Challenges to new economic governance in the Eurozone

Abstract

The surge of negative impacts of the economic and financial crisis in the more fragile countries of the Eurozone has triggered a heated debate about the viability of the European Monetary Union (EMU) architecture, whose imperfection may jeopardize the ultimate goals of the European integration process. In fact, this crisis has eloquently demonstrated that the EMU had serious shortcomings in its design and in its operational framework, which did not avoid penalizing effects for some of its Member States and fed the demand for structural changes to the single currency paradigm. As such, a number of initiatives from the communitarian institutions have emerged, based on the views of highly-critical authors of the European monetary integration process, and those initiatives have been changing the Eurozone governance model progressively. In this context, the article aims for two goals: on the one hand, to identify and discuss the rationality and fundaments of the main changes that have occurred in the Eurozone in recent years; on the other hand, to reflect on the dilemmas that, on a number of occasions, have opposed the need for a bigger legitimacy in the intergovernmental decisions and the efficiency required by the complex European construction process. Finally, we will address the political and technical conditions for an efficient governance that can improve the Eurozone’s resiliency as a whole and increase its effectiveness.