September 2, 2011
In response to the ongoing debt crisis, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble wants to expand the financial policy-making powers of the European Union. The far-reaching reforms would likely require a new EU treaty, the daily Bild reported on Friday.
The debt crisis has been a tough test of endurance for Europe. To better face such challenges in the future, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble wants to forge a new European Union treaty, the mass-circulation daily Bild reported Friday.
According to the report, Schäuble clarified his plan during a closed-door meeting of leaders of his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) on Thursday evening. Shifting greater powers over economic and financial policy to Brussels is necessary, he said according to the paper, "even though we know how difficult a treaty change will be."
Schäuble also acknowledged that such reforms would create a significant divide between the 17 European Union countries that use the euro and the remaining 10 that do not.
The EU treaty, signed in Maastricht in 1992, went into effect in 1993, and subsequent changes to the document have proven arduous and complicated. The most recent example was the signing of the Lisbon Treaty, which went into effect only after a protracted ratification process that was slowed by heated debate in individual member countries. One major stumbling block was the rejection of the treaty in a 2008 Irish referendum, which was reversed the following year in a second vote.
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