El único camino para el euro

Interesante -brillante- reflexión de Wolfgang Münchau sobre el único camino que hay para salvar al euro. Para Münchau, el euro es un sistema de cobertura de seguro transnacional contra determinados riesgos. No es suficiente porque la cobertura legal no lo es. Ña cobertura legal es nacional, la soberanía legal de cada nación partícipe. Pero lo que se refiere es una seguridad legal imperial, por encima de cada nación. La que hay hasta ahora se basa en Tratados, y los Tratasos pueden conculcarse, porque la Ley vigente en cada estado miembro es superior (creo que Miguel E nos ha recordado esto varias veces). Ergo el sistema de compromiso de ayuda por un sistema de cobertura de riesgos puede incumplirse. La única manera de comprometer a Alemania en firme en una asociación de cobertura obligatoria sería someterse a la soberanía de Berlín (lo que de facto sucede implícitamente), o construir una soberanía común. Si no, siempre podrá haber un miembro que diga NO. 

... Implicit in any economic model of insurance is the presence of a legal framework, and of a state that ensures the insurance pays out or protects against fraud. Since such legal frameworks exist in most countries, there is no need for economists to care much about legal enforcement. 

But we are dealing here with insurance among sovereign states. There is no state above them that can impose legal certainty. Insurance can be regulated through multilateral contracts or treaties but these can be unilaterally rescinded. Most western states have a rule preventing parliaments from making binding commitments on their successors. An insurance contract between states would violate that principle.

The idea of crisis resolution through insurance suffers from an internal contradiction. The intention is to create something lighter than a political union, but you need a political union to provide the legal and political framework to make insurance possible...

... Advocates of insurance-based systems also tend to ignore an important political reality. If you want to co-opt Berlin into writing an insurance policy for you, then you will have to accept a loss of sovereignty. And the only place to which any sane person would want to transfer this sovereignty would be a political union, not the German state.

My conclusion is that there is no way around a political and fiscal union in the long run, even if the idea is growing less fashionable. Without it, I see no counterweight to a rise in German power in the eurozone and no end to the rise in intra-eurozone imbalances. The German current account surplus was almost 8 per cent of economic output last year and is still rising. Without a political union, there is a risk that at least one southern member state, probably Greece, Portugal or Italy, will opt to drop out of the eurozone. Even in Greece opposition to the euro is growing. 

There are many technical ways to make the eurozone sustainable in the long run, and insurance is a perfectly legitimate idea. It may be an alternative to joint debt instruments but not to a political and a fiscal union.

Siempre hemos defendido en este blog la Europa de las naciones, de intereses comunes, pero de estados plenamente soberanos, frente a la confusión actual, en la que la UE ha raptado trozos de soberanía pero no ha sabido articularlas en defensa del bien común.