Euro

  • Why Economists Should not always Ask for Centralisation

    Adriaan Schout

    Many say that the eurocrisis is not about the euro but about financial markets. Whatever the precise cause: it seems to be a purely economic crisis. Of course, the financial sector was a motor behind the crisis, but there have been other drivers too. National conditions – such as high private debts, corruption and inflexible…

  • Europe – Absent?

    Almut Möller

    This is my first entry in the Eurozone 2013 blog. Based in Berlin, in the following months I will comment on the steps taken by EU leaders to reform the Eurozone from the German capital, and will include my observations on the German euro debate. As it happens, the German President, Joachim Gauck, has just…

  • The European Periphery: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

    Alexandre Abreu

    The strategy of the Portuguese government in the context of the current crisis, which is essentially aligned with the prescriptions of the ECB-EC-IMF troika, revolves around two axes that, indeed, were also typical of the policy packages implemented in the global south from the 1980s onwards: stabilisation, which in this case refers to slashing public…

  • Euro crisis: a View from Lisbon

    Alexandre Abreu

    In my first contribution to this blog, I would like to start with outlining what I’ll set out to do in the coming months. The readers of this blog will be quite familiar with the ‘orthodox’ account of the current crisis in the eurozone: profligate public spending by governments in the European periphery, which need…

  • Dijsselbloem as Eurogroup President – Curse or Blessing for the Netherlands and the Euro?

    Adriaan Schout

    Finding suitable chairpersons for EU meetings is extremely difficult.  Since ‘presidents’ can be politically quite threatening they should preferably come from small countries. They should be rather gullible and non-threatening people. As our euro notes prove, the EU has no shared values and that makes chairing particularly difficult. The design of the euro notes was…

  • The Euro Crisis in 2012: Belief, Will it be Enough?

    Aldo Caruso

    by Ferdi De Ville This is my final entry in this blog on the euro crisis in 2012. Many things have happened and been decided and installed the past year, too many to recap them all here. There have been moments at which a collapse of the euro area as we know it, once unthinkable,…

  • A Good Week for the Euro?

    Aldo Caruso

    by Ferdi De Ville Those that still doubted that the EU was a right choice for the Nobel Peace Prize have been rebuked by the Heads of State and Government of the euro area at last week’s summit (13-14/12). The leaders decided at this meeting, which for months was announced as the gathering that would…

  • Crisis Management and Integration at Gun Point

    Aldo Caruso

    by Daniela Schwarzer The ways decision-making that has taken place both in crisis management and in governance reform has increased the perception of democratic deficits in the EU. At peaks of the crisis, key decisions were taken at emergency summits, discarding the European Parliament, providing a key role to Germany and France at the costs…