Is there a shake up in Europe happening?

Are our paradigms shifting?

What's happening to Europe?!

Anne Applebaum just wrote a piece for <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2266155/" target="_blank">the Slate</a> titled: A Tale of Two Europes Forget East and West, Europe is dividing itself into North and South. She makes a case for looking at Europe in a new way. No longer East versus West or even East Meets West rather she's thinking about Europe in terms of North and South.

North and South you ask? Well, sort of. She's more interested in what defines Europe today. The Eastern-communist governments and divisions are a thing of the past.

Applebaum suggests a new division. Her division? North vs South. <!--more-->But then she attempts to locate Ireland in the South.  What's that you say? Ireland in the South? Yes. This is because she's interested more in the politics of Europe. For her, it's the issues and attitudes that are the most important. Okay.

So Applebaum focuses on things like outlook and self-control function in the countries rather than clear geographical definitions of North and South function. I think you'll see what I mean given the following two quotes:
<blockquote>North and South: Not everybody is going to like that concept, especially not the new South, some of whose members are not necessarily in the southern half of the continent. For these are not geographical designations, but political terms of art. The South contains all those countries whose political classes have not been able to balance their national budgets, whose bureaucrats have not been able to reduce their numbers, whose voters have not learned to approve of austerity: Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and—at the moment—Ireland.

The North contains the budget hawks: Germany, Poland, Estonia, Scandinavia, the Czechs, and the Slovaks. Britain's new government, with its austerity budget, aims to return to the North, following its recent experience of life in the South. France floats somewhere in between. Wealth, as such, isn't northern: Much of the South is very rich. But in the North, private wealth has grown more or less in tandem with the public sector. Private wealth and public squalor are more typical of the South.</blockquote>
Sure, I but it. There's a division in Europe and it functions on the level of economics and attitudes towards budgets  but it seems like Applebaum is also painting with some broad and sweeping brush strokes based not so much on wealth but seemingly on stereotypes related to work and attitudes towards work-life balances.  Hardworking Germany. Beach loving Greece. Strike loving Italy. Coffee drinking Bulgaria. And so on and so on. (And yes, I did just make up those stereotypes.)

Here's the thing, I like Applebaum's idea. I too am not sure that the outdated East vs West divide works anymore. Even more so after my recent travels through the Balkans. But I am not convinced that the North South divide works much better. It seems forced.

This said, I don't have a better division to offer. Mostly because I am not sure that "this and that" or "black and white" divisions are very helpful. I guess the word that I find myself stumbling over is division more than East/West or North/South.  Probably this is naive. But luckily, I can afford to be naive. I am not an economist or a political scientist.

Thoughts about Applebaum's claim?