I have always thought that a European Union based solely on a monetary and economic alliance was a bad one from the start and, ultimately, deleterious. On the one hand because the cold, mathematical laws of the economy and the markets, and of course the liberal ideology behind them, was unbefitting of those principles of equality and solidarity for which the Continental brand of democracy has been fabricated since the Second World War and, on the other, because the liberal market of competition and growth was destined to condemn this civilization (or civilizations) to an appalling colossal business enterprise and cementification of its territory (which is called growth).
The apparently irresistible forces of globalization are, in this sense, a new and more insidious form of colonialization, not exercised by dint of armies and chancellors, but the banks and the world's financial institutions, which have, as is presently taking place, usurped the role that politics once had in governing within the interests and aspirations of the various forces of popular groups. Now it is solely the markets, which means the liberal demands of profit and competitiveness, that establish the political agenda and the criteria upon which decisions are made, which has with frightful alacrity cancelled about 200 years of social commitment, struggle and conquest. In short it is capital, and those oligarchs who control it, which irresistibly reigns over the powers of labor and production, instead of it being put to the use of creating work and social well-being. In short finance, which means drawing profit from capital investments for profit's sake alone and that isn’t put back into the real economy, has taken the place of Keynesian investments to stimulate the job market and common prosperity, because finance has no other regard, has no social consciousness whatsoever, than in maximizing profit at the gambler's markets and casino economy.
This began in the 80's under Reagan and has reached a point at which Europe is quite willing to sell itself off to the oligarchs of world finance and banking, for which Mario Monti is perhaps the perfect incarnation of just where we stand socially and democratically today: which is the state of the contract between government and society.
Having said that it's interesting to see why the EU, based on a monetary and economic union alone, isn't a workable solution. Europe, as is well known, suffers from a poor competitiveness that's accompanied by a public spending that's too high, at least in regards to the cold, mathematical laws of financial capitalism. Now leaving aside the economic model in question (or at least accepting that no alternative exists now, or in the foreseeable future) let's take a look at why politically Europe, as it is currently operating, simply is unworkable.
For a Europe based on monetary union to work presupposes a common economic policy, which itself presupposes a common political agenda. None of which is presently the case. In fact Europe, in this moment, is without leadership and without solution. An unsolvable rebus. To ask Greece, for example, to pay down its debt by razing everything to the ground doesn't work. To ask Germany to pay for the southern States doesn't work either. A union of economic policy without a political consensus won't work. To try and obtain a political consensus without political union won't work either. And to try to obtain a political union without a political consensus (which means one based on popular agreement), again, won't work. The only way is to, in fact, take the political union and consensus out of the equation, by having a supranational power, i.e. the banks and financial oligarchs, bring the necessary pressure to bear on the legislative bodies to pass laws which force money to go where it's needed to save nationally insolvencies and defaults to avoid a catastrophe (which will be first financial, as the oligarchs know and is all they care about, and then social, which is what everyone else cares about). But what dreadful consequences this has for Europe’s democracy!
Yet it seems that this is precisely what Europe, pushed by global financial powers and the IMF, of which the US is the biggest shareholder, and the US political-economic establishment, is willing to do. In the end, the only thing that has prevented Europe from already arriving at the foregone conclusion, are the residual forces, much attenuated, of political and popular voices that were once called the powers of democracy. But the aplumb with which the same Mario Monti has maneuvered through the shark infested waters, because he is in fact not bound by consensus at poles and featherbagged by the same banking establishment of which he himself is a product, has only made the continued bickering and calculating of the traditional democratic political forces like Merkel and Sarkozy seem pathetically ridiculous. Result in the struggle of finance vs. democracy: democracy KO. The financialization of the economy has simply put democracy on a systemic overhaul, for which the political forces are dominated by the interests of investment capital, which itself isn’t put to the tangible benefit of society, but the abstract growth of the secondary markets, wherre risk and avarice are the only governing principles (or at least those most rewarded). Now this may have triggered an unprecedented financial growth over the last 30 years or so, which had its effects on the primary market (but what ghastly effects they were with all the ugly cemetification of what used to be beautiful, uncorrupted territories –all those building crimes! - and inane and useless products of conspicuous consumption). But we should begin to ask ourselves: is this world condemned to eternal growth and in which finance has taken the place of democracy, a world we want to live in?
Finance may have given the West all the comforts of an incredibly boring and numbing consumerism, but life is much more powerful than that. It would be enough for society to remember it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/fiscal-union-cannot-save-the-euro/249093/