EU needs to build further on its proud past

MAY 9 will mark the 64th anniversary of Europe Day. It was on that fateful day in 1950, in the aftermath of World War II, that the then French foreign minister Robert Schuman presented the Schuman Declaration, proposing the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, which was the embryo from which today's European Union (EU) evolved.

The EU has much to be proud of, especially during the first 50 years of its history. It has enlarged from an initial core of six members to 28, including countries from the former Soviet bloc. Its members have, by and large, co-existed peacefully under democratic regimes. Its institutional development has been marked by a succession of impressive milestones: the creation of the European Commission to propose EU-wide legislation, backed by an impressively large civil service; a regional policy to transfer resources to poorer parts of the union; the establishment of the European parliament, the creation in 1993 of a single market for goods, services and later, the free movement of people under the Schengen agreement of 1995 and the formation of the European Central Bank in 1998.

However, the EU's history thereafter has been more chequered. With the benefit of hindsight, it can be said that the launch of the single currency, the euro, in 1999 was a mistake, or at least premature, in that it was not backed by the necessary institutional framework needed to make it a success - notably a fiscal union. These weaknesses showed up starkly during the sovereign debt crisis which broke out in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. A number of eurozone countries emerged therefrom with burst property bubbles, dysfunctional banking systems and staggering levels of public debt.