To make matters worse, in Juncker’s vision, the finance minister would serve as Commission vice president, Eurogroup chairman and head of the eurozone’s portion of the EU budget. This unduly mixes the role of the Commission with that of the European Council, upsetting the fine balance between community interests and national interests on which the EU is built. [...]
Juncker’s proposal for a European finance minister may be misguided but other aspects of his plan to reform the bloc’s fiscal rules deserve serious consideration. The Commission president is right in saying that Europe needs a joint discussion on the bloc’s budget, which should be reformed to redirect resources from 20th-century targets — such as the common agricultural policy — to these new priorities.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed common initiatives — such as security and defense; border control and migration; research and common climate policies — would be a sensible place to start. Those priorities are widely shared among European leaders. [...]
Brussels should move away from creating an institutionally and politically ill-conceived finance minister position, and focus its energy on reforming the EU budget to make it more useful for its citizens. If the EU is serious about improving fiscal governance of the eurozone, beefing up the chairmanship of the Eurogroup and establishing greater accountability to the European Parliament will be far more effective.
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