Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union

The array of management structures built for the Eurozone in the past years is impressive, though still incomplete.
All of it was set up in firefighting mode, with the EU’s leaders doing their best to contain crisis after crisis.
The same happened this year, with successive crises occurring on a wider front than that covered by the euro narrative.
The firefighting has been successful.
The collateral social costs have been high.
But the structures set up under the Stability and Growth Pact might reflect too much the contingencies surrounding the euro crises of the past.
They are probably sufficient now to protect the euro from a recurrence of a crisis like that of 2008.
Will they be adequate to face up to the challenges of the future, to a new kind of crisis?
For instance, today’s challenges arise from economic fragility and stagnation; lack of job creation and competitiveness; low public and private investment.
Success in dealing with them has been very limited.
As we follow the liturgy of the European semester, has the time also come to reflect radically on the design of the economic and monetary union?
Do we need to think outside the box, not to undermine the achievements, but to update them?
As we bemoan the lack of competitiveness, could it be that the design of the Stability and Growth Pact itself inhibits competitiveness?
Why with “more Europe”, as this has been hesitantly implemented, have we failed to achieve higher competitiveness and investment?
Is the setting up of new bureaucratic councils to preach about competitiveness really the right answer?
Do we need a revision of the Stability and Growth Pact?
Perhaps beyond the consolidation of existing management structures, we need a root and branch appraisal of how emu has developed up to now.