Monetary integration was seen to leave some economies particularly vulnerable to asymmetric (external) shocks, as national decision makers were rendered no longer in control of nominal interest rates.
"In the end the big countries in Europe, the leaders in Europe, must meet and take a decision on how to coordinate monetary integration with more effective coordinated fiscal policy," Mr. Obama said, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.
For more than 30 years now Britain has dithered on just how far it is willing to move towards EU political and monetary integration, and not a single prime minister has dared to put it to referendum, even a non-binding one, for fear of a public rebuke.
Speaking in Washington on Tuesday, Obama said: "In the end, the big countries in Europe, the leaders in Europe, must meet and take a decision on how to co-ordinate monetary integration with more effective co-ordinated fiscal policy".
In creating the euro, however, they failed to recognize that monetary integration is fundamentally different from trade integration and that the group of euro countries as a whole did not come close to meeting the criteria for an optimum currency area.
The recently introduced roadmaps for Europe preview further economic, monetary and political integration to benefit all member countries.
Tony Blair as prime minister aspired and failed to put the UK at the heart of Europe, not least because of Brown's implacable opposition to UK participation in European political and monetary integration.
