The euro’s founding father has warned that Europe’s latest plan for an EMU-wide finance ministry is a dangerous attempt to smuggle through political union, and breaches the basic tenets of modern democracy. Professor Otmar Issing, the chief architect of monetary union through its early years, said it would be “dangerous” to transfer control over tax and spending to the EU federal level before full political union has been established first on democratic foundations. Such a quantum leap in the constitutional structure of Europe—effectively the creation of an EU superstate, with a parliament comparable in power to the US Congress—is unthinkable...