I can understand countries don't want to join the euro, but they cannot impede the consolidation and strengthening of the eurozone.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
You've got some very powerful countries: Poland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and others who have a genuine desire to see the euro zone straighten itself out. It's good for all of us, whether you're in the euro zone or not, to make sure that it doesn't lead to a fracturing.
Giving Northern Europe a veto over Southern Europe's budgets will not hold a monetary union together. The euro zone will continue to need the weaker countries to stomach decades of high unemployment to grind down wages.
This much is true: When we created the euro, it wasn't possible to create a political union along with it. People weren't ready for that. But since then, they've grown more willing to go in that direction. It's a process, one that is sometimes laborious and sometimes slow. But it's important to keep the populations involved.
It's political glue inside Europe to keep it together - the euro is the best thing going for it since the creation of the common market.
The euro has become a means by which superior German productivity is able to gain an absolutely unbeatable advantage over the whole eurozone territory.
Unraveling the euro is a terrible thing. This is a 50-year endeavor to get this continent together and that's a wonderful endeavor.
We must stress that the euro has been beneficial to the European Union because, otherwise, in this context of international turmoil, every country would have to devalue their currencies.
The euro must be defended, or uncertainty about the European Union will be widespread.
It is obvious that the monetary union among 17 very different European countries does not work. As an economist, I know that the Eurozone is not an optimum currency area, as defined in economic theory.
Countries themselves need to do everything possible to remain in the euro zone.