Friday 3 June 2011

What Trichet wants: An EU finance ministry leading to a federal European state


The outgoing president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet has, in a speech he gave in Germany, suggested that the eurozone could in the future have its own finance ministry:

"Would it be too bold, in the economic field , with a single market, a single currency and a single central bank, to envisage a ministry of finance of the union?"

Of course, Trichet knows that the creation of an EU "finance ministry" is not going to be possible. Harvard and LSE professor Niall Ferguson here explains why.
PS
In the same speech, Trichet also stated his ultimate goal for Europe (which he shares with many of the present political leaders, who do not dare to say it publicly, because they know that the vast majority of  Europeans do not want it):

I think that [eventually] a confederation of sovereign states of a new type, with new institutions to manage the interdependence of today and tomorrow, would be fully in line with such a heroism of reason.

Of course, Trichet´s concept,"a confederation of sovereign states" does not make any sense. A confederation can not consist of sovereign states. Gobachev tried to transform the Soviet Union to a Union of Sovereign States, but we know where that led. So, what Trichet actually wants, is to transform the present somewhat diffuse EUSSR to a more formal federal EUSSR.   
(image by EU photo service)

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