Reforms, Hardship, and Unrest

Abstract

The painter Eugene Delacroix (1798–1863), leader of the French Romantic school, famously remarked that “experience has two things to teach: we must correct a great deal; we must not correct too much”. This injunction has relevance to the present European situation because the banking and the sovereign debt crises in some of the euro area countries have unleashed a demand for “structural reform” (both at the national and the supranational level) within the countries of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and for changes in the relationship between the central authority of the European Commission (EC) and the European Union’s (EU) Member States. In seeking to correct the faults of the past lies the danger of overcorrection. `It is in this light that one must judge the pace and nature of reform that the economic and financial crisis in Europe has engendered.