The current eurozone financial crisis prompts calls for “more Europe”. About time too. For over 60 years Europhiles, and I count myself as one of them, have paid lip service to the declaration “an ever closer and deeper Union”. It has been so much part of the Euro-mantra that is was on automatic pilot. It never appealed to the Brits of course. They had they own micro-triumph in the drafting process of the Lisbon Constitution/Treaty which slighty watered down the phrase.
But it remains part of the Euro-DNA. Of course it was meant to be achieved by technocratic stealth through the Monnet method: little bit at a time, keep below the radar, slow accretion, don’t upset anyone (and don’t tell the voters.. the original sin of the grand old men of the founding fathers).
The euro crisis has flushed everything out into the open. A Euro monetary union which allowed the largest country, Germany, to ignore its own rules within a year or two of starting, surprisingly finds itself unworkable at the first real sign of trouble.
Fiscal and transfer unions are intregal parts of a monetary union. Now is the time for ever deeper and closer to be realised. And very quickly.
The Polish Foreign Ministers’ speech in Berlin sets out quite clearly the path ahead. Read it and lets start the ball rolling.