The current economic meltdown should give new momentum to the fading dream of a social Europe. Growing demand for state protection and the need to co-ordinate national responses to the crisis should bring grist to the mill of the proponents of a genuine social Europe, if the EU and EMU are to survive the current crisis. This should be sweet music to the ears of the French left, who have long believed that the only way to achieve a truly social Europe was through a more political Europe. At the launch of the euro, prime minister Lionel Jospin had hoped that the single currency could protect and promote the European social model by making it easier to “regulate global capitalism … through common European action, in a Europe fired by social-democratic ideals”.