Trust was placed in the push that integration would give to the economic convergence of the member states and in a strategy of progressive reforms, to be enacted when the political conditions were right. The risks inherent in this process materialized with unanticipated violence during the sovereign debt crisis.
The inadequacy of the euro area’s economic governance was laid bare: the rules of the Treaties failed to guide national policies appropriately and to ensure the necessary coordination; the lack of shared instruments for managing national economic crises has made them longer and deeper, and has raised the risk of episodes of contagion.