The Fiscal Dimension of the Economic Integration

Previously to the “Euro currency’s birth” there was even more than a debate about; there was a real fight of ideas between pro- and against the new currency and its “renewed” Union around. Then, there came the moment around the year 2000 (i.e. the Euro currency in 1999, then the effective Euro in 2002) when the pro-Euro and pro-Union won the match – e.g. the “Happy new Euro!” and its fire-works feast – this Programme came to be successful, as previously drawn. The EU was done, as resulted from the Maästricht Treaty (1992); so was the Euro and its Euro-Area/Euro-Zone/Euro-land. This was equally a new step taken into the integration process, as previously indicated by the “old” theory of economic integration. However, on the one hand this was not more than the euphoric end of an old period, on the other just the start of a new one that was going to be quite different and not entirely predictable. So, 2004-2005 was coming to be the moment of the French, Danish and Dutch voters’ rejection of the EU Constitution project on the very ground, 2008-2009 was the one of Lehman Brothers’ economic crisis, as international, and 2020-2021 the one called “Brexit” – the UK leaving the EU. Along this same period (2000-2023) context, first, singular voices came up in the literature for a presumable “fiscal union to accompany the monetary one”, but then such an idea, although not exactly disappeared, stays quite far from the current EU activities and projects. And from the literature, as well.