I'm John Bats with my colleague Judy Dempsey in Berlin, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

And over the years that Judy and I have been talking, I've been converted entirely to a pro-European Euro-American.

Very rare. We're very rare, Judy.

So I want to make that remark.

I read Christine Lagarde's op-ed in the Financial Times about the euro and how commonplace

it is around the world, 20% of the time, 58% for the dollar, which is the reserve currency.

And Christine Lagarde wants Europe to assume the mantle of authority and commonplaciness around the world because

the euro is trusted. She identifies three things that are necessary for European, for the Eurozone

to grow in confidence with trade. One is geopolitical credibility, another is economic resilience,

and a third is legal and institutional integrity. Now, Europe has all those things in different

pieces, and I'm presuming what the central banker Christine Lagarde wants is for everybody to

work together for those three things.

How close are you to think, Judy? I know this is pie in the sky, but we can dream of a better

day. How close is Europe to geopolitical credibility, economic resilience, and legal and

institutional integrity across the map.

Okay, great question.

The European Central Bank has done, is doing superb analysis of what's wrong with Europe.

And Christine Lagarde wanted to turn it around and say, actually, the potential is there now we've got to exploit it.

But the point is geopolitical prominence actually requires economic unity and economic confidence at home. And the point is that Europe and the euro isn't going to get its act together until, firstly

because growth remains persistently slow, but there's

another serious reason held up by the member states. Europe must complete the single market.

This means reducing regulatory burdens, building, for instance, a robust capital markets union,

...