Europe has spent hundreds of billions of euros rescuing its banks but may have lost an entire generation of young people in the process, the president of the European Parliament said.

Since the region's debt crisis erupted in Greece in late 2009, the European Union has created complex rescue mechanisms to prop up distressed countries and their shaky banking sectors, setting aside a total of 700 billion euros.

But little has been done to tackle the devastating social impact of the crisis, with more than 26 million people unemployed across the EU, including one in every two young people in Greece, Spain and parts of Italy and Portugal.
Link:http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...r&dlvrit=56943

A Reuters article citing at length the German Social Democrat who sits as President of the European Parliament, without doubt he is trying to make a mark as an EU summit approaches later this week. If there is one EU institution that is irrelevant in policy-making and democratic accountability it is this parliament - a very comfortable place to to sit and pontificate.