New European Economic Governance versus European Economic Government: From Market Constitutionalism toward a More Redist
The current debate about the management of the eurozone crisis focuses on correcting the failures of the structural design of the Economic and Monetary Union (Six pack, Two pack, European Semester, Euro Plus Pact, Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Gov
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New European Economic Governance versus European Economic Government: From Market Constitutionalism toward a More Redistributive Constitutionalism Ainhoa Lasa López 1
EUROZONE CRISIS AS A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
There have been many and varied interpretations of the various financial, economic and public debt crises that have threatened eurozone implosion over the last decade. Some scholars see the main trigger of the eurozone crisis as lying in the high level of indebtedness of some European Union Member States (EUMS).1 For those who consider the crisis to be one of sovereign debt, the solution lies in improving the legal framework of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).2 Others, however, see the eurozone crisis as a liquidity crisis in which the spread between public bond markets can only be avoided if the European Central Bank (ECB) is made into a lender of last resort, underwriting payment to holders of sovereign debt. This would entail questioning the overriding priority of price stability in the monetary policy.3
A. Lasa López () Department of State Legal Studies, Constitutional Law, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain © The Author(s) 2017 B. Pérez de las Heras (ed.), Democratic Legitimacy in the European Union and Global Governance, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41381-5_10
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A. LASA LÓPEZ
Both interpretations, while differing in the causes and solutions they propose, share a common belief that the problems arise from the EMU’s defective architecture. Indeed, they agree that this is a substantive problem, caused either by the asymmetries generated by the eurozone’s structural design itself, or by the rigidities that accompany fixed exchange rates. One might therefore think that reformulation of the design of the EMU in one sense or another would provide the necessary remedy for ending the current crisis and preventing future ones. However, various economists dissent, noting that these are short- or long-term responses that cannot overcome the eurozone’s institutional deficiencies and are thus ineffective for solving the real obstacle, the problem of taking collective actions in intergovernmental governance.4 This reasoning differs from the others in that it is committed to a federalization of relevant aspects of economic policy. The problems arise when the theoretical framework from which the functions of MS and European institutions are defined is the same, European Economic Governance (EEG). Some arguments seek to reconcile the two models as if the terms of the EEG–European government relationship could be conjugated in a multiplicity of mutually complementing meanings. If economic government is characterized by the primacy of politics legitimized by the possibility of public intervention in the economy, economic governance involves a radical change in the conception of politics, leading to the privatization of political decision-making.5 For this reason, we believe the issue is not merely a failure in the eurozone’s institutional architecture, as if it were an autonomous and independent
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