Javier Sampedro, scientist, journalist and generally distinguished man, wrote a phrase in this newspaper some time ago to describe the research on covid-19 and the race to create effective vaccines: “How to fix a plane in mid-flight that is still being drawing the plans.
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Brussels fears that Italy will become the EU's Achilles heel against Russia
I cannot think of a more accurate description of the functioning of the European Union, an entity whose unit is basically monetary, with disparate tax systems and without a political and executive vertex.
The invention should have crashed long ago.
And yet it flies.
Not only that: that strange flying object takes advantage of the storms to assemble new parts, manufactured on the fly to resist and overcome the problem of the moment.
Without anyone having a concrete idea of how the device will end up being when it is finished (if that ever happens), elements are incorporated.
During the pandemic crisis, a large chunk of debt was mutualized through the Reconstruction Fund.
In other words, the member countries were able to finance themselves for the first time thanks to the issue of European debt.
That was unthinkable a decade before, when the great financial crisis.
At that time, the best thing that occurred to the thinking minds of the flying object was to launch the Greek passengers into the void.
In the end, instead of defenestrating them, they were beaten up.
It remains undiscovered what was the use of leaving them half dead: the art of building the plane in mid-flight has these things, sometimes the improvisation goes well and other times it doesn't.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the sanctions imposed by Brussels and the consequent shortage of Russian gas could add another piece to the machine that should not fly, but does fly: the pooling of energy resources.
This time the ones caught at fault are the German passengers, who had relied excessively on Vladimir Putin's supplies;
It is not to be expected, however, that the rest of the passage gives them a beating like the one the Greeks took: they travel in first class.
Italian political crises used to be an almost family pastime.
The current one, on the other hand, entails the danger that the risk premium on Italian debt (and perhaps on Spanish and other) will skyrocket and that some countries will have to pay more than others to finance themselves.
The resolution of the problem falls to the European Central Bank, a theoretically technical and independent entity that, as is typical in the impossible plane, has to adopt the most serious political decisions.
When the euro was falling apart, it was Mario Draghi's turn to fix the problem.
He now he touches Christine Lagarde.
Out of this will come a new effective piece.
Or a new beating someone.
We'll see.
The European Union reminds me of that Woody Allen joke in the movie Annie Hall: “Doctor, my brother thinks he's a chicken”.
"Why doesn't he put him in an insane asylum?"
"I would, but I need the eggs."
The Brussels-based thing is created a functional and democratic political and economic institution.
We know it is not.
The point is that we need the eggs of the flying chicken.
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