Europe needs reformers

Europe needs active reformers, writes the left-liberal daily Süddeutsche Zeitung with reference to the new Irish referendum: "The most important challenge facing Europe is its re-Europeanisation. For only if it can manage to convince the new member states that the European idea is about more than just the absence of war with a major redistribution of tax money in its own favour, and that only if the old European countries can be brought back to the path of integration, only then can the EU be big and at the same time strong. … Even if it comes years too late, the Treaty of Lisbon can still do what needs to be done in terms of rescue work. … However all this can only help if above all the big countries remember their European calling. But at the moment Berlin, Paris, Rome, Madrid and London are mainly preoccupied with themselves and fitting themselves into the European status quo. It's absurd: after ten years the reform of the EU is within touching distance, but Europe has lost its reformers."

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