European Council On Foreign Relations: EU Needs To Use Crisis For Greater Power

Several more autocratic international voices have added their weight behind proposals to vastly empower the EU with greater authority to govern over nation states in Europe, in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis. Meanwhile, one leading commentator has described the move as “fiscal fascism”.

Proposals tabled yesterday by the European Commission, the legislative arm of the EU, would greatly diminish the ability of nation states to set their own fiscal policies, in favour of a move toward a centralized european treasury.

“There is still a long way to go. We have opened the gate. Now we have yet to go through it,” said Ulrike Guerot, an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.

“The crisis has shown us we need to animate moves toward closer political union as well as monetary union and we need a quantitative jump.” Guerot added in comments to Reuters.

“The EU has used crises in the past to make that kind of jump and this is what is needed now.” the German researcher concluded.

“This could be the fuel injection needed to put Europe on course toward closer political and economic union, the goal that drove its founding fathers and leaders a generation ago such as Germany’s Helmut Kohl, France’s Francois Mitterrand and former European Commission President Jacques Delors.” notes Reuters writer Timothy Heritage.

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