As the guardian of the euro, the European Central Bank (ECB) oversees a prime example of differentiated integration. Against the backdrop of the multiple crises of the euro’s second decade, this ...contribution asks how the ECB has dealt with differentiation. It analyses both the historical development of the ECB’s relationship with euro outsiders – discerning between ‘old’ opt-outs and ‘new’ accession countries in the context of EU enlargement – and how differentiation affects ECB policymaking across its various tasks. Specifically, we analyze three logics of ‘deepening’ and ‘widening’: (1) Is the ECB encouraging euro membership among the ‘outs’? (2) Does it seek to reduce the impact of differentiation by keeping the ‘outs’ on board as much as possible? (3) Or does the ECB further cement differentiation by excluding the ‘outs’ from decision-making or deepening integration among the ‘ins’ only? We find that, in the past, the ECB has been hesitant to support ‘more Europe’. When the sovereign debt crisis posed a potentially existential threat, however, the ECB started adopting a more proactive role through both monetary policies and discursive acts. The COVID-19 crisis appears to confirm that the ECB has shed its narrow technocratic focus in order to provide political leadership in the EU. Yet, in our view, this does not suggest that the ECB is a competence maximizer ‘hardwired’ to ever closer union. Rather, the evidence suggests that it merely accepted greater powers and a deepening of integration to avert the threat of (differentiated) disintegration.
This empirical study of manufacturing firms (NAICS 33) in the EU15 countries goes beyond the trade statistics that have indicated only a small to negligible effect from the introduction of the Euro ...and shows that the introduction of the Euro has made Euro firms (firms based in one of the 12 Euro countries) more inclined than non-Euro firms (firms based in one of the three non-Euro countries: UK, Sweden, and Denmark) to undertake various forms of real actions (exercise real business options) such as to establish alliances/partnerships, to enter new markets/market segments, to switch suppliers, and to generally expand in the Euro-area. The results are important in understanding the potential long-term effects of Euro membership.
This paper, after reviewing briefly the early steps of European monetary integration and key elements of the EMU project as reflected in the Treaty of Maastricht, analyses the monetary integration ...strategy and convergence experience of member states, in particular that of Greece, in the 1990s which led to the adoption of the euro. From this analysis, a number of lessons are drawn which may be useful, in the light of enlargement, to future candidates for euro area membership in designing their economic and monetary convergence strategies. The paper concludes that the existing Community institutions, rules and mechanisms provide a helpful framework to guide the convergence effort of accession countries towards EMU and ensure the implementation of sound economic policies thereafter.
