Only a few years ago, to suggest Europe was “post-crisis” would have been to border on hubris. Yet Europe today finds itself in a surprising place: after weathering an economic crisis that challenged its core tenets and almost brought down its crowning achievement – the common currency – it now believes that the worst is behind it and looks more confidently again to the future. Guarded optimism seems to be the order of the day. This caution is understandable and even justified, to an extent; after all, it was not that long ago that pundits predicted the end of Europe as we know it. However, the problems that were at the root of the crisis in the first place – in addition to others, which have emerged since – remain largely unresolved and still need to be tackled. The job is by no means done.

It has been more than a decade since the onset of the US financial subprime crisis and its impact on the European continent, and almost ten years since Greece triggered the fully fledged economic and financial eurozone crisis that rattled the whole world. During that time, Europe’s common currency area experienced a rude awakening to the reality of its incomplete, if not deeply flawed, construction.

The EU – in both its political and institutional manifestations – initially delayed and dithered in its response, hoping the matter would resolve itself, or at the very least that it could be contained. It was then forced by events to tear up its own rule book and bail out Greece. Eventually it embarked on a grimly determined, but to-date unfinished, effort to rewrite the rules of the Union’s economic and financial institutional architecture. Financial firewalls were erected, new institutions were put in place and decisions on creating a banking union and a true fiscal union were advanced, all in an effort to safeguard economic and financial stability and avoid a repeat of the kind of problems that threatened the very existence of the euro.

These decisions were taken in an increasingly toxic political environment, with citizens dissatisfied with the inability of governments to deliver prosperity and jobs, and with popular referenda in a number of countries loudly rejecting business-as-usual politics.