Jones: Is Jean Monnet’s dream for Europe ending in nightmare?
No. It has often taken crises to cause Europe to lurch ahead, often inelegantly. The Eurozone crisis is no exception. What’s the main reaction of Europe’s financial and political elites to the threat of potential unraveling? Not a retreat to nationalism. Rather, a proposal for deeper fiscal union. It’s too early to tell whether Europe’s politicians can sell that to Europe’s populations. But betting on the failure of European integration has been a losing proposition for four decades. Each step along the way – most recently with the Lisbon Treaty – integration goes less far than the idealists would propose. But it keeps going, slowly, steadily, incrementally. Ironically, it may take the Eurozone crisis to get Europe to start acting as an integrated financial power – which would reverse the trend of the erosion of European influence.
