EU Referendum


Eurocrash: Draghi's integration pep-talk


23/07/2012



Draghi yua-671.jpeg

On Thursday we had the IMF play the panic card, telling the "colleagues" to go for greater integration.

Then, over the weekend we have ECB president Mario Draghi telling the French newspaper Le Monde that the EU "was inevitably marching towards closer union among its members". And, by the way, the euro was not in danger.

Analysts do not recognise "the political capital that our leaders have invested in this union and Europeans' support", he adds, thus informing us that: "The euro is irreversible". Then says the great man, the euro will need to rest on a foundation of greater integration among eurozone countries.

"All movement towards financial, budgetary and political union is for me inevitable and will lead to the creation of new supranational bodies," he says.

Nowhere though do we see in any of the media reports a small but important detail. Draghi is one of the four, with Barroso, Rumpoy and Juncker, the "quartet" of EU presidents charged with working up the "master plan" for further integration.

As one of the men whose job is to make it happen, Draghi is bound to push for more integration. His statement, in this context, is not remarkable. The real interest is in how there seems to be a concerted effort to stress how important the planned treaty is.

That itself suggests that there is significant internal resistance to further integration, almost certainly at a high level. One wonders if this is might be coming from Hollande. The French president is not yet on message and needs to be brought into line.

It could be, in that case, that the future of the entire project rests on a Socialist French president. Few things could be more ironic.