N°127: The Euro area in crisis

A sovereign debt crisis has spread over a rising number of euro area Member States since early 2010. Intra-area disparities had widened before the crisis. Although in recession, Member States are requested to run austerity policies, their public debts are no longer safe assets, their economic policies are under permanent financial markets’ supervision. What are the origins of the euro area crisis?Can a single currency be maintained between so heterogeneous economies? Should domestic economic policies or the EMU framework be blamed for the current crisis? Should Europe establish binding fiscal rules, fiscal federalism or open economic policy coordination? Should Member States implement austerity measures and structural reforms? Or should the ECB guarantee public debt and EU institutions implement a growth strategy across the EU?These are some of the highly topical issues addressed in this volume of OFCE’s Review/Debates and Policies. This volume is a release of twelve of the papers given at the 9th EUROFRAME Conference on economic policy issues in the European Union, held in Kiel on 8 June 2012. The papers reflect a large diversity of analyses on real exchange rate imbalances, debt crisis indicators, fiscal rules, banking and financial issues, and exit strategies.