Ferdinando Giugliano, Columnist

A Realist's Guide to Euro-Zone Integration

European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis says euro-zone “safe assets” can work, but also issues a warning.

June 2, 2017 at 9:31 AM UTC

Ferdinando Giugliano is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was previously a member of the editorial board of the Financial Times.

Cautiously optimistic.
Photographer: Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg

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The European Commission is once again busy drafting plans for the future of the euro zone. This week’s “Reflection Paper on the deepening of the economic and monetary union” follows a long string of reports, which have often promised much more than politicians and bureaucrats were then able to deliver.

Still, there is hope in Brussels that this time things may be different. European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis is relatively optimistic that member states can be persuaded to integrate further. “We see there is determination from EU-27 to continue to move forward, and we believe this momentum is there also to complete the monetary union,” he tells me in his office in Brussels. “Certainly, with a clearly pro-European president in France, we see there can be more momentum behind this discussion on the future of EMU.”