Financial Times
January 2, 2013
At the last European Council summit of 2012, politicians decided to go ahead with the banking union while ending their reflections on fiscal union they had initiated in June, a time of acute market stress. The message: banking union is needed; the rest is not.
This behaviour confirms that the eurozone has little appetite to think about its own future. Like negligent or impecunious homeowners who only contemplate repairs when the roof threatens to collapse, their overriding motivation is to avoid imminent disaster. As market expectations of break-up have abated, even a discussion on whether integration initiatives would make the currency area more resilient or more efficient seems superfluous.
There are several reasons for this stance.
First, few leaders still have ambitions for Europe. Most are disillusioned. Fighting the crisis in the eurozone has already proved divisive. The less further initiatives they take, the less they risk political problems at home.
Second, there is no agreement about what is desirable. Most observers in southern Europe and France regard systemic reforms to governance as necessary but most in Northern Europe consider the crisis has resulted from national economic policy failures.
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