After a few years of crisis-born reticence, the European Commission is back in love with the financial sector. Presented as a way of stimulating the dragging economic growth in the EU, the Commission has recently proposed a series of new financial reforms called the Capital Markets Union (CMU). Although promising to set the stage for growth, jobs and investment in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the effectiveness of the reforms proposed by the Commission is broadly questioned. Especially the stimulation of ‘loan securitization’, a complex financial product comparable to those responsible for the financial crisis of 2008 in the United States, is cause for concern.

Is the current recovery policy for the financial and economic crises in the Eurozone a genuine answer for the complexity and diversity of the problems that all member states face? Not really. The responses are too one-sided and mainly export and austerity driven. In particular, the current policy ignores the fact that the euro crisis is a systemic crisis that cannot be overcome with more of the same. This euro crisis living analysis showcases in an innovative and interactive way that there are feasible alternatives that not only could bring back some economic growth to the Eurozone, but could also ensure that the recovery endures and includes all the people of Europe. This requires a dramatic rethink on debt restructuring, rising investment levels without triggering over-indebtedness again, and a systemic change of the financial sector industry. Such a strategy should be combined with a wage-led growth strategy based on more and better jobs to reverse the race to the bottom of the current supply side and export-led competitiveness strategies in the Eurozone. Only then is a healthy future for the single currency possible.