In the historical EU framework, integration through law has been replaced by integration through money,  bringing to light a real problem, that is the difficulty in efficiently keeping alive a ‘currency without a State’. The EU has tried to solve the problem by adopting fiscal policies, but they were only partially coordinated and no mechanism for convergence was envisaged.
In the context of the global pandemic crisis, the professor then suggested the adoption of a new European integration, not based on the currency nor on dangerous judicial expansionism, but on a bottom-up process, through social services in synergy with other mechanisms. These mechanisms, highly discussed within the political debate, especially in Italy, refer to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which for the first time has been used for social health needs, the Sure, used as a national unemployment insurance support and the Recovery Fund, based on temporary bonds or redeemable loans.
In conclusion, professor Montedoro focused his attention on the need to create social and environmental policies as the core of the European framework, by changing our perception of a Union as a product of the end of history, with reference to the theory of the political scientist Francis Fukuyama. In fact, history is by no means over: it reveals conflicts and extreme sovereignism, and this truth clearly emerges nowadays.
The neo-liberal ideological framework of European institutions cannot survive without changes, and without profound self-criticism, since it is necessary to realise, as Jan Zielonka and Ivan Krastev suggested, that monetary policies, which favoured  the emergence of sovereignism and populism, should evolve towards more balanced measures, able to protect social cohesion.
The social market economy should be reinterpreted by emphasising the adjective “social”, but avoiding deflections from the market logic towards ahistorical and illiberal planning.

Report by Sofia Horsfall, Veronica Marzo and Nazarena Tesei

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