Europeans fight back.

• Author: Pal, Amitabh
• Position: Comment - Essay

European policymakers are intent on wrecking their economies, but the people keep getting in the way.

Europe's masters have foisted on the continent a ruinous austerity package, and the result has been a complete fiasco.

The continent is gripped by bad news, with countries such as Belgium, Britain, the Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain all falling back into recession this year.

And Greece is in an especially bad shape, seized by sharply negative growth for the past five years. The effect has been most severe on people's livelihoods.

Unemployment averages more than 11 percent across the European Union, with Spain and Greece having almost one-fourth of their workforce currently without jobs. A staggering half of Spanish and Greek youth are out of work, raising fears of a "lost generation."

And at a time when people in these countries need a welfare system the most, governments have been slashing their social safety nets, under orders from the European Union and international banking institutions. Many citizens of Athens and Madrid are being forced to scrounge for food and other basic necessities.

A Europe-wide common currency has been a major cause of the crisis that has gripped the continent.

The faulty construction of the euro prevented crisis-ridden nations from taking the necessary steps to revive their economies through measures such as expanding their money supply. And the European Central Bank, with its German-driven agenda of extreme fiscal conservatism and anti-inflation hawkishness, has played a terribly detrimental role.

Thankfully, the population of Europe has refused to take this lying down. The continent has seen recurrent protests against austerity, sometimes in several countries at once. This May Day was a good example.

"Tens of thousands of protesters turned out amid rising anger over enforced austerity that many see not as a cure to the region's fiscal troubles, but as a deterrent to economic growth and job creation," The New York Times reported.

More than one million people marched in cities all across Spain, while hundreds of thousands were on the streets in Germany. France, Greece, and Britain also saw sizable crowds.

"The turnout today reflects the unhappiness of unionists with the German government's crisis policies and the rigid austerity measures in Europe," said Michael Sommer, the chief of the German Confederation of Trade Unions. In some sense, the French have led the way.

Unions brought Paris to a...