First, I did not think much about it – though yes, I saw it as another and typical expression of the shortcoming of the European architecture – a paragraph from the document that became known as The Five President’s Report. On page four we read:
Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) today is like a house that was built over decades but only partially finished. When the storm hit, its walls and roof had to be stabilised quickly. It is now high time to reinforce its foundations and turn it into what EMU was meant to be: a place of prosperity based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress. To achieve this, we will need to take further steps to complete EMU.
A more or less desperate attempt to be somewhat ‘poetical’, using a language that makes issues easily accessible and so I filed it first as matter of ‘creative writing’ of the general kind often used in introductory remarks. But it really depicts what all this is about, namely the ‘progress’ towards
- a genuine Economic Union
- a Financial Union
- a Fiscal Union
- a Political Union
Twenty four pages, some can be deducted – not metaphors but pictures and blanks … – Still, if I can trust the computer search, the term product* only shows up three times, on page seven and eight respectively: as ‘product market’, as ‘productivity’ and as ‘productive firms’. Searching for industr* brings one hit: on page 11 we find the term ‘financial industry’. – Indeed, a house without foundation, and thus with predictable cracks in roof and walls …. – a typical example for a castle in the air. Established on the exposition of powers, the hegemony-committed knighthood-populace accrediting the exposure with their celebratory HELLOs and enforcing and securing expulsion of those who are already made invisible.
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 