Neoliberal policies are at the very heart of the European Union. This demands that the social and political organizations of the Left find the avenues that will allow them to activate a new plan for the Continent, running against the forms that the integration process has taken in the past. Between a simple reenactment of what went before in the name of the European ideal, or a Euroscepticism that is just a stunted version of a retreat into nationalism, I suggest that there is also an alternative strategy: namely, the project of a selective de-integration and re-integration of Europe. The objective is to keep open the channels of cooperation between European states, while at the same time acquiring greater room for manoeuvre, in order to reactivate a socialist and environmentalist socioeconomic project. In other words, the goal is to change the hierarchy of the questions around which European integration is organized.

The fate of the single currency is central to such a perspective, given its deflationary bias, the unilateral character of the adjustments that it imposes, and the resulting loss of diversity in socio-productive systems. In theory, a European fiscal system that allowed the rapid rise of a welfare state, an ambitious industrial policy, and consequential regional programs, could change the social nature of the existing monetary order. In practice, the conditions of policymaking at the European level rule out any substantial change within the foreseeable future. This means that for the Left, it is an important political responsibility to embrace exit from the euro, a dismantling of the eurozone, or, preferably, the transformation of the euro into a common currency. Although it should be understood that is not an objective unto itself, but rather a means of taking back control of the political agenda, this question is nonetheless an unavoidable one. While such an institutional construction process poses important legal and political questions, there are no technical difficulties that preclude the adoption of such a course. On the contrary, as I have argued, the incentives structure that today sets creditor countries in opposition to debtor countries would be overturned through the perspective of abandoning the single currency, for each country would have an interest in cooperating to limit financial turbulence and finding a mutually beneficial arrangement.