Is Euro Disintegration on the Cards?
You can hear it; you might even be able to smell it…
…the sound and aroma of severe friction burns as Euro-sceptic hands rub together with glee at the single currency’s sorry state.
Some are hoping for predicting the end of the Euro; as a nightmare scenario warned of by sceptics unfolds. Others may be hoping for a different outcome – further integration with more power ceding to Brussels…
Der Spiegel: The problems facing Greece are just the beginning. The countries belonging to Europe’s common currency zone are drifting further and further apart, and national bankruptcies are a distinct possibility. Brussels is faced with a number of choices, none of them good.
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In the more than 10 years since the euro was introduced, the Commission states, it has become clear that simply controlling the development of member states’ budgets is not enough. What that means, more concretely, is that the stability provisions stipulated in the Maastricht Treaty to regulate the common currency aren’t working, and member states need to better coordinate their financial and economic policy measures.
That is precisely what euro skeptics have said from the beginning — that a common currency can’t work in the long run without a common economic and financial policy. The member countries’ governments ignored these objections, unready to give up a further aspect of their national sovereignty.
Now politicians are facing a difficult decision: Should they continue as they have, thus potentially undermining the euro’s ability to function? Or should they yield a portion of their national sovereignty to Brussels?
Imagine having to face your voters with that one – we know; Europe doesn’t really give a rats-a$$ about its voters on these issues but all the same. Lucky for Gordy and Dave it’s not on their menu.
