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 D 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 what type of union they wanted. “You are either a union or you are not,” he said, adding 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.