In the media
19.05.2020

A "Hamiltonian moment" for Europe?

Henrik Enderlein quoted in The New York Times saying Franco-German collective recovery fund could signal new era for EU.

Hertie School President Henrik Enderlein was quoted in an article in The New York Times saying that a €500-billion Franco-German pandemic fund announced on 18 May could signal a new era in which collective European debt, previously considered "taboo" in Germany, "could become a reality". Enderlein originally made the comments in a Twitter post picked up by the newspaper. 

As reported in the article: "This, Mr. Enderlein said, could signal a 'Hamiltonian moment' for Europe. The federal assumption of state debt engineered by Alexander Hamilton played a crucial role in forming a collective identity for the United States in its early days.

"'What matters most today,' Enderlein went on, 'is that France and Germany have agreed that in a crisis the E.U. can issue its own debt at a large scale. The political signal here is that the E.U. is more than a grouping of nation states and has its own federal identity'."

Read the full article

More about Henrik Enderlein