Is the European Union failing the viability tests?

A union of states is there for various reasons but a fundamental one is to provide public goods that cannot be provided optimally by actions at the level of individual states. For example, in the case of union-level public goods, actions by individual states cannot adequately capture the available economies of scale in production, control negative externalities or harness positive externalities, and optimize the tax and transfer systems. Such union-level public goods would be, for example, defense of the union against aggression by other states from outside the union, protection against infectious diseases spreading in the union, regulation of massive population flows into the union, and safeguarding the financial and macroeconomic stability of the union. These kinds of goods are characterized by two important qualities so that they can be classified as public goods at the level of...