1. Inching towards integration 朝着一体化缓慢爬行
【导读】：欧洲领导人做出了救市的承诺，但也仅限承诺。欧元区走在成功或失败的分岔路口，未来如何还是个未知数。
The Euro Crisis 欧债危机
The latest European summit made more progress than usual—but still not enough
最新欧洲峰会取得了比平常更多成果——但仍是不够。
Jul 7th 2012 | from the print edition
WAS Europe’s 19th crisis summit, held in Brussels on June 28th and 29th, a game-changer? Judging by the euphoria in financial markets and among many commentators, the answer seems to be yes. Yields on Italian and Spanish bonds fell sharply as investors decided that Europe’s political leaders had committed themselves to the creation of a banking union and to allowing troubled countries easier access to euro-zone rescue funds. The prime ministers of Italy and Spain, Mario Monti and Mariano Rajoy, and the French president, François Hollande, were widely hailed for scoring a victory over Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. She, in turn, was excoriated by many at home for giving in to blackmail.
As so often, the summit had been billed as a make-or-break affair, in which Europe’s political leaders had to lay out their vision for economic and political integration to save their single currency. Is the euphoria about to fizzle, as in the past?
The summit gave reasons for guarded optimism. Europe’s politicians have said they will create a Europe-wide bank supervisor (involving the European Central Bank) before the end of the year. This is only a pledge, but if the history of European policymaking is a guide, the euro zone will quarrel over the details of a banking supervisor only to agree to one eventually. Second, by accepting that bail-out funds can go straight to banks, Mrs Merkel has made a big shift from her insistence that help could go only to governments, with tough conditions attached. The underlying German logic that shared financial liability must imply shared oversight remains the same. But by countenancing jointly financed bank recapitalisation, Mrs Merkel has accepted a broader notion of risk-sharing. This is still a long way from the partial debt mutualisation that the euro zone needs, but it marks a step forward from Germany’s exclusive obsession with fiscal austerity.
However, there are caveats. Europe’s politicians did not commit themselves to a banking union. There was no agreement to euro-wide deposit insurance or to a common bank-resolution scheme. And although the summit agreed that euro-zone rescue funds could be injected directly into banks, this depends on the single supervisor being in place first.
The supposed loosening of the strings attached to help for peripheral economies was also limited. The much-ballyhooed agreement that rescue funds could buy embattled countries’ bonds without onerous extra conditions was just a political promise to do something already allowed. The only concrete new commitments were that the promised aid of up to