Röpke and Einaudi: from the Civitas of Persons to the Idea of Europe

Abstract The first part of the paper deals with the so-called liberal Third Way of Röpke and Einaudi, which has, at its center, the person and civitas umana. Subsidiarity principle, market, and conform public interventions define the role and limits of public powers. The second part presents eight main indicators of the divergent performance of the four main Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries. The third part deals with the incompleteness of the institutional construct of the European Union (EU) and the EMU that are clubs of sovereign states in the light of Einaudi’s and Röpke’s ideas. Suggestion about corrections of fiscal compact, banking regulations, and “bail in” and about a closer cooperation between European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy and European budget and EU fiscal policy concludes the paper.