Economic and Monetary Union

In this year of the euro's 25th anniversary, the book revisits the architecture of the European currency union as it continues to evolve and faces today's concurrent challenges posed by its members' high and diverging government debt levels, debt sustainability concerns, and the considerable public expenditures, investments and reforms needed in particular to address climate change and the green transition. Key components reviewed include the single monetary policy for the eurozone; the common rules and processes for keeping a measure of discipline and orderliness in the members' economic and budgetary policies; the containment of financial fragmentation within the eurozone; and stability support for members under financial stress. The book focuses on the central role of the European Central Bank (ECB) and considers such issues as: How the ECB has defined its monetary policy mandate and calibrated its actions within the matrix of broadly worded objectives and constraints set by the EU Treaties; The possible tensions and trade-offs between the ECB's primary mission of inflation control and the episodic need to avert risks to financial stability, contain financial fragmentation and preserve the cohesion of the European currency union; The difficulties of a single monetary policy interacting with the relative heterogeneity of economic characteristics and national fiscal policies across the eurozone; The ECB's possible role in supporting the transition to a lower-carbon economy; and how judicial review by the European Court of Justice has to contend with the complexities and inherent uncertainties of monetary analysis and the ECB's need of a broad margin of policy judgment. As part of the EU's incomplete Economic and Monetary Union, the currency union remains a work in progress. The challenges and choices at hand present serious legal questions that cannot be viewed in isolation from the economic and political issues - a kind of 3D combination puzzle to be solved.

This Element examines efforts to strengthen Economic and Monetary Union in the European Union, especially over the last decade, asking if enough has been done to render it more sustainable and resilient. Drawing on a survey of 111 leading experts on the economics and politics of EMU, this Element reviews the wide-ranging reforms undertaken since the crises of the early 2010s and assesses whether they go far enough. Although it concludes that much has been done to push the euro towards being a more complete currency, it identifies remaining flaws and challenges which EU leaders need to resolve.

This book has two research objectives. The main objective is to present the dynamics of the system reform of the Economic and Monetary Union in 2010-2022. The other is to take stock of the reform and to highlight its successes and failures. In this context, the monograph puts forward two research hypotheses. The first hypothesis assumes that the shortcomings in EU primary and secondary law regarding the Economic and Monetary Union and the course of the euro area debt crisis were two main reasons for reforming the EMU, whereby the crisis in question actually forced the European Union and the euro area countries to implement the reform. The second hypothesis is based on the assumption that the implementation of the system reform encountered many difficulties and obstacles arising from the negative attitude of the governments of some euro area Member States to the execution of selected projects, but also from the accumulation of various severe crises that the European Union faced during the reform, in particular the euro area debt crisis, the migration crisis, the pandemic crisis and the geopolitical crisis following Russia's aggression against Ukraine. The research hypotheses were verified using a triangulation of several qualitative methods: case study, institutional-legal method, comparative method, and critical analysis of sources and literature.

This open access book delivers a much-needed analysis of the relationship between the EU's financial constitution and European integration. The economic rescue package NextGenerationEU has multiplied the EU's financial volume and thereby raised the question of the state of European integration anew. This open-access book 'follows the money' and surveys the financial constitution of European integration from the perspective of law, political economy, and history. Structured into 3 thematic parts, the book focuses on past and present developments of the fiscal structure of the EU as well as potential future outcomes. It raises an array of questions that are answered from different disciplinary perspectives and through the eyes of academia and practice: can underlying design flaws of the European Monetary Union be identified? What about the legality and the economic implications of the innovative policy-making at the EU level in response to the COVID-19 pandemic? What do these reflections on the EU financial constitution reveal about the development of European integration as a whole? The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

September 2022 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) crisis, a seismic event which shook the continent and caused a severe recession to spread rapidly across European economies. To mark the occasion, CEPR organised, in collaboration with the Pierre Werner Chair at the EUI, a two-part webinar to reflect on the potential lessons from the crisis. These insightful discussions led to the creation of this eBook, which brings together eminent scholars and CEPR researchers who witnessed first-hand the fallout, both economic and political, of countries in the European Union. Many of the contributors have since been involved in managing, designing and debating the making of the European monetary system over the last three decades. The eBook discusses the origins of the crisis and frames it within a broader European historical and political perspective. It considers the underlying causes - German reunification, the struggle for monetary cooperation, the instability of a fixed exchange rate regime under capital mobility - which ultimately led to the breakdown of a flawed system. From disaster to revival, the eBook explains why the crisis was such a watershed moment for European economic policy formation and traces the growth and subsequent construction of a more robust European monetary system. It highlights how the trauma of the ERM crisis may have been the impulse needed to reinforce the ultimate adoption of a single, common currency in the form of the euro. In the following decades, the eBook shows how lessons from the crisis have remained pertinent, influencing theories of currency crisis and the development of instruments and institutions able to adequately respond to subsequent financial instability and debt crises. The final section reflects on the need for changes to further strengthen the institutional setup.

This book provides a commentary on the law of the EU related to the Monetary Union. It contains a comprehensive analysis of all provisions of the Statute of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) and the European Central Bank (ECB). In addition, the book also analyses all provisions of the Treaties themselves which regulate the ESCB and the ECB. This analysis is supplemented by commentaries on other Protocols which contain relevant rules for the Monetary Union. In essence, all relevant statutory rules governing the euro and its key monetary authority, the European Central Bank, are unfolded and explained in one volume. This gives the book a unique position in the legal literature on the law of the EU. With contributions by renowned academics and practitioners, this book is an expanded and updated translation of the 2013 German commentary, EWU Kommentar zu Europäischen Währungsunion (Mohr Siebeck) and is an invaluable resource for practitioners and academics alike who are looking for a provision-by-provision commentary on the laws governing the European Monetary Union.

This book provides the first in-depth empirical study of the European Parliament's powers of scrutiny of the executive in the European Union (EU) political system, focusing on the politically salient field of the Economic and Monetary Union. The expansion of executive decision-making during the euro crisis was accompanied by an empowerment of the European Parliament through legislative oversight. This book examines how the European Parliament exercises that oversight on a day-to-day basis and thus contributes to political accountability at the EU level. Building on an innovative analytical framework for the study of parliamentary questions and answers, Adina Akbik sheds light on the European Parliament's possibilities and limitations to hold EU executive bodies accountable more generally. Case studies cover the period 2012 to 2019 and include the European Central Bank in banking supervision, the European Commission, the Eurogroup, and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council. This title is Open Access.

The Eurozone and the European Union have recently been confronted with a number of existential threats. The sovereign debt crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have forced European decisionmakers to pass important reforms which have radically transformed the nature and scope of the Union's powers in the field of economic and fiscal policy. As the new economic governance of the Eurozone emerges as the main driver of integration in today's Europe, this book seeks to assess the solidity of the constitutional foundations supporting that system, and its compliance with the Union's core founding value: the rule of law. Using competence allocation, regulatory quality, access to external review and fundamental rights sustainability as analytical benchmarks, this book argues that the recent metamorphosis of Eurozone economic governance has not been accompanied by a parallel strengthening of its constitutional settlement, leading to a problematic misalignment between the Union's action and its governing principles.

This book analyzes the EU's responses to the sovereign debt crisis that hit the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 2010. After reviewing the events that led to the crisis, it examines two case studies. The first assesses the short-term policy changes by drawing on a new mechanism, contingent learning. The second case study revolves around the long-term EMU reforms passed during the period 2010-2013. More specifically, it assesses these responses in relation to the institutional scientific publications of the European Central Bank and the DG ECFIN of the Commission. By analyzing both the short and long-term responses to the sovereign debt crisis, the book elucidates how policy learning can be an effective engine for deeper European integration. It will be of interest to scholars and students of EU integration, the EMU, policy learning, and supranational bureaucracies. 

European integration efforts are on the brink of collapse. In its current state, the European Monetary Union is unintentionally acting more as a dis-integration factor than as a unifying element. Dirk Meyer provides descriptions, analyses and background information on the current crisis. The book is the result of more than ten years of work on the subject.

This incisive book is an accessible guide to the laws and policies relating to economic and monetary union (EMU). Providing a rich, multidisciplinary analysis, it combines historical, legal and economic perspectives to offer a detailed understanding of how EMU has developed since its inception and how it works in practice today. Alberto Saravalle begins with an overview of the history of EMU, alongside a theoretical analysis of its regulatory framework and development. He then discusses the events of the European sovereign debt crisis, examining the measures taken by EU institutions such as the European Central Bank, as well as the responses of the Member States and the impact of economic policies they adopted as a result. Finally, he analyses recent proposed reforms to EMU and its possible future evolution, including a discussion of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on Member States' willingness to participate in further reform and integration. This book will be a valuable reference for those teaching and studying advanced courses on EU law, as well as courses that cover the economic history of EU integration. It will also be useful to practitioners, government officials and policy-makers wishing to familiarise themselves with the complex functioning of EMU.

This book adopts a comprehensive approach, combining the views of economists and political scientists, to assess the threats of maintaining the non-collaborative stance that prevailed in the response to past crises, and to explore new solutions to the present emergency. The coronavirus pandemic represents a serious test for the continued existence of the European Monetary Union. It has worsened pre-existing divisions among its members and highlighted the urgent need to address institutional and governance problems that were already apparent in the aftermath of the financial crisis and sovereign debt crisis, but have now gained in relevance following the more widespread impact of the disease across the European Union. This book discusses concrete strategies to overcome the current challenges, focusing on the need to build an effective economic and monetary union. It also reflects on ways of pursuing conformity with discipline and coordination rules while also adopting a more collaborative stance that has so far been absent in the Eurozone and has consistently undermined the political and social dimensions of the common currency project.

Why was the Eurozone crisis so difficult to resolve? Why was it resolved in a manner in which some countries bore a much larger share of the pain than other countries? Why did no country leave the Eurozone rather than implement unprecedented austerity? Who supported and opposed the differentpolicy options in the crisis domestically, and how did the distributive struggles among these groups shape crisis politics?Building on macro-level statistical data, original survey data from interest groups, and qualitative comparative case studies, this book argues and shows that the answers to these questions revolve around distributive struggles about how the costs of the Eurozone crisis should be divided amongcountries, and within countries, among different socioeconomic groups. Together with divergent but strongly held ideas about the "right way" to conduct economic policy and asymmetries in the distribution of power among actors, severe distributive concerns of important actors lie at the root of thedifficulties of resolving the Eurozone crisis as well as the difficulties to substantially reform EMU.The book provides new insights into the politics of the Eurozone crisis by emphasizing three perspectives that have received scant attention in existing research: a comparative perspective on the Eurozone crisis by systematically comparing it to previous financial crises, an analysis of the wholerange of policy options, including the ones not chosen, and a unified framework that examines crisis politics not just in deficit-debtor, but also in surplus-creditor countries.

Do individual constitutions, and the legal cultures underlying them, pose an obstacle to future EU integration? This ambitious collections brings together reports from all the European Member States, systematically setting out their individual constitutional guarantees. In doing so, it tracks possible roadblocks to the future evolution of European integration. Written by recognised authorities in each Member State, it offers an authoritative and rigorous overview of the European Union's constitutional landscape. Its single-structure approach allows for comparison while maintaining consistency. It will become the standard reference work for academics, students, and practitioners in the field of European Union Law and integration.

Die Europäische Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion (EWWU) hat sich seit ihrer schrittweisen Gründung in den 1990er Jahren zu einem Kernbestandteil der Europäischen Union (EU) entwickelt. Der Euro ist nicht mehr wegzudenken und dieser setzt die EWWU voraus. Die EWWU sichert aber auch den Binnenmarkt ab und bildet damit ein wichtiges Fundament für die Wahrung der Grundfreiheiten. Die EWWU wurde aber als „unvollständige“ Union, mit einer voll integrierten Währungsunion und einer Wirtschaftsunion in rudimentärer Form etabliert. Diese „asymmetrische“ Natur hat vielfältige Herausforderungen für die Praxis geschaffen. Zahlreiche Mitgliedstaaten waren aber darauf bedacht, ihre souveränen Rechte im Bereich der Wirtschaftspolitik zu verteidigen und insbesondere die Entstehung einer „Solidarunion“ oder einer „Fiskalunion“ zu verhindern. Die große Finanzkrise, die 2007 begonnen hat, war noch nicht überwunden, als mit der COVID-19-Pandemie die nächste existentielle Gefahr für die EWWU auftrat. Die EU ist dieser mit Entschlossenheit entgegengetreten. In dieser Monographie wird die gesamte Entwicklung der EWWU von den 1990er Jahren bis 2021 nachgezeichnet und analysiert. Besonderes Augenmerk wird auch der Rechtsprechung des EuGH sowie jener des deutschen Bundesverfassungsgerichts gewidmet. Ein eigenes Kapitel ist der „Bankenunion“ gewidmet. Die aktuellen Bemühungen zur Bewältigung der COVID-19-Krise, insbesondere aufgrund des Next Generation EU–Programms schließen die Arbeit ab. Es wird gezeigt, dass das Solidarelement, trotz erheblichen Widerstandes einer Reihe von EU-Staaten, in der EWWU immer größere Bedeutung erlangt.

How can the new dynamic in European integration politics during the second half of the 1980’s be explained? What were the driving forces behind the Single European Act, the achievement of the Single Market, the Schengen agreement, the EC’s expansion to the south, and the new steps towards Monetary Union and the Common Foreign and Security Policy? In this book, using numerous discoveries from the archives, historians from 12 countries show how the European Community reacted to the challenges of globalisation and the reform initiatives by Mikhail Gorbachev. In doing so, they write a new chapter in the history of European integration: the emergence of the European Union.