Leaders squash a $240 bailout of struggling Eastern European countries
As anyone who has travelled through the “poorer” parts of Europe in recent years can attest, the European Union has done a pretty good job redistributing the continent’s wealth. The economic organization’s bright blue and yellow signs are on every infrastructure project in sight—bridges, highways, water mains, and transit. But all that largess has its limits. This weekend the EU rejected calls for a bailout of its struggling members from the former East Block. And solidarity is crumbling as member states try to protect their own faltering economies.