The Euro Debate: Back to Square One

I was glad to write a preface for the Italian translation (La moneta rinnegata) of Martin Sandbu’s latest effort (Europe’s Orphan). A somewhat shorter version can be found on the website of LuissOpen.

In a few sentences, I believe that the interest of the book lies in two points:

• First, its rebuttal of the “flawed euro” narrative. This narrative is shared by euro skeptics and federalists (including myself more often than not), and it fatally hurts the capacity of the latter to win the argument. If the euro is flawed, and if a political union is not in the cards, then it is hard to argue against XX-exiters with arguments other than fear. And fear (Brexit docet) does not work.
• Second, Sandbu shows masterfully something I have also been saying, much less effectively: institutions (and money is one) do not make policies. People do. None of the policy mistakes that disseminate the euro crisis Via Crucis  was inevitable. In the piece for LuissOpen I notice that institutions may still bias the choice in certain directions (think of the Stability Pact), but in spite of that I join Sandbu in believing that the Euro is the scapegoat for policies that could and should have been different. La moneta rinnegata, indeed.

I would add something, that came to my mind after I had sent out the piece. Sandbu puts at the center of his narrative the issue of debt restructuring. It is the refusal of EU creditors to consider forgiveness for a debt that was anyway never to be repaid, that led to self-defeating austerity. Sharing the burden (debt relief) would have entailed lower costs and eventually, would have increased resilience and more sustainable public finances. The IMF recognized this fundamental contradiction, but the other creditors (must notably Germany) did not.

And they still don’t. I believe that the whole debate about risk sharing versus risk reduction, that shapes the discussion on EMU reforms, replicates the fault lines we saw at work for debt crisis management. On one side those who believe that market mechanisms or policy constraints, alone, cannot dampen the centrifugal forces that are inevitably built in any monetary union. On the other, those who believe that the collective convergence will happen once each member behaves, so that enhanced rules and firewalls are all that is needed for the euro to thrive.

Thus Sandbu’s book helps making sense of what happened, but also to assess the proposals for the future. Refusal to share costs linked to the debt crisis turned out to be a huge mistake. We should avoid making another one by refusing to fight divergence through risk sharing.