Ledende politikere og eksperter sier at svaret på eurosonens problemer er et United States of Europe.

I en tid da pendelen har sving i retning nasjonalstaten, vil man foreta et kvantesprang og innføre både en finansiell – dvs. skattemessig – og politisk union. Det er svimlende perspektiver, og man undres på om disse menneskene som foreslår det, er klar over risikoen og spenningene i dagens Europa.

Det de vil gjøre er å innføre den superstaten som Nei-bevegelsen har advart mot i alle år.

Dumdristig er ikke et dekkende ord.

På et tidspunkt da økonomien i flere land har store problemer, og befolkningene i land med overskudd knurrer over å måtte betale andres gjeld/gilde, våger man å foreslå at nasjonalstaten skal miste kontroll med skatter og finanser.

En politisk/finansiell union vil løse eurosonens problemer. Men det vil samtidig være et politisk overgrep. Befolkningene vil neppe finne seg i en slik maktoverdragelse og umyndiggjøring.

På rekke og rad har ledende politikere og eksperter fremholdt at EU ikke kan leve med ubalansen mellom eurosone og nasjonal kontroll.

The outgoing head of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, for his part on Monday told participants at a Paris conference that the bloc required a European “federal government with a federal finance minister.»

His successor, Italian central bank chief Mario Draghi added that strengthening the European bail-out fund must be completed, «But it is not enough. Let’s not forget that the crisis starts from the incompleteness of European construction.”

Targetting the multiplicity of fiscal policy approaches across the eurozone, he declared:

«We are discovering that we cannot live with this incompleteness any more.»

Gerhard Schröder sier rett ut at det som trengs er United States of Europe, en føderal stat.

Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor on Sunday said “Countries will have to give up some of their national sovereignty.” His vision involves fiscal powers being given to the commission or a European finance minister under the control of the European Parliament as “the ultimate authority”.

“The commission will have to be turned into a government that is controlled, in parliamentary terms, by the European Parliament. That translates into a United States of Europe.”

Tony Blair og en rekke andre kjente navn har dannet en tenketank de kaller Council on the Future of Europe. Disse er heller ikke skvetne, og vil foreta spranget inn i fremtiden:

A newly established think-tank, the Council on the Future of Europe, whose members include Schroeder, Tony Blair, former commission president Jacques Delors, former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez and economists Nouriel Roubini and Joseph Stiglitz on Monday issued a manifesto that called not just full fiscal union, but for parallel political union.

“It will be necessary to further lay out a vision of a federation that goes beyond a fiscal and economic mandate to include a common security, energy, climate, immigration and foreign policy as well as develop a common narrative about the future of the union and its place in the world,” the document read.

“Nation states will need to share certain dimensions of sovereignty to a central European entity that would have the capacity to source revenue at the federal level in order to provide European-wide public goods.”

Man forsøker å fremstille det som et nødvendig og uavvendelig skritt. Har man sagt A må man si B:

Speaking to EUobserver, Janis Ennanouilidis, a senior policy analyst with the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based EU specialist think-tank, said that moves in the direction of fiscal union and a new treaty are inevitable.

“It seems there is a growing consensus for treaty change, not just in the last few days or weeks, but this has been widening since the start of the crisis months ago,” he said.

“There is increasing awareness of just how dangerous a situation Europe is in – the potential break-up of the euro and the costs that would go along with that. They see the need to get ahead of the curve. To do that they have to go substantially further toward fiscal union.»

Spørsmålet er om det kan gjøres i henhold til Lisboa-traktaten. Trolig ikke. Da den var rodd i havn sa man at den skulle ligge fast i mange år. Nå har den tyske finansminister vært frempå om at den må åpnes og reforhandles.

Denne diskusjonen går over hodet på de fleste. Men det er snakk om en av de største forandringer i nyere historie: en superstat, der nasjonalforsamlingene blir sandpåstrøingsorgan, og reduseres til kommunestyrer.

Vil europeere finne seg i det?

On Tuesday, German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called for the second time in a week for changes to the treaties.

“Strengthening the eurozone’s architecture … may need profound treaty changes,” he wrote in an opinion piece for the Financial Times.

On Thursday, Schaeuble presented a plan to draft a new EU treaty to leading figures in his own party, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union, and its sister party, Bavaria’s Christian Social Union.

According to populist daily Bild, the finance minister made the argument for a major shift in fiscal policy-making powers to Brussels, a move that would almost certainly necessitate a fresh opening of the treaties holding the bloc together.

This must be done, he said, “even though we know how difficult a treaty change will be.”

Leigh Phillips

Spectre of fresh EU treaty returns to haunt ‘incomplete’ Europe