It seems that I am neither crazy nor alone. It is not me, it is Jean Tirole who says it, so perhaps federalism advocated by an Economics Nobel Prize will be paid more attention:
"The federalist vision requires two pre-conditions. First, any
insurance contract must be signed behind a veil of ignorance: you
wouldn’t include solidarity in a buildings insurance plan if my house
were already on fire. It would eventually be possible to resolve the
current asymmetry between northern and southern countries by identifying
and isolating problems inherited from the past in order to confront
them; this is complex but can be done.
Then, and in the main,
countries sharing the same roof must have common laws in order to limit
moral hazard. It goes without saying that legal uniformity must apply to
laws which may create collateral damage for other European countries
and not, shall we say, the “pasteurisation” of supplies consumed in the
member state: subsidiarity must apply in areas where it creates no costs
for the rest of Europe.
The ECB’s centralised supervision within a
banking union raises a sliver of hope and might pave the way for common
deposits insurance since centralised supervision reduces the chances
that countries supervising their banks prudentially end up paying for
lax ones.
A Necessary Loss Of Sovereignty
But mutualisation
cannot be achieved regarding unemployment insurance. Effectively, the
unemployment rate in Eurozone countries is only partly determined by the
economic cycle and is very much linked to choices regarding employment
protection, active labour market policies, contributions to social
security, professional training bodies, the type of redistribution
(minimum wage or fiscal allowances), etc.
Clearly, countries
electing institutions that enable them to obtain a 5% unemployment rate
won’t want to “co-insure” countries that, de facto, opt for 20%
joblessness. The same holds for pensions and the mutual sharing of
debts. Against all this evidence, Europeans still cannot bring
themselves to think of giving up their sovereignty.
We Europeans
must accept the loss of sovereignty that’s necessary to live under one
roof. And, to do so, we should rehabilitate the European ideal and unite
to defend it against populist nationalism – and this is not easy these
days…"
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