FRANKFURT (MNI) – The Eurozone must integrate further and Germany
must remain at the center of a strong currency, ECB President Mario
Draghi said in an op-ed for German newspaper Die Zeit released
Wednesday.
“To continue to prosper, Germany needs to remain an anchor of a
strong currency, at the center of a zone of monetary stability and in a
dynamic and competitive euro area economy. Only a stronger economic and
monetary union can provide this,” Draghi wrote.
But Draghi said further integration does not require a straight
choice between breaking up the Eurozone or the “United States of
Europe,” nor does political union have to proceed at the same pace as
economic union.
The monetary union has clearly “not yet fully succeeded as a
polity,” he said. “Currencies ultimately depend on the institutions that
stand behind them.”
Therefore, “a new architecture for the euro area is desirable to
create sustained prosperity for all euro area countries, and especially
for Germany.”
“Yet this new architecture does not require a political union
first,” Draghi said. “It is clear that monetary union does entail a
higher degree of joint decision-making. But economic integration and
political integration can develop in parallel. Where necessary,
sovereignty in selected economic policy fields can and should be pooled
and democratic legitimation deepened.”
Draghi said one should instead look at the “minimum requirements”
for economic and monetary union, “and in doing so, we will find that all
the necessary measures are firmly within our reach.”
On the fiscal side, Draghi called for “true oversight over national
budgets. The consequences of misguided fiscal policies in a monetary
union are too severe to remain self-policed.”
Turning to financial union, he said that “there need to be powers
at the center to limit excessive risk-taking by banks and regulatory
capture by supervisors.”
— Frankfurt bureau: +49 69 720 142; email: frankfurt@mni-news.com —
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