A signal to everyone

In the efforts to save Greece from bankruptcy, Angela Merkel hasn’t made things easy for her partners. She has stubbornly called for respect for the rules laid down for cases of this kind, putting pressure on Greece radically to change the approach of her own financial and budgetary policy with a rigorous economic programme of belt-tightening. Among other things it has proved necessary to activate the intervention of the international Monetary Fund, a provision unpopular with many convinced pro-Europeans, who have seen in this measure an admission of European failure. To better interpret the German Chancellor’s approach to the Greek crisis, we should recall that in the negotiations on the introduction of the euro, the German government imposed the rule according to which the debts of a member state cannot be assumed by the Monetary Union. This ought to have prevented situations such as that in which the Monetary Union has been placed as a result of the poor financial management of Greece. Each member state must be co-responsible and make its own contribution to the stability of the euro.The “no bail out” rule – according to which EU member states cannot underwrite the debt of another member country – was therefore adopted by the Maastricht Treaty (1992): it appeared necessary in the light of the experience that some governments (especially in southern Europe) tended, and still tend, to solve their own economic problems by increasing their debt, well knowing that this is the wrong road to go down, but in the hope of buying time in this way to get the situation under control. This has had terrible consequences for the economic fortunes of these countries. The depreciation of their currencies has inevitably been followed by an increase in their unemployment and a loss of prosperity. With the budgetary rules prescribed by the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability Pact (1997) the aim was to curb these malpractices in the Monetary Union.As we have seen, however, the contractual agreement that led to the Monetary Union does not preclude the misconduct of some of its members. This has posed a fundamental problem for the Monetary Union: so long as it comprises sovereign states, in other words does not have its own state system in which all members are subjected to a common discipline based on a shared Constitution, the construction of such a union remains precarious in spite of all mutual promises. So, the Monetary Union especially needs to be integrated by a tougher monetary union in which financial and budgetary policy are conceived and controlled at the Community level. Moreover, the completion of the political union still remains an indispensable objective, without which, in the long run, the euro will lose its raison d’être and its value. It would be utterly wrong to interpret the Chancellor’s hesitation as a lack of solidarity with a partner in an emergency. Merkel’s attitude derives, rather, from her concern for the long-term stability of the euro and for the subsistence and future of the European Union. When she insists on the need for the Greek government to create by its own efforts the preconditions for an aid package by its partners, Merkel not only wishes to ensure that the reform of the Greek finances be introduced in a definitive way, but also intends to give an incontrovertible warning signal to other partners that have taken the same road of indebtedness. This pedagogical intention has not been understood everywhere and is criticized in particular by those who fail to adopt an attitude of this kind, so inconvenient and rigorous but objectively necessary. Each crisis conceals within itself an opportunity. The movement of European unification has always had a forward impetus in times when it was important to overcome a crisis. The members of the governments and parliamentarians of member states can hardly ignore the strength of persuasion of the lessons drawn from the present crisis. Those lessons consist, first, of a responsible and sustainable government in their own national interest and in that of the EU as a whole; and, second, of the political and institutional development of the Union into a federation that can count on a government with the capacity to act within its own area of responsibility.