The Maastricht Treaty celebrates its thirtieth anniversary and faces the challenge of reforming the Stability and Growth Pact. The file, which has always been at the heart of violent clashes between member states, is now vital to the economic future of the Union itself, marked by the wounds left first by the sovereign debt crisis and then, in the last three years, by the sovereign debt crisis. The permanent state of emergency has moved from Covid to the Russian aggression against Ukraine, all the way to the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas.
It was signed on 7 February 1992 in the Dutch border town and entered into force at midnight on 1 November 1993, based on the intentions of the twelve European leaders who drew up the agreement – including Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. and French President François Mitterrand – the treaty was supposed to represent the first step towards creating an economic, monetary and political union. A hope born in the euphoria sparked by the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it continues to struggle today, weakened by multi-speed European integration, by the often categorical rejection of the gradual transfer of national sovereignty, and by periodic winds of Euroscepticism.
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