EU leaders meeting in a mountainous city in Romania on Thursday will discuss the future of Europe, but the fate of the euro will be mostly ignored.
Launching the single currency is probably the EU’s most ambitious achievement yet, two decades later, it is little-loved and the 19 countries that use it are split, mostly between richer and poorer members.
Against this backdrop, the euro will only be referred to in passing at a Sibiu summit that was originally intended as a renewal of vows by the remaining 27 member states after a now-delayed Brexit.
“There is a lot of unfinished business, which we haven’t addressed and I very much doubt that Sibiu will get us much further forward,” said Fabian Zuleeg, head of European Policy Centre in Brussels.
The euro is widely acknowledged to be imperfect and in need of reform to unify what are vastly disparate economies, even more so after the eurozone debt crisis.
But reform, when it does happen, has so far come only in an emergency when there is no choice but to bridge divisions.
“The objective of Sibiu is not to really discuss the issues, but rather to show unity by focusing on consensual themes,” a European source protested.
‘No libido’
The…
