CAN EUROPE RISE TO THE CHALLENGE? EU POLICY RESPONSES TO THE GLOBAL CRISIS

The financial and economic crisis has revealed what is wrong with globalisation: lack of global regulation, the extreme imbalance between the world’s economies and the unequal distribution of benefit and risk. Countries that, in recent years, have managed to lift themselves into a state of modest affluence are in danger of being cast back into their previous survival mode. A return to economic nationalism, or more popularly protectionism, would only make things even worse. De-globalisation is no utopia but rather a spectre of doom. Not just because it will mean a loss of wealth around the globe but also because economic fragmentation can foment political nationalism - remember the 1930s.

The crisis has cruelly exposed the shortcomings of the European Union. We have a single market and a single currency but no European coordination of economic and financial policy. European economies, however, are, for better or for worse, interdependent. Standing by countries up to their neck in debt is not altruistic but a rational act.

In their time, De Gaulle and Adenauer, Kohl and Mitterrand knew how to make the sort of historical compromise that helped advance the construction of Europe. If Merkel and Sarkozy will not find the political courage to support a new equilibrium, they will have to assume the risk that monetary union could fall apart and as a consequence set Europe back more than 50 years.


Chair: tbc