To further advance the economic and monetary union, it is necessary to continue and accelerate the path towards a real political union. Which is the first condition to ensure stability and prosperity in all the member states of the EU itself, and, ultimately, to give Europe a future. This is, in a nutshell, the message that Mario Draghi essentially (although not explicitly) addresses to the governments and parliaments of the Eurozone countries. A message, calm in form but concerned in substance, which illustrates with clarity of reasoning the reasons why structural reforms are essential, in a European context of strengthened political and institutional integration, for the recovery of the economy and employment growth in all 19 states that have adopted the euro (none excluded, even if some march faster and others are late).
The message from the president of the European Central Bank takes the form of a written speech for "Project Syndicate", an American agency that distributes articles written by many of the world's leading personalities in the fields of economy, finance, politics, human rights development. And it is published at the same time as a long interview given by Draghi to the German economic-financial newspaper "Handelsblatt".
The testimony confirms the ECB president's constant attention to an economic and employment recovery that is still weak and therefore slow to assume the character of stability. A situation that obliges Draghi, like a doctor at the bedside of a seriously ill patient, to reiterate that Frankfurt has the tools necessary to intervene at a time when the recession, which has not yet passed, especially in some member states of the Eurozone (among these there is Italy), should unfortunately veer towards the much feared deflation.
However, Draghi's concern does not take on the guise of a "red alert". His speech for "Project Syndicate" indeed underlines that the economic and monetary union, even if still incomplete, continues to ensure a good level of stability to the countries that belong to it precisely "thanks to the considerable degree of integration achieved by the countries of the European Union, made even more profound by sharing a single currency”.
But what does it mean to “complete” a monetary union? “It mainly means – Draghi clarifies – creating the conditions for countries to achieve greater stability and prosperity by becoming part of them. They must be in better conditions by adhering to it than by staying out of it”.
Among these assumptions is still lacking in the Eurozone, where, moreover, there is a "strong common identity" among the member countries, the glue for "permanent budget transfers between richer and poorer regions". Glue that in the euro area has only a pale imitation represented by the cohesion policy. “We therefore need – underlines Draghi – a different approach to ensure that each country is better off within the euro area on a permanent basis”.
Hence the need to adopt "structural reforms that stimulate competition, reduce the superfluous burden of bureaucracy and make labor markets more adaptable". Reforms whose implementation, clarifies the president of the ECB, "until now has been largely a national prerogative, but in a Union like ours it is clearly a matter of common interest".
And so the time has come for the next step, says Draghi. Firstly to ward off "the specter of an exit which all members would ultimately suffer the consequences of". Furthermore, it becomes increasingly "fundamental to improve the distribution of risk" in order to "share the cost of shocks", any but possible, among all the member states of the Eurozone. And it is equally necessary that "national budgetary policies are able to play their stabilizing role".
Ultimately, concludes the president of the ECB, economic convergence between countries "must be a condition to be met on a lasting basis". And therefore "to complete the monetary union it will ultimately be necessary to further strengthen the political union, defining its rights and duties in a renewed institutional framework".
