Last week, Mario Centeno, the new group head for the euro region’s finance ministers, said that the coming months offer a “unique window of opportunity” to strengthen the common currency. He called for agreement by the EU’s June summit to unify banking and capital markets regulation, and to increase fiscal burden sharing. [...]
Euroskeptic nationalist politicians now run Hungary and Poland. In March, Italy is expected to hold elections that could produce a less pro-European government in Rome. Meanwhile, the far-right Freedom Party of Austria recently joined a coalition government in Vienna. Its party members or affiliates head the foreign, interior and defense ministries. [...]
If border guards were put to work under the canopy over the Brenner Pass, “we’d have 15 to 20 kilometer tailbacks,” said Peter Mock, commissar of the highway police based in Sterzing, a small medieval town 11 miles into the Italian part of Tyrol. The number of trucks crossing the pass has increased by at least eight or nine times since 1995, he said. [...]
Support for rejoining Austria is marginal, but hardened borders and resurgent nationalism could change that, he said: “This is a little Europe within Europe.”
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