Rethinking solidarity in the EU, from fact to social contract

At the time of writing of this editorial, in the high summer of 2011, the ‘market forces" are meeting up for an attack on the first major member of the Eurozone, Italy. It begins, as has now become familiar, with a rise in the rate of interest that a country has to pay for money to service its sovereign debt. Above a critical percentage, around seven in this case, the servicing of its debt, compounded with the loss of tax income due to a slackening economy, will send the country into the downward spiral of ever-increasing debt. The perspective of a possible default in turn will send the interest rate further upward, pushing the country into a more certain default, and so on. It is a self-fulfilling perspective.