Imagine for a moment that European leaders, in an untimely attack of lucidity, looked at the reality of the Union through the eyes of ordinary citizens.
The order of their concerns would be inverted: growth and employment, which rank as the principal objective in all pacts, would actually become the principal objective. The rest of the problems, like sovereign debt, the deficits and corresponding adjustments, as well as the restructuring and recovery of financial institutions, would become instrumental to that central objective.
The real economy, the one that generates wealth and creates jobs, is being destroyed at full speed. It lacks credit, even for the working capital of viable companies; the rhythms of (necessary) budgetary adjustment are absurd and no one is willing to modulate them in order to get us out of the recession. He who does not grow does not pay.
The debt problem is being treated as a solvency problem and the recession that induces this type of behavior will in turn generate the dreaded situation of insolvency. Thus, the confusion of these instrumental policies with ultimate policies is leading to disaster. That's why, suddenly, seeing the dramatic drift, the European leaders decide that:
- The Monetary Union cannot function without an Economic and Fiscal Union, and they set those in motion.
Ugh! Excuse me. I'm talking about the European Union that moves towards the construction of the political union as a shared public space, in which each country cedes sovereignty and shares it with the rest, with effective institutions that make bold and timely decisions. Will that be possible?
This post was originally published in Spanish on El Huffington Post.