By Silvia Cavasola .
While the United States embraces democracy once again, the European Left wing is weak and fragmented like never before. Take a look at the data. In 1997, 13 of the 15 countries that make up the European Union were democratic; today, only 8 of the 25 countries are of the Left.
In countries like Italy, France and Germany democracy was seen in their liveliness of our culture, yet a separation between such parties and the electorate seems to have surfaced.
Democracy in Italy, for instance, has struggled to survive. Although the democrats are the largest opposition party, WaIter Veltroni stepped down as leader nearly a month ago. Such struggles are anchored by these two dates: 13 April 2008 and 17 February 2009. First: Silvio Berlusconi's coalition won the elections and the parties of the radical Left were excluded from Parliament. Second: VeItroni resigned after having been accused of having failed to "regenerate the party and provide it with a large popular consensus." Within a few months, Italian democracy was confronted with a dramatic loss of representativeness - the causes of which have been interpreted in a variety of ways.
Enough with the past, enough with the causes. How does the shift to the right wing and the "disappearance" of democracy effect the European Union?
Among JCU students, opinions are manifold. Some interpret the phenomenon optimistically, arguing for the end of the era of great ideological contrapositions: a hope for the beginning of a political confrontation based on "concrete facts, rather than just names." Others are pessimistic, deeming the shift to the right "the death of progress" and an advent of homologous thought. In any case, the future of the European Democracy remains highly uncertain. We will see if the whispering wind in the new USA will be heard from the Old Continent.
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