Fairytales are an inseparable part of not only child’s world, but even many grown-ups believe in fairytales. There is an interesting category in this genre, the so-called European fairytales, in which grown-ups in Brussels believe. One of the newest is that about the real Economic and Monetary union. It goes like this. Few years ago, an evil world invoked a catastrophe on Europe in the form of economic crisis. Europe was defenseless, because there was not a real Economic and Monetary union. That is why the economic crisis have had such a significant consequences: economic growth has disappeared and a big plague in form of a high rate of unemployment came into being. Situation was serious, but not desperate. Clever heads in Europe found out a miracle recipe. Just to build a real European economic and monetary union and then Europe will become a paradise on Earth.
Even though this European fairytale is quite new, it has already became popular to such a degree in Brussels, that almost everybody believes it. Moreover, what candidate for President of the European Commission would it be, if he had not acquire it? No, Jean Claud Juncker really has not made this fault. In his program of 10 points that was released already in July, a point about ‘a deeper and more just Economic and Monetary union’ stands out. In a way he applied for the ever-widening church, whose main point of admire is centralized Economic and Monetary union.
The main dogma of this church is a misled trust that a fast developing of a real union is like a magic wound, thanks to which we will be able to let such an inconvenient features like stagnation and unemployment are disappear. That is an essential mistake. The problem of Europe do not lie in the absence of bigger European budget, European own taxes, single budgetary policy and a strong European commissioner for this area. If Europe suddenly had these strong tools, we would not be closer to European heaven, but to European hell. After that, it would be clear that the problem was not missing strong tools, but an absence of a consensus about their usage at all.
That is why it is useless, and even dangerous, to waste time realizing an utopic dream about solving all our problems by miracles coming from the up, from the center, from Brussels, from new-established European institutions and their tools. It would be better if there were a will here down, in terrain of every single country, to start finally doing such a policy, which would change the Europe of pedantic and uncompetitive to the union of flexible and dynamic economies. That is the point where a fairytale ends and other story starts, a story without a guarantee of happy conclusion, a story with an open ending.
Translation: Jana Kobzová
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