Who will be Europe’s Alexander Hamilton?

As former ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet has long argued, the eurozone cannot function without a fiscal union. But to make that leap, Europe will need its own Alexander Hamilton – the United States’ powerful first Secretary of the Treasury.

After all, a fiscal union is not just a mechanism for sharing existing and new debt. It must also establish the conditions for fiscal policymaking at the national level, through balanced-budget rules and other measures. Just as Hamilton’s reforms shifted power from American states to the US federal government, eurozone countries would have to cede some degree of national sovereignty.

To be sure, such a shift in power would be momentous. But, at the end of the day, a fiscal union is the only viable solution to the eurozone’s structural problems. The Stability and Growth Pact is a second-best solution that will leave Europe stumbling from crisis to crisis.

History has shown that, to establish the euro, European policymakers first had to work together to align national policies and incentives within the European Monetary System. A new presidium within the Eurogroup could do the same for a fiscal union today.

But who will be Europe’s Hamilton?