Is Europe really ready for Captain Zapatero?

| 04-01-2010 | Spanish Politics | Written by Matthew Bennett

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Have European leaders not been reading the news for the last two or three years? Have they not seen what Zapatero has done to the Spanish economy? Maybe they have no choice about it. Nor do the people of Europe.

Maybe the Belgian Van Rompuy will be able to calm him down a bit and help him steer a steadier course through 300 meetings and 10 top level summits before the end of June, including the one Zapatero will be most enthusiastic about – a longed-for second audience with The Anointed One from Washington in Madrid on May 24.

He could do a lot of damage in 300 meetings and 10 summits. He’s got his hands on the helm of a 27-country ship with 500 million passengers. The Titanic was nothing compared to what might happen next.

And he’s very aware that on his watch, he’ll have an enormous opportunity for improving his image, if not for improving Europe. Spanish Secretary of Sate for Europe, Diego López Garrido has said that the next six months will give Spain “an exceptional capacity to influence the world” and increase its geopolitical standing.

What Europe seems not to realise is that it is likely to be an exceptionally negative influence that is about to wash over the continent.

Zapatero has stated that his top priority – his obsession – over the next six months is to leave the recession behind and create jobs for Europe. This from the man who took two years to admit there was a recession in the first place. Run away, European people, run away to America or Africa or anywhere else!

Get ready for a Euro-sized version of Plan-E – maybe called Plan-EU. Pavements, cycle lanes and parks will be dug-up and repainted from Lisbon to Leipzig. If the EU has a deficit, it will quadruple by June. If it doesn’t have one yet, it will do soon.

And it’s not exactly leadership from the front, is it? Spain is at the wrong end of all of the economic rankings from the last year or two.

The Germans at the ECB must be quaking in their boots right now. Zapatero will show them how to spend their money properly! And how can it possibly be good that Zapatero gets to help Greece out of its recession right now?

Letting the same Spanish government which has done so little (or almost nothing at all, in fact) to sort out the Spanish economy during the financial crisis and recession get its hands on the wheel of the great-ship Europe – at such a delicate moment in European history, with so much of our future prosperity riding on the decisions taken over the next few months and with half-serious talk of eurozone break-up appearing in the financial press – would appear to be a reckless move indeed.

Not that this will worry Zapatero; he will still be smiling enthusiastically in June, however much havoc he manages to wreak between now and then.