In his essay “Europe’s Perfect Storm: The Political and Economic Consequences of the Euro crisis,” Jan-Werner Muller argues that theresults of euro crisis had adverse impacts on the economic and political powers of some of the countries. Muller bases his argument on the regional imbalances between several European Union member states with his argument based on the rising Euro related crises which he states that they are the results of conflicting political agendas and economic imbalances experienced in the North and Southern parts of the European Union countries which were stimulated by the biased EU laws. The claims presented in the essay however, essentially provide limited empirical evidence that supports the argument and he has mostly used personal opinions in supporting his argument. He also provides an argument that the solution towards ending the crisis is embracing German’s proposal to make EU a federal state as a way of enacting full enforcement of the set legislations. The problem with Muller’s essay is that his argument is overshadowing other factors that fueled euro crisis as well as its consequences as he is focusing more on the politicalpowers and economic imbalances experienced in the Eurozone.
The basic assumption that Muller has used is to explain the reasons behind euro crisis is the regional imbalance that exist between the member countries in the north and the south(47). Political superiority being one of the imbalances experienced by the EU members is highly experienced before and after the eruption of the crisis and this further deteriorates the economic relationship that was supposed to exist between the EU members. Muller argues for EU to be successful, all the members “..first had to come closer together” meaning they had to be in the same level in terms of production and eradicating inflation. This argument is illogical as it neglects the fact that though EU’s main agenda is to promote economic development, all countries can never be in the same level in development as they do not have the same level of resources and also their system of governance may not be the same to support economic development.
Another argument that Muller uses to support his claims is the assumption that the existence of economic imbalances that were caused by bad policy making. He supports this claim by citing some of the progress that was seen after the formation of the European Union policies that resulted to progress of some countries in the North such as Italy who had recovered greatly from inflation.Formation of legislative clauses such as that of “60 percent debt to GDP policy” among others is hard to implement and as such, they had quietly forced some countries to become highly indebted while others in the North had benefited from the EU funds. This argument overlooks the positive policies that have promoted free trade within the regionhence benefiting some countries such as Portugal in recovering from high debts. Also the economic effort of a country determines their loans borrowing potential as well as their ability to handle the debts.This argument is also not convincing enough as despite receiving financial assistance from the European Union; such countries could have had other underlying issues that weakened the national economic plans that enabled them deal with their economic downfalls.
Muller argues that as a way of handling further deterioration of the European Union, dismantling or reducing the size of the existing Eurozone and centralizing the supervisory powers are among the possible way that will enable the existing laws to be followed to the latter.This, he argues is the same as a formation of a ‘political state’ according to the evidence he has provided to support his argument. He points out that “.theEuropean Union would take on at least some characteristics of a state” (50). This suggestion does not however provide the logic behind these actions nor does it provide the magnitude as to how big or small the union should be for it to be easily supervised and managed. The argument also overshadows other possibilities that could be adopted to handle the crisis such as coming up with development plans for each country that will help them boost their economic productivity
In “Europe’s Perfect Storm, “ Jan-Werner Muller focuses more on the political and economic imbalances as the key subsequent factors that resulted from the direct impact of Euro crisis. He has however failed to explore other various factors that could have led to the crisis as well as provide logical solutions that could be used in dealing with the aftermath of the crisis. In addition, though being a political and economic crisis, Muller fails to address the direct social impact of the crisis to the citizens resulting from unemployment to hatred among each other as a result of a blame game between the member countries. Also, though some countries gained more economic benefits than others, the fact is that all the members have benefited economically after the formation of European Union throughthe free trade legislations. Overshadowing other causes and effects of Euro crisis makes Muller’s argument weak and biased since this makes the reader feel that only the political motives of the member countries are to blame for the euro crisis.
Works Cited
Muller Jan-Werner.Europe’s Perfect Storm: The Political and Economic Consequences of the Eurocrisis, Dissent –Fall, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.princeton.edu/~jmueller/DISSENT-Eurocrisis-JWMueller.pdf
