Draghi Says Euro-Zone Banking and Fiscal Union Is Inescapable

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Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, said completing banking and fiscal union in the euro region is “inescapable” as the region grows closer together.

“The evolution from single market to single currency to single banking and fiscal union is, in reality, a logical extension of the aspiration in Europe to make openness among nations sustainable,” Draghi said in a speech in Dublin on Thursday. “I believe that, at some point, this sequence will be looked back on as inescapable and self-evident, just as the decision to build single European market is now.”

Speaking on the day his successor at the ECB, Christine Lagarde, held her first monetary policy meeting, Draghi said the euro had reduced trade tensions in the region.

The currency “was created to prevent competitive devaluations that might undermine trust in open trade,” he said, adding the global system still depends on the willingness of states to accept constraints on their freedom of action. “That willingness is not infinite, a fact we are seeing displayed today in the fading of the WTO appellate court.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Flanagan in Dublin at pflanagan23@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Dara Doyle

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