Kinsman: How can the G20 help save the euro zone?

By:
Jeremy Kinsman
/
7 November, 2011
By: Jeremy Kinsman
Former ambassador to the European Union and high commissioner to Britain

The notion the G20 might extend national credits to help cover excessive Euro-debt got nowhere.

The G8 became ineffective because China, India, and Brazil weren’t in it. The G20 looks ineffective because China, India and Brazil are in it, very defensively.

 The IMF can extend some supervised credit. But this multi-layered crisis is Europe’s to solve.

Solutions are discussed only on surface layers covering debt issues. Lasting solutions require going deeper down to correct existential defaults of EU governance. Without a common fiscal policy for members, the Euro will remain distrusted. But from Day One, political leaders kept taxation power in their national Parliaments to permit pursuit of differing political/electoral agendas.

Can politicians finally together confront the unaffordability of Europe’s high-pension social model against low growth and birth rates and aging populations? “We all know what we have to do,” said Jean Claude Junckere, PM of Luxembourg. “The problem is getting re-elected afterward.” So it goes.

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