Is it possible to hypothesize that war favors European integration? Second Mario Monti, “we should take advantage of this dramatic circumstance to fill at least one of the gaps in the unification process: the common defence”. The former Prime Minister, who spoke on Friday during a conference at the Luiss University in Rome, has no doubts: "I have already let Brussels know that I would see a "Secure Eu" much more favorably than a "Next Generation EU 2 ” – he continued – With this last project, hypothesized by someone, I don't agree at all: I would find it almost harmful, because it would mean linking digital reforms and the green economy in an almost structural way to an aid plan extraordinary".
Tria: We need to create a Eurozone tax authority
From the same stage Giovanni Tria, Minister of the Treasury at the time of the yellow-green government, also indicated "another great void to be filled in the architecture of European governance: we have a common monetary authority, the ECB, but a Eurozone tax authority also needs to be created, overcoming the current system in which a Commission limits itself to judging and correcting the work of individual countries. In Brussels – Tria continued – there is no one who can say “whatever it takes”, and this is the vulnerability that needs to be remedied. But what is needed is real change, not some kind of institutional engineering."
Cavallari: single capital market, banking union, energy transition
Other steps towards the completion of European unification have been on the agenda for some time now, “such as the implementation of the single capital market and banking union”, he recalled Lilia Cavallari, president of the Parliamentary Budget Office. “The same process – he added – also includes the pursuit of common objectives, starting with transformative processes such as the energy transition and the climate transition. In more general terms, Europe has yet to define the role it intends to play in the new global economic order that will emerge from the pandemic and war".
Reichlin: European integration is hampered by political problems
But the path towards greater European integration cannot be analyzed only from an economic perspective. When we think about the shortcomings of the current system "we often talk about errors and delays, but I think these problems have to do with something deeper - he points out Peter Reichlin, professor of Macroeconomics at Luiss – There are some huge political problems which hinder the completion of the unitary European governance. The difficulty of reaching compromises derives from the fact that each government answers to the electorates of individual countries, not to those of Europe as a whole. This is why it is so difficult to find an agreement on the redistribution of risks and wealth".
