Introduction

Hannelore Foerster/Bloomberg News

"If the euro fails, then Europe too will fail," Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said in May 2010, as the continent faced the exploding debt crisis that rippled out of Greece. Today, with the problems only worsening, the Germans and other prosperous Europeans seem less likely to express such noble sentiments.

In his column on Monday, Paul Krugman criticized what he described as the moralizing streak of the Germans toward the less thrifty economies of Italy and Spain.

The Germans were wary of admitting the so-called Club Med countries into the euro zone in the first place, but with E.U. negotiators pressing Germany and other strong economies to cough up more of their money to pay the debts of the more profligate, the cultural differences and stereotypes are only becoming magnified.



Do these cultural differences threaten the future of the European Union?