European Commissioner for Economic Affairs Pierre Moscovici on Wednesday said "fundamental errors" in dealing with the financial crisis which hit a decade ago had stoked EU political tensions. "Political tensions which Europe is going through are in my view the direct result of the way the European Union and the member states managed the economic crisis," Moscovici said on the fringes of an OECD forum meeting in Paris.
He admitted that two "fundamental errors" had been made - "putting the effectiveness of economic decision-making ahead of the representativeness of democratic decision-making" and also "not having been able to protect the most vulnerable" citizens. He said that as a former French finance minister before switching to the Commission he had to acknowledge his own role in "actively contributing to the reinforcement of European economic governance".
Ten years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers lit the touch paper for the financial crisis Moscovici said he regretted that "decisions gave the impression of being taken by experts and technocrats rather than politicians". Moscovici's comments echoed similar statements made last month by the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Angel Gurria.
But the former injected a note of optimism as he tweeted that "I hope our fellow citizens remain confident in the strength of the European model - a model (which economic, social, democratic, unique in the world."