Roadmap needed, please

Urging European leaders to take action against the euro crisis feels like to be in front of a set of poker players who, at the end of the game, refuse to say what they have in their hands: “you show first”, “no, you show first…”. They need to agree about what to do first, second and third…

It should be their job. They should get their job done. Soon.

Why are they so slow? Politicians are elected inside their national boundaries. But they work for a supranational reality. And their job is split in two: they need to decide for international cooperation to cope with international problems, and at the same time they need to speak to their electorate in terms that seem to save their national interests. But it is time to choose.

Germany wants a political union, in which Europe decides whether or not national budget are right or wrong. Spain wants a banking union, to save its financial system and the one of anybody else in its same conditions. Italy wants a fiscal union to share some of the risk that having a huge public debt generates to public finances in times of financial turmoil. France needs to say something about who is in charge inside the country: Europe or France. The United Kingdom needs to say when it is going to get in or get out the process. All the other states need to get together and speak their voice for more integration or less integration.

If Europe is to be built, then there is no choice about what to do, but only about when to do what is needed for the integration and in which order it must be done: political first and then fiscal? banking and then political? fiscal and then…

There is only a word to define this kind of decision making: roadmap writing and implementing. One step at a time, but what the big picture clear in mind for everybody.

The roadmap is the new political metaphore. And it is a beautiful metaphore. Young people will understand it. But even old people can like it. Only politicians will be less free to do what they want when the roadmap is decided. And that is precisely what they don’t like. And that is precisely what people don’t like in politicians.