United States of Europe

In their recent speeches by Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy indicated that the only way to solving European debt crisis is deeper mutual integration of the European states - both economically and politically:
"German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday made an urgent appeal for decisive political action—including quick changes to the European treaty—to fix the root causes of the euro-zone debt crisis that threatens to unravel Europe's single currency and plunge the global economy into recession.

...

Ms. Merkel's much anticipated speech follows a landmark address by Mr. Sarkozy on Thursday evening in the southern French city of Toulon. Echoing positions long advocated by Ms. Merkel, Mr. Sarkozy said euro-zone countries should allow European review of national budgets, and introduce "more automatic and more severe sanctions" on budget sinners.

"There cannot be a single currency without economic convergence," Mr. Sarkozy said in the one-hour address. "Or the euro zone will explode."

The French president declared France's willingness to side with Germany and sacrifice a degree of national sovereignty in order to better align economic policies. Ms. Merkel continued on this theme, saying the aim of the European Union summit next week is to change the European treaty to allow fiscal policy coordination.

"We are going to Brussels with the intention to change the EU treaty," Ms. Merkel said. "The goal is a fiscal union that enforces both fiscal discipline in its members and has the necessary instruments to effectively handle a crisis.""

This supports the idea that the European crisis may have deeper roots than merely the mismanagement fo the economy by "deceptive politicians and greedy bankers": Indeed, the situation resembles the one that the United States experienced a century and a half ago, when dozens of politically autonomous states could not agree on a common economic policy, which put at risk the integrity of the Union. The result was the American Civil War. Yet, the centralization of the power to the extent that we see today, took a few more decades, and was completed perhaps only during the Great Depression.

This analogy gives us a hint that the European economic problems may be the inevitable consequence of the yet incomplete European integration. One may reasonably expect that they will be partially alleviated, if the European leaders undertake serious steps towards giving up part of their political and economic sovereignty. Yet, as full European integration cannot be achieved within a period of a few days, or a few years, the problems are likely to reappear for the following decades, till European Union becoms a single centralized state... or collapses. Hopefully, we will not see cataclisms comparable with the American Civil War and teh Great Depression.