The augurs had spoken: the Euro was supposed to disappear by Christmas and the European Union collapse by New Year’s Eve. Predictions of a shipwreck or… shipwreck of the predictions!?
Anyway, the situation proves to be serious and demands more than partisan admonitions or fortune-teller stances. It requires genuine reflection work from European citizens because the ongoing transformation must be understood to be controlled.
IN FACT, EUROPE NEEDS TO SHIFT GEARS TODAY. THE ATTACKS IT FACES, ESPECIALLY FROM THE FINANCIAL MARKETS, TARGET ITS STRONG POINTS THROUGH ITS WEAK LINKS.
Indeed, the challenge directed at it directly tests its ability to become a finally coherent political entity. Because lenders and capital providers hate nothing more than politically unstable regions… or those that could become unstable!
At the center of the target: THE PRODUCTIVITY DIFFERENTIALS BETWEEN COUNTRIES IN THE EURO ZONE, which were regulated during the time of national currencies by the play of punctual devaluations! The community approach has long consisted of providing development aid to new member countries through a whole range of structural funds. To what extent would these solidarity transfers still be viable in a 17-member monetary zone and a 27-member Union? What new adjustment mechanisms could we replace them with? Finally, what rational democratic institutions will we produce to liberate the continent from its current shaky framework: that of an economic giant in the tight clothes of a political dwarf?
These questions hit us like slaps in the face, and it’s our ability to answer them that the markets have been testing for several months, with the risk of a disastrous precipice that would send our countries back to a chaotic fate of nationalist fragmentations.
