

Last year, K. O’Rourke accurately wrote the following

[ http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/03/orourke.htm ]: “Europe is now defined by the constraints it imposes on governments, not by the possibilities it affords them to improve the lives of their people. This is politically unsustainable”. Since “muddling through” seems no longer possible, he reported two alternative, opposite solutions: “jump forward to a federal political Europe [where the single currency survives], on whose stage left and right can compete on equal terms”, or “return to a European Union without a single currency and let individual countries decide for themselves”.



In my opinion, a third way should be devised, so as to fight, as efficiently as possible, both the “status quo” and the “reformist” ideas of Schauble et al, those of Hollande et al

[ http://www.lejdd.fr/Politique/Francois-Hollande-Ce-qui-nous-menace-ce-n-est-pas-l-exces-d-Europe-mais-son-insuffisance-742998 ] and the resulting “franco-german consensus” that will probably emerge sooner or later – which seem to meet the well-known “Leopard’s principle” (if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change). Two decades after the Maastricht Treaty, a completely novel EU treaty is mandatory – not a mere set of “positive” , incremental amendments -, so as to develop a New European Project, under essential democratic principles, and avoid a sad situation, in the near future, where the foreseen “European common home” becomes replaced by a true “European house of correction”. We need to build a true, democratic European Union through a “cooperative European disunion”, where the Euro survives as a “common”, parallel currency – including for the United Kingdom and the other non-Euro states – but no longer as the single currency for a fraction of the EU (currently 19 out of 28 member states).



As proposed three years ago by some European Citizens [ http://building-a-true-european-union.blogspot.com ],



– The Euro should be a COMMON currency within the future EU – including the EU members outside the current ‘Euro Area’ – but not necessarily the SINGLE currency.

– In this context, the coexistence of TWO parallel currencies should be allowed in each EU member state (under certain conditions, established in a novel European Treaty), within the framework of an appropriate “Cooperative European Disunion” .

- Besides the “Common Euro”, the complementary currency in each member state could be either a “national currency” (…) or a completely new currency, shared by that member state and some other “compatible” EU member states, taking into account both the relevant macroeconomic issues and appropriate geographic, historic and cultural issues.



This solution could be a flexible basis for a future EMU-LTE (Economic and Monetary Union – Long Term Evolution ), with several stages; in an advanced stage of the EMU-LTE, the euro could be – at last! – the single currency in a fiscally and politically unified democratic EU. I believe that this extremely concise (but not modest) proposal could be a good basis for the required, flexible and realistic, “Plan B” – jointly saving the Euro and the European people.



In this context, a detailed treatment of the “common currency” issue should be carried out. An interesting approach was proposed in

http://blog.mondediplo.net/2013-05-25-Pour-une-monnaie-commune-sans-l-Allemagne-ou-avec

