Free Republic

The European Union and the eurozone have already taken important federalist steps to counter the debt crisis, which go beyond mere economic governance, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said yesterday (22 April) at the 2013 Think Tank Dialogue. A few months after his state of the Union address, in which he called for turning the EU into “a federation of nation states,” the Commission chief tried to dissipate fears about federalism. “More integration is simply indispensable for our economy, to shield us from international rough weather to face strong completion and maintain the trust of markets and investors,” Barroso...

The voters rejected the tutelage of Mario Monti and Angela Merkel, sabotaging the Chancellor's strategy of postponing the euro crisis until after Germany's September elections. To avoid a complete disintegration of the European consensus, the integration process must get back on track now. Angela Merkel has done everything she could to clear away the danger of new outbreaks of instability in Europe in the lead-up to the German elections in September. In Italy, she played the Monti card to the full – without going beyond declarations of esteem – anxious as she is to avoid the boomerang effect that caught...