A willingness to fix the euro's flaws is fading fast

[TexasTowelie]

FRANKFURT, Germany — When Angela Merkel was re-elected as Germany's leader in March, the way looked open for European nations to finally patch the remaining cracks in the euro — the structural flaws that threatened to break apart the shared currency in 2010-12.

Suddenly, those prospects for far-reaching agreements are fading, as one proposal after another falls by the wayside. The reason: longstanding German fears of being handed the bill for financial profligacy in other member countries.

A long-awaited European Union summit June 28-29 may now produce vague agreements only on limited parts of wide-ranging proposals to strengthen the way the euro is set up. The bigger ideas for deeper eurozone integration, such as a common pot of money overseen by a European finance minister — an idea once allowed in principle by Merkel — are off the table. Prospects are also uncertain for plans to upgrade a bailout fund cobbled together during the crisis to a full-fledged European monetary fund to assist troubled countries.

German resistance bubbled up this week at a meeting of parliament deputies from Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Merkel told lawmakers that upgrading the taxpayer-backed bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, would require amending the basic European Union treaty, the dpa news agency reported. That condition would likely kill the idea, since treaty change would take years.

Read more: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/story/2018/apr/20/willingness-fix-euros-flaws-fading-fast/468772/

[PoliticAverse]

1. "fears of being handed the bill for financial profligacy in other member countries."

It was inevitable that some countries would take advantage of the common currency and not hard to guess which countries it would be.