Roadmap for Withdrawal from the Euro: Technical Preparation, Legal and Practical Implementation from the Perspective of a Withdrawing State

A Plan B as a reaction to the past sovereign debt crises, the current account imbalances, the partly extremely high TARGET2 balances, the EU credit through eurobonds and the renewed discussions about the abolition of the fiscal rules—all in the interest of a reordering of the currency union to make the highly indebted crisis countries viable—is politically so far categorically rejected with the reference to the unity and the irreversibility of the eurozone. In addition, from an economic point of view, the potential high costs, the risk of contagion and the lack of practicability are pointed out. The withdrawal of a country from the eurozone is full of difficulties in the procedural process. In general, a distinction must be made between the withdrawal of a strong country with appreciation expectations and a crisis country with depreciation expectations. The need for secrecy to avoid bank runs, capital flight and generally anticipatory capital movements on the one hand and the time required for the negotiation and dismissal of other contracts on the other hand seem incompatible. A temporal separation of the recording of the account balances and the cash in advance, the announcement of the withdrawal in a second step and the negotiation and fixation of the withdrawal conditions afterwards offer a possible solution.