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The European Union continues to have its problems and doesn't seem to be resolving any of them.

It must turn things around and turn them around soon.

Events last year didn't help the EU, especially the Brexit vote in the U.K. and the election of Donald Trump as president of the U.S.

This year doesn't look like it will bring a release of the pressures being felt within the community, especially with elections coming up in France, Germany, the Netherlands and possibly Italy.

Almost since it began, the EU has done the minimum necessary to keep things together, and it often just seems to bekicking the can down the road.

Financial Times Associate Editor Wolfgang Munchau has arguedthat this kind of behavior can't continue, and that the EU "will not be able to muddle through for four years, let alone eight, of a Trump presidency."

There are, in my mind, two reasons for this.

First, protectionism doesn't work. And if protectionism doesn't work, people have to learn to work together and build together or suffer alone.

EU members have achieved the scale needed to be an economic force in the world, have gone a long way to integrating their economies and have the second-strongest reserve currency in the world, a great starting point.

But as Munchau wrote, "The history of monetary unions has shown us that it needs to be embedded in a political union to be sustainable."

The EU "crisis is in its eighth year. The EU needs to stop quarreling about Greece or fretting about whether the euro can survive the next Italian elections," Munchau wrote.

EU leaders need to get serious and really get to work.

See the original post here:
European Union Must Get Its Act Together, as Time Is Running Out - TheStreet.com