The European Union: A Viable Colossus?

The European Union is a term way ahead of its time. Instead of a union, we have a half-way house between an international organization and a confederation. The EU is sometimes presented as a peace project, but a more sober analysis would look at its beginnings as a cooperation among previous enemies necessitated by new superpowers that had totally sidelined them as world powers. The current problems of the EU are often ascribed to a “democratic deficit,” but they are more likely due to the absence of a common European identity and little delegation of power that matters from its still sovereign member states. The debt accumulation problem of the euro countries, although no greater than that of the United States and Japan, is often ascribed to the absence of national currencies in the member countries of the Eurozone. The euro was, however, adopted in large measure to get away from the classical problems of devaluations used to bridge the gap between wages and productivity.