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The current focus by the EU is to reduce spending as much as possible to reduce budget deficits. This will cause lower growth and falling tax revenues. By doing that we will get a prolonged economic stagnation and a serious recession in the south of Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France etc..) Reducing budget deficits will not by itself solve the EU economic difficulties.

Agressive business lobbying on trade issues is much less common in Brussels that it is for example in Washington D.C. Indeed, U.S. firms and trade associations are very proactive in business-government relations on trade policy. This "bottom-up" approach contrasts with the "top-down" EU approach where public authority, in particular the European Commission, plays the predominant entrepreneurial role.

Greece has been sitting on a massive € 350 billion euro debt. Since May 2010, Greece has been surviving on a first € 110 billion bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund contingent on higher taxes and sharp cuts in government spending. The sixt installment of € 8 billion as part of the 2010 loan agreement of € 110 billion is urgently needed to stave off a catastrophic default.

Through a referendum the Greeks will, for a change, decide for themselves how they and their country will move forward. The Greeks have had no real opportunity to do so for quite some time. For about a year and a half, Greece has been under foreign administration; it is de facto no longer a sovereign state. The government's most important task has been dragging the austerity programmes and structural reforms through parliament and implementing them. These are dictated by he strict troika of the EU Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).