Irish president urges ECB reform or risk social upheaval The EU must drop its "hegemonic" economic model and reform the European Central Bank or risk social upheaval and a loss of popular legitimacy, Ireland's head of state has warned. Michael Higgins told the Financial Times that the EU faced a "moral crisis" as much as an economic crisis and European leaders needed to make up their minds on the type of union they really wanted. "You are either a union or you are not," the Irish president said in the interview, adding that there would be no "glowing future" for an EU that allowed divisions to open up between states. Mr Higgins, a leftwing poet and human rights campaigner, was elected president in the wake of Ireland's financial crisis in October 2011 with the biggest vote in the history of presidential elections. He spoke as May day demonstrators poured into the streets across the eurozone, spurred on by the growing backlash against austerity. In Slovakia, prime minister Robert Fico argued that it was "not possible . . . to cut public finances and to expect that the government will have enough resources to support economic growth and fight unemployment." Mr Higgins, whose position is largely ceremonial, argued that there was a need for "radical economics" and a "radical rethink" of how EU leaders were handling the economic crisis. "There is a real problem in what was assumed to be a single hegemonic model," he said. The unemployment profile in Greece is different from the unemployment profile in Ireland. You need a pluralism of approaches. Mr Higgins said jointly issued eurozone bonds could create the space needed for economic recovery and criticised the ECB's response to the crisis, saying it should act to fuel growth: "We have 26m people unemployed . . . are 112m at risk of poverty, a contraction in investment and falling demand." The Irish president criticised EU leaders for not separating bank debt from sovereign debt. Ireland's government finances were overwhelmed in 2010 when Dublin bailed out the country's banks but did not impose losses on their bondholders. "It would have been of immense benefit naturally to growth, employment creation and investment if the . . . commitment of separating banking debt from sovereign debt had in fact been implemented," Mr Higgins said. It would give you the opportunity to breathe and create growth in the economy. Mr Higgins added that Ireland, praised by many as the eurozone's model bailout patient, had been unusual in accepting such a high degree of cuts when compared to other states in the currency bloc. "The polite version is that we are pragmatists," he said. What we really need now is something that goes beyond outrage and recrimination. Additional reporting by Jan Cienski in Bratislava