By: Savanna Shuntich

Last week Vaclav Klaus, current president of the Czech Republic, gave a talk at the Heritage Foundation. Klaus is a well-known euro-skeptic, so it was not surprising that his talk was wholly dedicated to criticizing the European Union. But I must admit, his view of Europe’s future was much darker than I had anticipated. Klaus argued that European integration has reached the point where the EU is compromising democracy in its member nations and that the EMU remains a colossal mistake. Additionally, he blamed the EU for stunting economic growth in several countries and trapping Europe in a cycle of debt. Klaus wants the EU to immediately begin decentralizing power and eliminating regulations so that “integration” in Europe does not become “unification” in Europe.

Klaus’ views of the EU mark him as an extremist and his repeated brow-beatings of the evil “greens” (environmentalists) do little to help his case. He famously authored a book called Blue Planet in Green Shackles, in which he details how the green movement will and is crushing capitalism.

However, after I spent time reflecting on last week’s lecture I began to see that Klaus might have a point. To agree with Charles Moore of the Telegraph, Europe is experience a crisis of leadership. European leaders in general and German leaders in particular are unwilling to do what is necessary to solve their debt crisis because they are not being compelled to act. There is no specific governing body to handle these types of crisis and there is no common treasury. So the politicians of the EU’s wealthier nations want to sit on the fence and thus they risk the stability of the global economy. Today’s bailout agreement is a step in the right direction but it will not be enough, especially if the situation in Portugal Italy, and Spain worsens.

To be honest the reluctance of many European politicians to take drastic measures is understandable. What politician would want to bring home billions in toxic debt to an otherwise healthy economy? As Bonnie Kavoussi says,

“The European response to the sovereign debt crisis has been halfhearted because

political leaders must answer to their own populations in elections — not Europe

as a whole — and people in stronger economies, such as Germany’s, have

protested against making concessions to save their less fortunate neighbors.”

But unfortunately Germany and its compatriots have no choice. Greece would never go against its own self-interest by leaving the EU and defaulting. Consequently, the country must be further bailed out. Even if they are able to extricate themselves from the current crisis by using the EFSF (without leveraging it) a broader regulatory scheme still needs to be put in place for the future. Either way, this all translates to more power and autonomy for the EU and less power for its individual nation states. As Klaus explained, it’s impossible to have a monetary union without a political one. Thus, with each year that the Euro exist Europe grows a little closer together, made all the more obvious by the latest crisis. The real question is not will Europe recover but rather, is what’s good for the EU good for its member nations?