Weidmann (Bundesbank): “From Italy to the Stability Pact violations.” And tow Padoan on risk sharing – Il Sole 24 Ore

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This article was published April 26, 2016 at 18:58 hours.
the last change is the April 26, 2016 at 19:51.

a tribute to Italy, the speech of the president of the Bundesbank Jens Weidmann German Embassy in Rome , opens with a quotation from a joke by Tommaso Padoa Schioppa, one of the founding fathers of the single currency, which was “extremely appropriate” the denoniminazione English European Monetary Union, abbreviated as “EMU”, because “as its Australian namesake – the emu – also the monetary union can not run backwards. ” So this is going, and the way Weidmann would be to proceed with closer integration, or ‘Member States is transferring decision-making power and the responsibility for budgetary issues at the European level, for example in the form of a fiscal union European. ” A European Treasury in practice, “a true fiscal union (which) could actually restore the right balance between action and responsibility.”

Tax Union “would be the biggest step in the integration process”
But this would require, he says the president of the Bundesbank in his speech dedicated to “solidity and solidarity in ‘ monetary union “, extensive changes to European treaties and subsequent confirmatory referendums in different countries. “Enormous obstacles”, according to the head of the Bundesbank: “At the moment I do not see the will to overcome these limitations, neither in Italy nor in Germany nor in other countries.” The central banker then quotes the president of the Council Matteo Renzi: “Last year, at the presentation of the Italian budget said that the Italian tax policy is made in Italy and that Italy does not allow it to be dictated by Brussels bureaucrats . This would change in a fiscal union. ” A Member State should fulfill the demands of a European tax authorities. A fiscal union “would be the biggest step in the integration process since the euro to date.”

Without quantum leap necessary to strengthen ties of Maastricht
but if states do not transfer these powers, if “continue to have sovereignty on the budget ‘, then it must also” bear the responsibility for the consequences. ” According therefore Weidmann “Now we have to decide if the final step will be to dare a leap towards greater integration or whether it should be strengthened the principle of the responsibility enshrined in the Maastricht framework ‘. And “if you are afraid of the renunciation of national sovereignty, the strengthening of the existing framework remains the only alternative to make the most stable monetary union.” A perspective still an uphill struggle, given that “since there is monetary union the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact were violated by some states, including even Italy, more often than they have been ‘observed. Among the countries from the wrong Weidmann also he brings his own, remembering that “even Germany, in the years 2003/2004, has helped weaken the binding force of the rules.”

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