We refer to the www.ohada.com newsletter dated August 14, 2015 and deem useful to call your attention on the Five Presidents' Report titled “Completing the Europe's Economic and Monetary Union” published by the European Commission on June 22, 2015.

This landmark Five Presidents' Report sets out plan for strengthening Europe's Economic and Monetary Union as of July 1, 2015. It constitutes a roadmap for strengthening the Euro, and even maybe, some may think, saving the European common currency.

Indeed, beyond the Greek crisis, the European common currency is currently going through a kind of existential crisis, since the Euro has not yet proven that it truly enhances economic convergence, its “raison d'être” and an essential condition for its viability and its own survival.

As you will realize, this very high quality report is a tremendous progress for the salutary action program it sets forth for the coming months and years.

However, a thorough analysis of the report leads to the amazing conclusion that the report is extremely vague on the pivotal issue of business law unification within the Euro zone, not to mention the essential and urgent harmonization of labor laws and tax laws within the euro bloc, which are a prerequisite for genuine economic convergence.

It is a fact: the Euro is an incomplete, not yet fully functional, monetary system. The Five Presidents' Report is per se a most welcome, if somewhat belated, acknowledgment of this disturbing reality.

Most lawyers and business people agree on the fact that European leaders may have made a mistake in implementing a single currency without undertaking in parallel a business law harmonization process, encompassing labor and tax laws, within the countries sharing the Euro.

It is true that starting a legal unification process is a painstaking, long and arduous task. But it is a worthwhile one. Indeed, as Judge Kéba Mbaye has always stated, law, and in particular business law and business regulations are, probably even more than a common currency, the true unifying factors of economies, nations and their people. There is no denying the difficulties created by the differences of the underlying legal systems and by legal parochialisms when it comes to harmonize laws. But political will should be able to overcome these difficulties when superior interests are at stake.

The US dollar, which was a reference when the Euro was introduced (The Euro was supposed to counterbalance the US currency perceived hegemony) is itself constructed on an harmonized system of business laws (The Uniform Commercial Code, UCC) and the US Supreme Court exercises its supreme and federal jurisdiction on issues of labor law since the early 30s.

Besides, with the OHADAC business law reform, www.ohadac.com, the Caribbean and Latin American lawyers are currently proving that it is possible to harmonize business legal systems of very different backgrounds.

And finally, in its plea to strengthen the Euro single currency by the establishment of a common system of business laws within the euro bloc, the aforementioned www.ohada.com newsletter, dated August 14, 2015, recalled how, 25 years ago, African Governments, led by their common desire to save their own single currency, started an accelerated business law unification process, with notably, but not solely, the OHADA reform, whose philosophy is clearly a pan African one.

Today, in order to consolidate the Euro, European leaders should take inspiration from the vision and courage of their peers of the African continent in the early 90s and turn the Euro zone into a bloc of common business laws, including labor and tax laws, essential tools to achieve economic convergence.

The Five Presidents' Report should certainly be completed from that perspective.

Download the Five Presidents' Report