Europe Is Heading Toward a New Financial Crisis
Beware the loop of doom.
Photographer: Francesca Volpi/Bloomberg
Photographer: Francesca Volpi/Bloomberg
Europe faces a predicament. Even as it struggles to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s setting itself up for another crisis — this one financial. To ensure the viability of the common currency at the heart of the European project, the EU’s leaders will have to cooperate in ways they’ve so far resisted.
Adopting the single currency has yielded great benefits, from frictionless trade to improved global competitiveness. But the euro also obliged member states to relinquish the independent monetary policies that can help backstop national debts and financial systems.