Social democrat Sigmar Gabriel and French economics minister Emmanuel Macron call for embryo euro area budget and fiscal powers
German and French politicians are calling for a quantum leap in how the EU’s single currency is run, proposing an embryo eurozone treasury equipped with a eurozone finance chief, single budget, tax-raising powers, pooled debt liabilities, a common monetary fund, and separate organisation and representation within the European parliament.
They also propose that all teenagers in the EU be given the chance to spend a subsidised six months in another European country.
In an article published in the Guardian and other European newspapers, Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s social democratic leader and vice-chancellor in Angela Merkel’s coalition government, and Emmanuel Macron, France’s young reformist economics minister, advocate a radical shift in integration of the eurozone, following five years of single currency crisis that have come close to tearing the EU apart.
They call for the setting up of “an embryo euro area budget”, “a fiscal capacity over and above national budgets”, and harmonised corporate taxes across the bloc. The eurozone would be able to borrow on the markets against its budget, which would be financed from a kind of Tobin tax on financial transactions and also from part of the revenue from the new business tax regime.
The eurozone’s current bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, which is made up of national contributions under a deal between governments, would be made a common eurozone instrument and converted into a European Monetary Fund.
The entire new regime would come under the authority of a new post of euro commissioner who would be answerable to eurozone MEPs who, in turn, would need to have a separate sub-chamber in the European parliament.
In reference to the Greek crisis currently moving towards some form of denouement, the two leading figures say the new regime they are proposing should also establish “a legal framework for orderly and legitimate sovereign debt restructurings, should they become necessary as a last resort. This would prevent both inappropriate use of crisis lending and self-defeating bouts of austerity when countries face unsustainable debts.”
Germany and France are the two biggest countries in the eurozone. Gabriel and Macron are both seen as youngish leaders of reformist social democracy in an EU, however, dominated by the centre-right, suggesting that their ideas might struggle to find traction.
Many of the proposals entail a pooling of liability for public finances and debt, moves that have been strongly resisted by Merkel throughout the crisis.
Merkel and President François Hollande of France have also agreed a document on eurozone reforms to be put to a Brussels summit of EU leaders later this month. The radicalism of the Gabriel-Macron initiative is quite at odds with the Franco-German summit paper, which is low-key.
Merkel and Hollande say there should be no reopening of the EU treaties for the foreseeable future. The blueprint published in the Guardian would require a total overhaul of the EU treaties.
As part of their campaign to rewrite the terms of Britain’s membership of the EU, David Cameron and especially George Osborne have been urging the eurozone to embark on such integration, hoping to exploit the renegotiation of the EU treaties to obtain a more far-reaching deal for the UK.
The Gabriel-Macron proposals acknowledge that their vision would also entail big changes for EU countries not in the euro.
“Strengthening the euro is not only about the eurozone itself. It cannot be isolated from a broader rethinking of the EU, not least because we need to be able to answer the key question: ‘what about the other member states?’ A stronger eurozone should be the core of a deepened EU. We need a simpler and more efficient Union, with more subsidiarity and a streamlined governance,” they write. “Our common goal shall be to render [it] unthinkable for any country rightfully in pursuit of its national interest to consider a future without Europe – or within a lesser Union.”
In what many might find an eyecatching idea, the Franco-German pair urge an expansion of the EU’s Erasmus student programmes to embrace all EU teenagers.
This “would allow every European reaching the age of 18 to spend at least one semester in another EU country to either study or follow an apprenticeship”.
