4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Those calling for greater mutual liability are often the very ones who reject recommendations from Brussels as meddling in national matters. Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, for instance, likens the EU to an “old boring aunt telling us what to do”.
It was a long-held belief, above all in Germany, that monetary union would, out of necessity as it were, culminate in political union. Addressing the Bundestag in November 1991, Helmut Kohl remarked that “the idea of sustaining economic and monetary union over time without political union is a fallacy”.