Historic, unprecedented, essential, are all deserved adjectives to qualify the EU Summit decision on the €750bn Recovery deal. Common debt issuance (almost Eurobonds) to fund European fiscal stimulus in a recession is the big innovation /1
Distributing more than half of the money, not through loans, but budget transfers, partly proportionate to need, are two other important points. Anyone, myself included, could quibble about details and small disappointments, but we shouldn´t /2
The crucial meaning of this decision is to make credible the idea that in serious socio-economic situations, the EU/EA will come to the rescue and will not leave member countries on their own. The EU and the EA are now seen as more robust and resilient. EU assets gained value /3
Merkel said it: “it was easier without the UK”. Post-Brexit, the multi-year budget was increased, not reduced. There is a new sense of geopolitical necessity and collective responsibility. This is not, though, a Hamiltonian moment. Fiscal union is not around the corner /4
The plans to be announced with the forthcoming State of the Union speech by von der Layen, besides the covid crisis, will presumably focus on the green goals, on the aims of technological sovereignty and industrial policy and on security concerns. /5
Perhaps EMU reforms will not be on the forefront of those plans. That will be regrettable, however. No European sovereignty can be enhanced without a strengthening of monetary union and of the international role of the euro, /6
No enhancement of the international role of the euro is possible without the creation of a market of European safe assets, with a size on the trillions. The significant issuance by the Commission of some hundreds of billion European bonds is far from enough for that objective /7
The unfeasible project of a tranched synthetic solution failed. There are however proposals on the table that do not involve mutualisation and use legal seniority of European claims over the national debts. It is high time for the Commission to make a new official proposal./end
