> The EU was never meant to be a transfer union. The EU maybe not. The Eurozone, on the other hand, must have a compensation mechanism to allow for the inclusi

> The EU was never meant to be a transfer union. The EU maybe not. The Eurozone, on the other hand, must have a compensation mechanism to allow for the inclusion of countries as different as the Netherlands and Portugal (to use examples far from the polarized Germany<->Greece spectrum). Whenever a country has a chronic balance of goods surplus, its currency will gain in value. This keeps the surplus from accumulating, by making imports cheaper and exports more expensive. However, combine chronic surplus and chronic deficit in the same monetary zone, and they cancel out. Neither the surplus nor the deficit get corrected automatically by the market. Now, you can't have a chronic surplus, not any more than you can have a chronic deficit. Either you compensate through other channels of monetary transfer (investment, differential taxation, redistribution), or you are letting the system go in freewheel mode. If you don't compensate, something is gotta give.