bergmann’s piece (My grandfather was a Nazi. I’ve seen why we need the EU, 20 February) reminds us of the EU’s peace-fostering effect. Bergmann also admits that the EU is “far from perfect” but does not tell us how.
The currently precarious state of European politics arises in large part because the Brussels technocrats swallowed the Thatcherite mantra of neoliberal market policies and, in addition, created the euro. That shielded Germany’s sluggish economic performance by fuelling cheap credit, provided in part by German banks, in the economically weaker “European south” and Ireland, leading to the eurozone crisis and EU-wide “austerity”.
Germany led the calls for the EU to refuse debt relief. The Greeks, in particular, continue to live with the consequences today. Not exactly a beacon of cooperative solidarity and equality between nations.
Brexit is, in part, an understandable reaction to that failure, even though Britain was not at the coalface of the eurozone crisis. Brexit also involves many specifically British cultural and political problems that Bergmann does not consider.
Brussels needs to wake up and offer a cooperative solution to Brexit and not a defensive reaction, protecting its institutions and political process, as Bergmann suggests. Entrenching the current EU status quo is not the way forward and stands to create a permanent rift with Britain that can only weaken Europe, making it more vulnerable to the external political threats we all face.
Peter Muchlinski
Emeritus professor of law, Soas University of London
Re Peter Mandelson’s warnings about Brexit (Journal, 20 February). Mandelson endorsed neoliberalism and was opposed to, or dismissive of, social democracy, redistribution and the role of trade unions. These policies and attitudes furthered the decline of working-class areas, many of which demonstrated their resentment by voting Brexit. What one sows.
Michael Cunningham
Wolverhampton
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