I get people asking such questions: What needs next to be done concerning the euro? What developments are to be expected in this field? How can the euro be made stronger as a currency in future?

One understands why these questions arise in the wake of the list of proposals about the steps that had better be taken, advanced by a range of actors, including the Italian government, the European Parliament, the President of the Commission Juncker, French President Macron, not to mention diverse academic and political institutions in Europe devoted to European unity. Many of their proposals actually overlap.

What make best sense in my view, are those proposals that concentrate on concrete steps forward which can actually be implemented in short order. By contrast, proposals which describe federal measures that should lead to full economic and monetary union by the year 2024 or 2025 appear to me to be speculative, more than anything else.

For instance, the need is to ensure that a banking union is fully implemented. Measures are still pending by which the monitoring and back up for systemically important banks, applying on a European basis, become operative; as well as to launch a European bank deposit guarantee. Progress on these two fronts should be given total priority.

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A proactive Church

A Catholic church that is proactive publicly in the different areas of national live is desirable, even when such activism takes a critical turn.

To be sure, despite all that is proclaimed to the contrary, the truth is that sociologically and culturally, the Church is staffed with people who in their majority, lean towards the political right. The probability therefore is that any critical attitudes that emerge are going to address what the left is doing, rather then the right. Developments in recent years bear out this thesis.

Even so, I believe it’s better to have this kind of Church, rather than one still caught in the mindsets of the past, lacking all projects for the future except those that are meant to safeguard any privileges it might still retain in society. With the condition however, that such a Church should also accept that it will itself have to face contrary criticism.

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Lack of trained people

Too many people in our society fail to receive the training for which they are suited, and that would provide them, if they get it, with opportunities for a better life, today and tomorrow. It’s a topic on which up to now, as a society we have failed to focus adequately.

True, measures are being implemented to reduce the number of school dropouts  and of students whose stay at secondary school is just pro forma. But beyond these programmes, we quite likely need other initiatives by which to urge people, even those already with a job, to go in for further training.

Needless to say, if such initiatives are going to succeed, they must really provide a valid training, one that is well designed and that passes along needed and up-to-date skills. Even those who lack training, will quickly understand whether what they’re being offered is up to scratch or not.