1 April 22, 2012 Europe After the Crisis By ANDREW MORAVCSIK From the start, the euro has rested on a gamble. When European leaders opted for monetary union in 1992, they wagered that European economies would converge toward one another: The deficit-prone countries of southern Europe would adopt German economic standards — lower price inflation and wage growth, more saving and less spending — and Germany would become a little more like them, by accepting more government and private spending, as well as higher wage and price inflation. This did not occur. Now, with the euro in crisis, the true implications of this gamble are becoming clear. Over the past two years, the eurozone members have done a remarkable job managing the short-term symptoms of the crisis, although the costs have been great. Yet the long-term challenge remains: making European economies converge — that is, assuring that their domestic macro-economic behaviors are sufficiently similar to one another to permit a single monetary policy at a reasonable cost. For this to happen, both creditor countries, such as Germany, and the deficit countries in southern Europe must align their trends in public spending, competitiveness, inflation and other areas. Aligning the Continent’s economies will first require Europe to reject the common misdiagnoses of today’s crisis. The problem is not primarily one of profligate public sectors or broken private sectors in southern European debtor countries. Greece is exceptional. Most euro-zone crisis countries had relatively prudent fiscal policies; most ran up smaller deficits than Japan, Britain and the United States. And severe housing and banking crises are hardly specific to southern Europe; they have recently occurred across the Western world. Although big deficits and broken private sectors may have been part of the problem, the deeper cause of today’s crisis lies in contradictions within the euro system itself.