Structural Differences Ensure Permanent Shock Trends That Play into the Above. A Closer and More Democratic Union to Heal Economic Asymmetries and Help Southern European Countries Such as Greece

There is no particular need to describe how the compromise on which the birth of the European common currency was based formed the foundation of the current crisis: the common monetary policy was accepted easily by national politicians but turned out to be incompatible with the maintenance of the national control over structural and fiscal policies. This weakness is described elegantly by Habermas (2011), as member states are functioning as the legislative and executive bodies of the Union, thus depriving the prerogative of power and implementation from the supranational bodies over the national legal systems.