During this lecture, it was highlighted that 2009 marks two important events for Europe: the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and, with the coming into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on December 1, the end of the third stage in the construction of Europe, which during the period 1990-2009 saw a major enlargement of the Union to include new members together with a first attempt at establishing a European Constitution.
Created by the implosion of the US financial system, the last of the “bubbles” – that of the housing market – is the culmination of over a decade of shortsighted American monetary policies and an inadequate monitoring system. The situation is particularly grave, with forecasts that world growth will fall from 5% in 2007 to little more than 1% in 2009. As yet, it is not possible to predict how long the recession will last.
This talk-debate session focused on early signs of a global economic recovery. Whilst the light at the end of the tunnel may not yet be clearly visible, some important signals are already starting to emerge. The first of these is that the governments of EU countries have acted in a timely and effectively coordinated manner. Indeed, their actions have confirmed the primacy of the political sphere and an intergovernmental approach over action through EU institutions (and the European Commission in particular).
