Poland’s Kaczynski warns two-speed Europe leads to ‘breakdown’

France and Germany have called for greater fiscal and social harmonisation in the eurozone, saying other EU countries like Britain or Poland should be allowed to settle for a less integrated Union based on the single market.

Those ideas were fleshed out in a paper on eurozone governance, by the Presidents of the European Commission, the Council, the Eurogroup, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank.

The report, presented in June 2015, concluded that "for the euro area to gradually evolve towards a genuine Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), it will need to shift from a system of rules and guidelines for national economic policy-making to a system of further sovereignty sharing within common institutions, most of which already exist and can progressively fulfil this task".

The report foresees three stages in deepening integration:

• Stage 1 (1 July 2015 - 30 June 2017): A "deepening-by-doing" stage, where small steps are taken towards fiscal convergence, using "existing instruments" and treaties.
• Stage 2 (30 June 2017 - 2025): A "more binding" completion stage, with "a set of commonly agreed benchmarks for convergence that could be given a legal nature, as well as a euro area treasury".
• Stage 3 (By 2025 at the latest): A final stage, where the vision would be complete.

But the process has stalled amid reluctance from some member states and diverging views between Germany and France.

Juncker and Draghi fail to win support for eurozone reform

The piecemeal approach orchestrated by Jean-Claude Juncker and Mario Draghi to address the root causes of the euro zone debt crisis and complete the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has not yielded any positive results so far, EURACTIV.com has learned.