IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eps/cepswp/26688.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Overcoming the gridlock in EMU decision-making

Author

Listed:
  • Micossi, Stefano
  • Peirce, Fabrizia

Abstract

The completion of EMU, and banking union as its critical component, requires that certain taboos in the policy debate are brought out in the open. First, the Commission must stop pretending that Italian public debt is sustainable under current policies and shift from politically motivated forbearance to serious implementation of the SGP and notably its debt rule. Second, it is necessary to acknowledge that crisis management by the ESM is crippled as long as its financial assistance can only be granted after the country in need is close to losing market access and, in addition, this threatens the financial stability of the entire euro area. The already-existing alternative to assist a country that is not respecting the SGP is to utilise the enhanced conditional credit line (ECCL) introduced by the ESM reform, approved by the European Council and awaiting national ratifications, in order to agree on a full-fledged adjustment programme before any euro area member (Italy) comes to the brink again � without any preventive conditions on the sustainability of public debt. And, third, the completion of the banking union requires a reduction of banks� home sovereign portfolios, that can be incentivised by the introduction of mild concentration charges. However, the system will not work without simultaneously offering the banks and financial investors in general a true European safe asset, fully guaranteed by its member states. Our proposal is that such a safe asset could be offered by the ESM, which would purchase in exchange the sovereigns held by the ESCB as a result of the quantitative easing asset purchase programme. The risk of losses on these sovereigns would continue to lie with the national central banks, thus avoiding the transfer of new risks to the ESM. This Policy Insight is being published simultaneously as a LUISS SEP Policy Brief.

Suggested Citation

  • Micossi, Stefano & Peirce, Fabrizia, 2020. "Overcoming the gridlock in EMU decision-making," CEPS Papers 26688, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:eps:cepswp:26688
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cdn.ceps.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/PI2020-03_Overcoming-the-gridlock-in-EMU-decision-making.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tito Boeri & Andrea Ichino & Enrico Moretti & Johanna Posch, 2021. "Wage Equalization and Regional Misallocation: Evidence from Italian and German Provinces [“Regional Wage Disparities and Migration.”]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(6), pages 3249-3292.
    2. Stefano Micossi, 2015. "The Monetary Policy of the European Central Bank (2002-2015)," Bruges European Economic Policy Briefings 35, European Economic Studies Department, College of Europe.
    3. Martin Sandbu, 2015. "Europe’s Orphan: The Future of the Euro and the Politics of Debt," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10564.
    4. Marika Cioffi & Pietro Rizza & Marzia Romanelli & Pietro Tommasino, 2019. "Outline of a redistribution-free debt redemption fund for the euro area," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 479, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    5. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Sam Langfield & Marco Pagano & Ricardo Reis & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Dimitri Vayanos, 2017. "ESBies: safety in the tranches," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 32(90), pages 175-219.
    6. Micossi, Stefano, 2017. "A Blueprint for Completing the Banking Union," CEPS Papers 13212, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    7. Messori, Marcello & Micossi, Stefano, 2018. "Counterproductive Proposals on Euro Area Reform by French and German Economists," CEPS Papers 13438, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    8. Matías Lamas & Javier Mencía, 2018. "What drives sovereign debt portfolios of banks in a crisis context?," Working Papers 1843, Banco de España.
    9. Micossi, Stefano, 2015. "The Monetary Policy of the European Central Bank (2002-2015)," CEPS Papers 10610, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Avgouleas, Emilios & Micossi, Stefano, 2021. "On selling sovereigns held by the ECB to the ESM: Institutional and economic policy implications," CEPS Papers 32673, Centre for European Policy Studies.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van Riet, Ad, 2017. "Monetary Policy Stretched to the Limit: How Could Governments Support the European Central Bank?," MPRA Paper 83451, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Rostagno, Massimo & Altavilla, Carlo & Carboni, Giacomo & Lemke, Wolfgang & Motto, Roberto & Saint Guilhem, Arthur & Yiangou, Jonathan, 2019. "A tale of two decades: the ECB’s monetary policy at 20," Working Paper Series 2346, European Central Bank.
    3. Francesco Spadafora, 2019. "European integration in the time of mistrust," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 512, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    4. Taner Akan & Tim Solle, 2022. "Do macroeconomic and financial governance matter? Evidence from Germany, 1950–2019," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 17(4), pages 993-1045, October.
    5. Engelbert Stockhammer & Collin Constantine & Severin Reissl, 2020. "Explaining the Euro crisis: current account imbalances, credit booms and economic policy in different economic paradigms," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 231-266, April.
    6. Glocker, Christian & Piribauer, Philipp, 2021. "Digitalization, retail trade and monetary policy," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    7. Messori, Marcello & Micossi, Stefano, 2018. "Counterproductive Proposals on Euro Area Reform by French and German Economists," CEPS Papers 13438, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    8. Alvaro Fernandez-Gallardo & Ivan Paya, 2020. "Macroprudential Policy in the Euro Area," Working Papers 307121127, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    9. Micossi, Stefano, 2016. "Balance-of-Payments Adjustment in the Eurozone," CEPS Papers 11250, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    10. Rojas, Luis E. & Thaler, Dominik, 2023. "The bright side of the doom loop: banks’ sovereign exposure and default incentives," Working Paper Series 2869, European Central Bank.
    11. Mirdala, Rajmund, 2015. "Exchange Rate Pass-Through in the Euro Area," MPRA Paper 68862, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Olivier Fortin‐Gagnon & Maxime Leroux & Dalibor Stevanovic & Stéphane Surprenant, 2022. "A large Canadian database for macroeconomic analysis," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(4), pages 1799-1833, November.
    13. De Grauwe Paul & Ji Yuemei, 2018. "Core-Periphery Relations in the Eurozone," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, December.
    14. Papaioannou, Sotiris, 2016. "Public spending, monetary policy and growth: Evidence from EU countries," MPRA Paper 70331, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Philip R. Lane, 2021. "The Resilience of the Euro," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 3-22, Spring.
    16. Jean-Pierre Allegret & Audrey Allegret-Sallenave, 2016. "Intra-European Union Imbalances and Cyclical Position: Does Monetary Policy Matter?," Post-Print hal-01410832, HAL.
    17. Mosler, Warren & Silipo, Damiano B., 2017. "Maximizing price stability in a monetary economy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 272-289.
    18. Burriel, Pablo & Galesi, Alessandro, 2018. "Uncovering the heterogeneous effects of ECB unconventional monetary policies across euro area countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 210-229.
    19. Francesco Spadafora, 2020. "Completing the Economic and Monetary Union: Wisdom Come Late?," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 6(3), pages 379-409, November.
    20. Mislav Brkic, 2021. "Costs and benefits of government borrowing in foreign currency: is it a major source of risk for EU member states outside the Euro?," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 45(1), pages 63-91.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eps:cepswp:26688. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Margarita Minkova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepssbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.