AP reports that Finance officials and experts gathered in Italy mostly agreed Saturday that Europe needs deeper political union to preserve the troubled euro — even though persistent national identities made the prospect politically unlikely in the near future.
Speakers at the annual Ambrosetti forum labored to articulate the emerging existential dilemma: Monetary union struggles without central budget control, but member nations want independence; and the imbalances that result could lead to a calamitous breakup of the euro — which no one wants either, especially since it could send the world economy into a tailspin.
Unless Europeans agree "to complete economic and monetary union ... with a fiscal union, with a strong governance, with a feeling that some political decision should be adopted in common by those who are sharing the single currency, we will not succeed," said Joaquin Almunia, a vice president of the EU commission, the closest thing to a central government in the union.
EU-Digest
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