The Financial Crisis: Three Ways Out for Europe
ABSTRACT
Only days before the G20 meeting on the international financial system, Guy Verhofstadt – former Prime Minister of Belgium and a distinguished expert in all matters relating to international politics – offers his view on the current crisis and its consequences. In the following essay, he sets the international financial crisis in its historic context, depicts its far-reaching geopolitical corollaries and, above all, attends to the biggest challenge Europe ever faced: what should be the European Union’s answer to the financial crisis?
For Guy Verhofstadt, this is not merely about emergency economic measures but rather a matter of structural reforms such as the development of a new and binding international financial framework. He stresses three fields on which Europe urgently needs to take action: Europe needs (1) a single financial regulator belonging to a global network operating according to identical rules and standards, (2) an institution clearing interbank loan requests and (3) a Eurozone economic government.