Philosophical Doubts Concerning the Euro
We do not know now the final outcome of the Greek crisis in the eurozone. Will things get better or worse? How will costs and benefits be shared across the population?
For those who work in philosophy, there are at least two issues to be pondered. It's about the two arguments used in the defense of the euro in media debates and intellectual discussion. They are usually attributed to Mario Draghi, the current president of the ECB, or Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the European Commission.
The first argument concerns irreversibility. In order to prevent the exit of a country from the eurozone, the advocates of the integrity of the monetary union appeal to the so-called irreversibility or irrevocability of the euro, which would be a currency you just cannot leave, in short. If you take a historical perspective, this argument sounds strange. We have seen plenty of kingdoms, empires, unions, regimes, wars, and upheavals come and go in Europe in modern times.
For good or ill, all human institutions are bound to rise and fall, including social, economic, and legal institutions. Why would the euro be an exception? What would grant the single currency its irreversible nature? The weirdness of the argument is the immortality attributed to the euro. And this cannot be, considered how worldly things go. Another interesting point is to better understand who makes use of the irreversibility argument. Perhaps the issue is simply normative: it is argued is that eurozone countries are legally obliged to stay in the current currency regime. Then it's not an issue of common destiny but of legal constraint. And the issue becomes clearer. One could ask whether this is an open-ended or time-limited commitment, but this is how foundational pacts usually work (consider new constitutions): let's commit indefinitely, and then see how things go. To this, I would add that in order to defend the euro from the barrage of attacks it is subjected to, it is better to focus on the good socio-economic reasons for it, rather than appeal to its supposed exceptionality.
The second argument (which is a reformulation of the first) is that which says that an exit from the eurozone is not contemplated. That is, Treaties do not provide for a procedure to leave the single currency. For those who argue in juridical terms, this is an interesting point. The fact that there is no exit clause means simply this: there is not exit clause. In other words there is a legal vacuum. The interesting thing is to understand which consequences can be drawn. Usually the argument is that if something is not contemplated, it cannot be done. But if you look closely, there is a further premise to justify this conclusion. The implicit premise is that what is not regulated is not allowed. Technically, is an a contrario argument. But why not use the a simili argument, and so draw an analogy from other regulated and unregulated questions and decide the issue in a similar way comparing it to a similar issue? In presence of a lack of rules, it must be understood whether this vacuum shall be filled by analogy with an existing rule or principle, or, conversely, whether it must be decided a contrario. I am not a specialist in EU law to provide a definitive answer (one should start by interpreting article 50 of the EU Treaty and article 140 on the functioning of the Union), but the question I have raised seems to me important for the future of our common institutions.