If Europe does not become a political entity, the euro will disappear.
This disappearance can take a number of forms and go through several detours.
It may be an explosion, an implosion, slow death, a dissolution, or a division.
It may take two, three, five, ten years, preceded by a great number of successive remissions, all of which may give the impression, every time, that the worst has been avoided.
The event that triggers it might be the collapse of a Greece overwhelmed by austerity plans that are impossible to effect and unbearable for the people, or the feat of one Karlsruhe Court or another, refusing, on the part of Germany, the unlimited risk to which the country would be exposed in the event of the default of a member State.
But it will disappear. One way or another, if nothing happens, it will disappear. This is not a hypothesis, a vague fear, a red flag waved in the face of recalcitrant Europeans. It is a certainty. And it is deduced, this certainty, not only from logic (the absurdity of the pipe dream this abstract single currency, virtually floating since it is not backed by common economies, resources, and fiscal policy, will become if things remain as they are) but from History (all the situations that have occurred in the past two centuries that remind us of the crisis we are experiencing now).
For the euro is not the first single currency experiment the West has attempted.
There have been at least six, the chronicle of which -- even if, as always, the situations are not comparable -- is full of lessons.
Two of them clearly failed, and they did so because of national egotism coupled with inequality of development among countries that could not speak the same monetary language without uniting (moreover, in the first case, the key episode was a default of payment on the part of... Greece!): These are the two adventures, today long forgotten, of the Latin Union (1865-1927) and the Scandinavian Union (1873-1914).
Two proved fairly rapid and clear successes -- and if they succeeded, it was, in each case, because the process of monetary unification was accompanied by political unification: They were the birth of the Swiss franc in 1848, when, after half a century of trial and error due to the refusal to pay the political price of the economic Union, the Constitution establishing the Helvetic Confederation replaced the different currencies that had up until then been issued by the cities, cantons, or territories; and, secondly, the victory of the Italian lire which, at the moment of Italian Union, triumphed over the myriad currencies indexed either on those of the German States, or on the franc, or on former ducal or republican traditions. (And even then, at what price this triumph! And in return, particularly in the south, for how many tragedies, former structures shattered, micro-societies that disintegrated, entire towns forced to emigrate to the north, if not to France or America!
Two took tentative steps, fell back, nearly failed, and finally succeeded, yes, invented an actual common currency after undergoing a thousand crises, retreats, temporary abrogations and, thanks to courageous leaders, finally understanding that a currency exists only when backed by a budget, a tax system, a system of allocation of resources, labor laws, social rules, in short, policies that are truly mutual: , lsuch is the story of the new mark that became a reality, nearly forty years after the Zollverein of 1834, against the florins, thalers, kronenthalers, and other marks of the Hanseatic League cities; and it is the story of the dollar which, we tend to forget, took a hundred and twenty years to establish its dominance and did so, in truth, only after the agreement to federalize the debt of the member states of the Union.
The theorem is implacable.
Without federation, no common currency.
Without political unity, the currency lasts for a few decades and then, due to a war or a crisis, it crumbles.
Otherwise put, without the process of this political integration, to which the obligation is inscribed in all the European treaties but which no leader in France or Germany seems to want to take seriously, without the nation-States turning over their spheres of competence, and thus without a resounding defeat of these "sovereignists" who, in reality, are pushing the people towards withdrawal and collapse, the euro will disintegrate, just as the dollar would have if, for example, the Confederacy had won the Civil War.
Before, one used to say: socialism or barbarity.
Today, we should say: political union or barbarity.
Better yet: federalism or rupture and, right on the heels of rupture, social regression, precariousness, the explosion of unemployment, and poverty.
Better still: Either Europe takes one more step, passing a mark in the path to this political integration without which no single currency will succeed in enduring, or it will leave History and sink into chaos.
We no longer have the choice: It is political union or death.
Everything else -- the incantations of some, the little tweaks and changes of others, the Such and such solidarity funds, the Whatsits stabilization bank -- can only push back the deadline and encourage in a dying man the illusion that he is not condemned.
No. It is political union with the Euro or without, as it was before.
The Eurozone and the EU are two separate entities. Not even Greece that might have left the Eurozone ever intended to leave the Union. And one can join the Union without even having the Euro.
The EU has never been in any kind of danger.
Europe is already becoming a political entity. It has already been for decades. Every time another step is taken, it aims at further centralisation. Small at a time and slow, but that's how it works.
Whether it is the EU constitution, the European Court or the thousands and thousands of pages of European legislation that dictate about everything in every member state, they all aim at further centralisation. An EU country can hardly take a single step without it conforming to EU legislation.
The Euro is the strongest step in decades. A deliberate choice, politically motivated. Wanted by the those that are "state building". Disliked by all others that will not ditch it out of fear the consequences might be worse than keeping it.
Those believing it will disappear have not understood it is a political currency that is extremely unlikely to disappear. Even a country only paying into it like Germany backs it up and a country in total ruin like Greece actually voted to keep it. Politics at work.
It will force us into further centralisation. First a union of Eurozone banks, then on the long term a form of centralised Eurozone budget control. Brilliant move of those working on the "United States of Europe". All in the making. But Europe being Europe the making will be in a rather slow pace.
That Euro is there to stay.
What happened, Children of Helles? I know you can DO IT - You just don't seem to know that you should want to!
The Value of a Fiat Currency is based upon the economic capacity of those within the Political Entity (Say, you remember "Polits", don't you, Greeks? You saw yourselves as 'one'....though you were many....is there a Lessen, from your Ancestors, here? Think "Hansa = Polit" - then maybe you'll "get" your Franc and German Cousins up north there) who produce the things that the world needs - and your children will ALWAYS be Better Off and be sailing in Safer Economic Waters IF your Fiat Currency has 300+ Million 'those' within the issuing entity!!!
That's worth ANY PRICE!!!
I mean...Would the Brits have been bitching, when the 'Celtic Tigers got Distemper', IF they'd have joined the Euro....or would those 300 Million 'extra' producers have helped them to 'ride it out'?
It's a "No Brainer", Ma-a-a-an!
Now the deal is: since the euro is a failure, we have to double down and hand all budgetary power to an unelected elite. Deepen in turbo mode. Democracy at the national level is "barbarism" and will kill us all. But why? It would seem logical, instead, to recognize that we've "deepened" things a little too far.
We're in a big crisis, and the future of the European construction hangs in the balance. What would be more sensible than to ask the people what they want? That won't happen, of course, because the unwashed masses would vote the "wrong" way - against further "deepening".
There was a reason the American founding fathers gave the budgetary power to Congress and not the Executive. Since all other powers are derived from it, it has to be given to the institution that offers the greatest democratic guarantees. In Europe, that is national parliaments.
But that is exactly what the European elites do not want. They want budgetary power to be given to institutions offering no democratic guarantees at all.
It's astonishing that the same BHL who shouts his support for democracy abroad is so dismissive of it at home.
But I think the bigger picture here is that it is safer to stay small-scale and collect smaller profits and smaller growth on a more consistent basis than the gamble on this risky financial strategy employed in various ways by various entities.
OK, you lost me when you put "sovereignty" in quotes, to not mention your definition of barbarity. In your perfect world would there also be a law that people have to hold their teacups with one raised pinky finger?
The Eurozone's core problem is a number of past derailments that now call for the ESM and other measures, such as the proposed political union, precisely because 'more Europe' (i.e. more integration) caused the wrong Europe to arise. In his example of Italy, it follows its monetary union caused social disruption for the south of Italy.
20 years of neoliberalism created a limitless market. However, with an appeal on globalization, many social certainties have been abolished under European pressure. Thus, "Europe" has become to many not the way forward for more for more social security and stability, but rather a threat thereof.
The maxim everything is salable anywhere in Europe, implies identical rules everywhere. That, then, also applies for culturely tied items as French wines, German sausages, and Dutch cheese. In its striving for efficiency and bulk production, the Single Market enforces uniformity.
BHL possesses limited feeling for the primeval human need of European people within an ever expanding Eurozone: they want to continue to speak their own language and cling to their own culture without learning that's contrary to EU rules.
Undoubtedly inefficient and irrational. But it is something that many ordinary citizens cling to. There is thus a great danger to be had from propagandists only too happy to turn the Eurozone into Orwell's Airstrip 1.
But since BHL here voices the assumptions of the European elite, let's forget the over-the-top language and just respond to the central theme: Europe only has a future if all real power is given to an elite.
We the people don't believe a word of it. We don't believe Europe will fail if we simply recognize that a single one of its projects, the euro, was a failure. We don't fall for the words "political union" which is simply code for "oligarchy". And we don't believe that you, who time and again insisted on "deepening" the Union even the votes were against you - who took every "yeah" vote as a definitive answer, and every "nay" vote as a temporary obstacle - are best qualified to dig us out of this hole of your creation.
We will not relinquish national sovereignty, not because of outdated nationalism, but because democracy is guaranteed at the national level even as it is routinely dismissed in Brussels and Frankfurt. We have what we have, national democracy, and will not give it up just because of your vague promises that one day, when you're tired of exercising absolute power, you will create democratic rule at the European level.
FH
Look at his predictions:
" It may be an explosion, an implosion, slow death, a dissolution or a division"
What is left Levy ?
" It may take two, three, five,ten years"
That's being exact
What a waste of time