Codici etici e modelli di organizzazione economica. Lo strano caso dell'Unione europea

The debate on post-pandemic recovery policies revealed that the distinction between symmetric and asymmetric shocks on economic activity plays a significant role in the conventions governing the dialectics among EU political players. The representatives of individual member countries have indeed introjected a ‘rule’ according to which a member country in economic trouble has the right to receive aid from EU partners only if its trouble is caused by a symmetric disturbance, i.e. a shock simultaneously hitting all member countries. The rationale behind this lies in a sort of ‘responsibility principle’, according to which aid is justified only in the absence of negligence on the part of the recipient. Within this framework, a mere local shock would be evidence of negligence. Grounding on a very influential stream of literature, we argue that this principle con- flicts with the peculiar mechanics of an economy integrated on a continental level. Local shocks are a natural consequence of a high degree of sectoral specialization of a country’s economy, and consequently no one can be blamed for them. Counterbalancing the adverse effects of asymmet- ric shocks is then the primary task of supranational governance institutions, when market adjust- ments are not enough. Furthermore, this task becomes increasingly important as time goes by, because member countries’ sectoral specialization tends to deepen as economic integration pro- ceeds.