That only happens because Europe has this romantic idea of the nation state, each with self-governance. For it to work, you’d need each country to become part of a “United States of Europe” with power coming from a centralised source. Right now, Europe is fractured politically, hence the troubles.

That's a very major part but there is more to it than that. Fundamentally, the economies of, say, Greece and Finland just aren't that similar. They're based on different goods, the countries have vastly different cost of living, the different cultures lead to different demands etc. You can't just ram them together and hope for the best; there will always be... economic tortion stress (for want to a better phrase) that will end up tearing them apart. You have to work to get the economies at some level of parity first. It's debatable if that would ever have been possible with half the nations that are actually in the euro now.

The politicians threw a massive spanner in the works when they decided it was more important to have the emerging nations in the Euro than it was for the Euro to have a proper economic base. So they fudged the rules and let them in, even though they didn't nearly meet the criteria that had initially been (very sensibly) set. Basically they broke the Euro just as much as the bankers did.

They had two choices : limit the Euro to the countries that were fit to have it, or use it as an inappropriate too for political change, rather like using a Stradivarius to knock in a nail. It seems they didn't realise choices have consequences.

Jon

In truth, there's no massive similarity between the economies of Delaware and Alabama either, yet there has been monetary union between them for really quite a long time. Unfortunately for Germany, this is achieved through massive subsidies forked out by rich states like New York and Massachusetts, greedily devoured by poor ones like Alabama and Mississippi.

That kind of wealth transfer is hard to accept if you see it coming, but it seems to be ok if you ignore it and it sneaks up on you. I guess somebody was thinking along those lines when they agreed to let the obvious basket-cases into the Euro.

For me, the underlying flaw in the Euro and the wider Euro project, is that it always follows the path of least resistance. The decision making process assumes that anything hard to do is not worth trying to do. So the obvious alternative is to let committees make every decision, and never, under any circumstances, to ask people to agree to a positive vision. The Euro narrative is always about inevitability, the futility of resistance (see the old Britain is too small to have its own currency argument), and the dangers of being outside the fast lane - risking loss of influence or a treasured privilege. It's not just that this outlook is negative, it's also rather feudal.

The legacy of the bureaucracy, the democratic deficit, the complete absence of vision is... a kind of torpor. It's getting kind of sad to watch Sarkozy and Merkel try to get something done. They have absolutely no idea what to do, and it doesn't matter because nobody ever thought to create a mechanism by which anything might actually be done.

The Greeks have only in the last couple of months agreed a package to reform their universities. Until now, the average Greek student has taken & years to complete a degree which is academically less valuable than one secured in 3 years in England. It took decades of arguing for them to agree to do anything about that. If the Euro had been designed with a gag reflex, it would have vomited Greece up years ago - to the benefit of all concerned.


The books thing is fine by me though, it seems like something that bureaucrats should be encouraged to handle. I say give them more of this stuff to do, perhaps they will stop buggering everything else up.