Papering over the cracks

If EU policy papers on the single currency had much bearing on reality, all of the governance arrangements for the euro would have been transformed long ago. Not so. Many of the euro zone’s institutions are widely seen as half built — and coordination of economic policies remains very much a work in progress.

Yet one area in which Brussels has been hyperactive is in publishing detailed ideas on what exactly should be done to shore up the currency. The latest in this long line of creative efforts came on Wednesday in the form of a European Commission’s “reflection paper on the deepening of the economic and monetary union.”