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.
欧洲议会议长最近表示，尽管欧洲已经花费了几千亿欧元来援救其银行业，但可能在这一过程中失去了整整一代年轻人。
Since the region's debt crisis erupted in Greece in late 2009, the European Union has created complex rescue
mechanisms1 to
prop2 up
distressed3 countries and their shaky
banking4 sectors5, setting aside a total of 700 billion euros.
But little has been done to tackle the
devastating6 social impact of the crisis, with more than 26 million people
unemployed7 across the EU, including one in every two young people in Greece, Spain and parts of Italy and Portugal.
That
crippling（造成严重后果的） level of unemployment has led to protests and outbreaks of violence across southern Europe, raising the threat of full-scale social
breakdown8, including rising crime and anti-immigrant attacks that can further
rattle9（喋喋不休地讲话） unstable10 governments.
"We saved the banks but are running the risk of losing a generation," said Martin Schulz, a German
socialist11 who has led the European Parliament, the EU's only directly elected institution, since January last year.
"One of the biggest threats to the European Union is that people
entirely12 lose their confidence in the capacity of the EU to solve their problems. And if the younger generation is losing trust, then in my eyes the European Union is in real danger," he told the reporters in an interview.
Figures released last week showed 57 percent of Greeks
aged13 15 to 24 are out of work, and a similar
scourge14（鞭，灾祸） is tearing apart the
fabric15 of Spain, where some university graduates in their 30s have never had a job.
European Union heads of state and government will discuss the fallout from the debt crisis at a summit on March 14-15.
"If we have 700 billion euros to
stabilize16 the banking system, we must have at least as much money to stabilize the young generation in such countries," he said.
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