Hoje recomendamos a leitura de um artigo de Guy Verhofstadt, antigo primeiro ministro Belga e lider do grupo Liberal Democrata no Parlamento Europeu.
Alguns excerto (em inglês) do artigo “The Economic Governance the EU Needs” no Project Sindicate (vale a pena ler na íntegra):
“Two lessons have emerged from Europe’s financial crisis. First, there is no substitute for timely and coordinated action when the single currency is under pressure. Second, all eurozone countries are effectively in the same boat. If the boat springs a leak, everyone sinks.
A quicker and more concerted response might have limited the fall-out from the crisis, and thus its cost. (…)
Despite all this, markets remain unconvinced by the eurozone’s shows of solidarity. Greek sovereign debt has been downgraded to below that of Egypt. Portugal has had to ask for assistance from the EFSF and the International Monetary Fund. Irish banks reportedly need an additional €24 billion to stay afloat. And Spain is doing all it can to avoid the contagion.
The irony is that the euro has been a hugely successful project, bringing considerable stability to participating countries. Indeed, without the single currency, many of these countries would have succumbed to a downward spiral of devaluation, default, and recourse to the IMF.
The European Central Bank has played a crucial role in preventing a worst-case scenario, but the obvious lacuna in Europe’s economic and monetary union (EMU) remains: EMU established only a monetary union and largely omitted the economic union that has proven so closely linked to the euro’s strengths and weaknesses.
The real crisis facing Europe is one of economic governance. Eurozone member states have increasingly gone their own way, even overtly defending nationalist economic policies that harm the eurozone as a whole.
This is not to say that a single economic policy should be imposed on everyone; but Europe does need a higher degree of coordination and convergence to ensure that everyone is at least heading in the same direction. Like cars on a highway, some may drive more slowly than others, but there are minimum and maximum speeds and all must go with the flow of traffic. (…)
If European countries are to emerge stronger from the current crisis, they need to think bigger and put more faith, not less, in the collective enterprise that is the EU. After all, European unification was conceived as a project of pooled sovereignty, not surrendered prosperity.”
