The European Monetary Union After The Crisis

This book provides a much-needed detailed analysis of the evolution of Europe over the last decade, as well as a discussion about the path of reform that has been trodden in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It offers a multidisciplinary view of the E(M)U and captures the main factors that induced the reform of the monetary union – a process that has not been linear and is far from being concluded. The author examines the policy responses designed throughout the development of the crisis and assesses the scale of the crisis in Europe, in comparison to other parts of the world, as well as its prolonged effects both in economic and financial terms. An update on the current ‘state of the art’ in the conception of risk-sharing mechanisms is provided. With its innovative approach, the book analyses the financing issues which need to be taken into consideration in the design of these instruments and highlights the main categories of governmental risk-sharing mechanisms – in particular, the ones to be used as ‘fiscal capacity’. This is a timely and topical book and will be of interest to a broad audience, including experts, scholars and students of European affairs, particularly those with economic, financial, legal and political science backgrounds.

This book provides a much-needed detailed analysis of the evolution of Europe over the last decade, as well as a discussion about the path of reform that has been trodden in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It offers a multidisciplinary view of the E(M)U and captures the main factors that induced the reform of the monetary union – a process that has not been linear and is far from being concluded. The author examines the policy responses designed throughout the development of the crisis and assesses the scale of the crisis in Europe, in comparison to other parts of the world, as well as its prolonged effects both in economic and financial terms. An update on the current ‘state of the art’ in the conception of risk-sharing mechanisms is provided. With its innovative approach, the book analyses the financing issues which need to be taken into consideration in the design of these instruments and highlights the main categories of governmental risk-sharing mechanisms – in particular, the ones to be used as ‘fiscal capacity’. This is a timely and topical book and will be of interest to a broad audience, including experts, scholars and students of European affairs, particularly those with economic, financial, legal and political science backgrounds.

After decades of economic integration and EU enlargement, the economic geography of Europe has shifted, with new peripheries emerging and the core showing signs of fragmentation. This book examines the paths of the core and peripheral countries, with a focus on their diverse productive capabilities and their interdependence. Crisis in the European Monetary Union: A Core-Periphery Perspective provides a new framework for analysing the economic crisis that has shaken the Eurozone countries. Its analysis goes beyond the short-term, to study the medium and long-term relations between ‘core’ countries (particularly Germany) and Southern European ‘peripheral’ countries. The authors argue that long-term sustainability means assigning the state a key role in guiding investment, which in turn implies industrial policies geared towards diversifying, innovating and strengthening the economic structures of peripheral countries to help them thrive. Offering a fresh angle on the European crisis, this volume will appeal to students, academics and policymakers interested in the past, present and future construction of Europe.

The first book to examine the social and economic arguments for, and the legal feasibility of, a European Social Union.

This book provides a fully revised and up-to-date analysis of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). With four entirely new chapters on responses to the financial crisis and the debate on reform options, Tomann assesses the EMU in comparison with other currency regimes through the adoption of a historical analysis. The book discusses in detail basic issues with currency and comprehensively analyzes monetary policy, highlighting problems of policy coordination. Tomann explores new monetary institutions that have been established in response to the financial crisis, before addressing long-term issues and reviewing reform proposals. By focusing on monetary issues the book offers a better understanding of macroeconomic policies and international policy cooperation, and, by extension, provides a thorough economic assessment of the EMU as an institution as it stands today.

This volume presents a radical reinterpretation of the European Community or Union as a neo-liberal construction. It was neo-liberal rather than classically liberal because it was designed and used as an external instrument to weaken the interventionist welfare state that protected working people and strengthened the hand of labor. It was founded on the vision of a free market untrammelled by public intervention and worked to ensure competition, sound money and profitability against the inflationary force of workers and unions and the welfare state. Monetary union in particular restored profitability but produced slow growth, mass unemployment, and insecurity and came under challenge, most dramatically in France, by working people from below. This view is substantiated by an economically based study of member-state performance and complemented by a series of national studies on the monetarist turn by leading scholars.

The global financial and economic crisis struck the European Union and its member states with particular force from 2009 onwards. The immediate problem was the knock-on effects of the crisis on each country’s public finances. Bank bail-outs imposed a massive increase in sovereign debt on member states, while the economic recession unavoidably led to ballooning budget deficits via the usual mechanisms of reduced taxes and increased welfare spending. Subsequently, the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis exposed the hidden weaknesses in the monetary and financial arrangements that had accompanied the launch of the Euro; the severe economic imbalance between member states, rooted in longer-term structural divergences, and the inadequate institutional mechanisms for resolving these difficulties. This book originated from an EU-funded international research network on "Systemic Risks, Financial Crises and Credit: the Roots, Dynamics and Consequences of the Sub-Prime Crisis". Contributions explore and evaluate some of the ways in which the institutions and policies of the European Union and its member states have changed in response to the problems brought about by the crisis. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

Europe’s financial crisis cannot be blamed on the Euro, Harold James contends in this probing exploration of the whys, whens, whos, and what-ifs of European monetary union. The current crisis goes deeper, to a series of problems that were debated but not resolved at the time of the Euro’s invention. Since the 1960s, Europeans had been looking for a way to address two conundrums simultaneously: the dollar’s privileged position in the international monetary system, and Germany’s persistent current account surpluses in Europe. The Euro was created under a politically independent central bank to meet the primary goal of price stability. But while the monetary side of union was clearly conceived, other prerequisites of stability were beyond the reach of technocratic central bankers. Issues such as fiscal rules and Europe-wide banking supervision and regulation were thoroughly discussed during planning in the late 1980s and 1990s, but remained in the hands of member states. That omission proved to be a cause of crisis decades later. Here is an account that helps readers understand the European monetary crisis in depth, by tracing behind-the-scenes negotiations using an array of sources unavailable until now, notably from the European Community’s Committee of Central Bank Governors and the Delors Committee of 1988–89, which set out the plan for how Europe could reach its goal of monetary union. As this foundational study makes clear, it was the constant friction between politicians and technocrats that shaped the Euro. And, Euro or no Euro, this clash will continue into the future.