Of course, safeguards have to ensure full consistency with the Single Market, which is the European Union’s most valuable achievement. However, while such safeguards will have a bearing on the design of euro area integration, they cannot change its direction. And let’s have our priorities right: the biggest threat to the Single Market is not euro area integration: it would be euro area stagnation.
Ladies and Gentlemen, In 1946, Winston Churchill called for the United States of Europe. This did not pass the political “fitness test” at the time – and would probably not pass it today either. Subsidiarity has been and remains an essential principle of building a common Europe.