Less Austerity in return for more 'Competitiveness' Reforms - a Pyrrhic victory for Europeans

It's official:  the European Commission confirmed that France, Spain, Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Slovenia will be given more time to reach the 3% budget deficit target, thus allowing a slow-down of the pace of austerity cuts amid concerns over growth. To help reduce economic imbalances in the eurozone, the stronger economies were admonished to let wages rise and increase labor market flexibility to improve competitiveness.

Europe's policymakers were unable to hide any longer the overwhelming evidence of the utter failure of austerity: record unemployment esp. among the young; the closing of thousands of businesses and the destruction of millions of jobs; a deep, deflationary recession in the Southern European periphery, rising poverty and RISING public debt levels, exactly the opposite of austerity's intent. So far, the eurozone economy has endured the seventh quarter or nearly two years of shrinking GDP and the recession is now spreading to the core, including Finland, France, and the Netherlands. Despite this dramatic failure of austerity policies favored by Europe's Very Serious Nincompoops* (VSN), they continue to play shallow, games: to prepare for the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland, a 'colony' of the U.K., prime minister Cameron has ordered blighted shops to put on fake store fronts showing make-believe merchandise (see here).  

The quid pro quo of less austerity for more reforms is another such game. As noted in my post "Public Opinion in Germany turning broadly against Austerity", conservatives very openly recommend this strategy as "a new bargain between creditors and debtors" [1] to push through investor-friendly policies that would safeguard the value of their financial assets in Europe and open up new investment opportunities in the future. Investor-friendly policies are, of course, policies that reduce investment costs such as the flexibilization (lowering) of wages and non-wage costs and the loosening of labor protection laws, such as termination protection and such.

For Europe's working population, this "New Deal for Europe" (see the Financial Times of April 25) would, however, be a Pyrrhic victory as, in a recessionary environment, the loosening of labor laws and the flexibilization of wages and non-wage costs would first and foremost result in more unemployment, lower social protection, and lower wages (read the experience of German workers in my post on the Agenda 2010. Moreover, the spreading of the competitiveness doctrine (see my posts on the competitiveness dogma, part I, II, and III) throughout Europe would remake the continent into an über-efficient Anglo-Germanic Europe, crush the savoir-vivre of traditional France and the creative spirit of Italians and Spaniards, and extinguish the charming sensuality and inefficiency of the Mediterranean culture and everything that makes life worth living by assigning a clock to every activity.

Let's stop this nightmare NOW and preserve the rich diversity of European cultures by:

1.) firing the austere and competitiveness-crazy Schwabian housewife Merkel and her gang;
2.) by supporting those European leaders with the courage to stand up against the Merkel government;
3.) by supporting the recent resolution of the European parliament that insists on more attention to social justice, investments for the future, and more democratic decisionmaking with regard to reform policies in Europe (see the resolution of the European parliament of 23 May 2013 on future legislative proposals on EMU: response to the Commission communications).

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*derived from the German 'pups'
[1] see the Financial Times: "The New Deal for Europe: more reform, less austerity"