Euro Crisis or European Governance Crisis?

The European Monetary Union is an unprecedented event in economic history: it is based on an institutional model characterized by a combination of a single monetary policy, mandated by sovereign states to an independent supranational institution, the European Central Bank, and decentralized fiscal policies, subject to the fulfillment of constraints. This model has raised doubts and misgivings, the most relevant of which have focused on the costs of a single monetary policy address for countries that are different in terms of growth rates, inflationary pressures, public finance situations, labor market flexibility and balance of payments imbalances. The present difficulties of the EMU countries seem to confirm these doubts, fueling the conviction of a failure of the single currency and suggesting a return to national currencies. This article rejects the aforementioned conviction, arguing that the current crisis is not yet a euro crisis, but it is a crisis of the European governance, which has not been able to cope with the limits of the EMU construction. This conclusion is reached through the review of the international functions that the euro has carried out since its introduction to the present