Using these or other instruments – sometimes there is talk of a euro-area budget, sometimes of “fiscal capacity”, and at other times of a “macroeconomic stabilising function” – economic shocks affecting individual countries could, of course, be better cushioned. But the big risk is that payments intended to cushion country-specific shocks become permanent one-way transfers.
Some have even come out and explicitly called for a revenue-sharing arrangement. France’s economy minister Emmanuel Macron, for example, said in an interview with the Süddeutsche  BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  Zeitung: “Monetary union without a revenue-sharing scheme – that’s impossible!