Financial Times
February 9, 2012
The 20th anniversary of the signing of the Maastricht treaty passed largely unremarked on Tuesday as the crisis in the eurozone preoccupied governments and the financial markets. Yet even as negotiations in Athens edged towards Thursday’s agreement on rescheduling the Greek debt burden, the pact that laid the foundations for Europe’s single currency was heralded by Chancellor Angela Merkel in a speech to students.
In an unusually appropriate setting – surrounded by Greek antiquities in the reconstructed Neues Museum in the centre of Berlin – Germany’s normally cautious leader spelt out elements of her vision on how to solve the eurozone crisis long-term.
Much was familiar. Eurozone countries needed both budget austerity to reduce their debts and structural reforms to boost their competitiveness and employment, she said. They needed to recreate trust in their finances and in each other. Then she turned to the construction of the EU. “Without doubt, we need more and not less Europe,” Ms Merkel declared. “That’s why it’s necessary to create a political union, something that wasn’t done when the euro was launched.”
She went on to suggest that this political union – “there will still be a lot of argument about it” – would be organised around the existing bodies of the soon to be 28-nation bloc. The European Commission, the Brussels-based executive arm, would – with competences transferred to it by nation states – act as a government reporting to a strong European parliament. The European Council of national heads of state and government would function as a second legislative chamber; the European Court of Justice would be the highest authority. “We believe that we will stand better together if we are ready to transfer competences step by step to Europe,” she said.
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