EMU @ 10
EMU @ 10

Author: European Commission. Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs

Publisher: European Communities

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9789279083846

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This publication series appears six times a year, and contains important reports and communications from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on the economic situation and developments.

10 Years of the Euro
10 Years of the Euro

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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The creation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the euro ten years ago was a leap forward in the process of European integration, according to a recently launched policy brief, introduced at a Distinguished Lecture by Klaus Regling, EU Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Senior Adviser to the European Commission. The event drew a capacity crowd. Prof Kishore Mahbubahni, Dean of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, chaired the session. The policy brief reviewed the achievements of the first decade of the euro and the challenges ahead. It outlined out the various stages in implementing the EMU: from freeing movement of capital, to establishing a Central Bank, to economic convergence, fixing the exchange rate and launching the euro. The euro and the EMU have enjoyed a successful decade, buoyed by relatively benign conditions in the world economy, particularly in increasing trade flow, financial and product market integration, generating macroeconomic stability and growing status as an international currency. With the onset of the international financial crisis however, the euro-zone faced the first major test and challenge. The crisis exposed existing imbalances within the area and raised the stakes for economic coordination. Nonetheless, the EMU provided important protection and mitigated the effects of the crisis on vulnerable member states. The experience of the past decade offered lessons for economic integration in Asia, particularly in creating reserve and exchange rate arrangements. The brief noted that Asia existed in a different geopolitical context compared with the EU, but that a regional forum would probably still need to be a pre-condition for currency reserve and monetary cooperation, alongside political will, effective surveillance and clear procedures.

European States and the Euro
European States and the Euro

Author: Kenneth Dyson

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2002-03-07

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0191530506

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With Economic and Monetary Union, the European Union has embarked on one of the biggest projects in its history. Previous literature has focused on how EMU came into being and on the policy issues that it raises. European States and the Euro seeks to move the discussion forwards by offering the first systematic evaluation of how it is affecting EU states, both members and non-members of the Euro-Zone. It is the first book to explicitly situate EMU in the growing literature on Europeanization. It examines the effects on public policies, political structures, discourses, and identities. The book seeks to identify the scope of EMU's effects, the direction that it imparts to political and policy changes, the mechanisms by which it produces its effects, and the role of domestic institutions, political leadership and specific forms of discourse in shaping responses. In addition, the book assesses how, and with what effects, EMU is affecting key policy sectors labour markets and wages, welfare states, and financial market governance. What conditions the degree of convergence discernible in these sectors? Finally, the book seeks to 'contextualize' EMU by assessing its effects both in comparison with other variables like globalization and in a historical perspective of the European Monetary System as a 'training ground'. The book combines sectoral and country case studies with a thematic treatment by recognized experts in their fields. It moves from globalization, through EU-level changes, to member states and finally to specific sectors. The main conclusions are that EMU is most important in affecting the timing, tempo and rhythm of domestic change that these changes are experienced pre-eminently at the level of policy; that it strengthens pressures for convergence; but that different domestic institutional arrangements and discourses lead to variations in policy processes and effects and in the way change is 'framed'. In particular, whilst EMU contains a neo-liberalizing tendency exhibited most clearly in financial market effects, it is not to be characterized as a neo-liberal project by means of which the EU is becoming an economic and social space simply converging around Anglo-American market capitalism.