Rethinking the governance of economic and monetary union: Should rules continue to rule?

Firstrun project

The FIRSTRUN project was a European Union funded multinational research project 2015-2018 that investigated the need for fiscal policy coordination in the EU. To this end, the project pursued the following interrelated goals:

+ To quantify the importance of fiscal policy spillovers and the gains from fiscal policy coordination in the EU;

+ to evaluate the potential role of new shock-absorbing mechanisms;

+ to incorporate the key rules of the enhanced Economic governance into applied models that are used for practical fiscal policy evaluation;

+ to investigate the institutional mechanisms for ensuring fiscal discipline, better fiscal policy coordination and how their legitimacy can be assured in the light of the growing disquiet about EU policies.
Although the EU economy has returned to a period of stable growth since the Eurozone crisis, several key issues in the governance of economic and monetary union remain unresolved. Drawing on results from the Firstrun project, Iain Begg provided an overview of concerns in the spring of 2018 and outlined five recommendations to help further the debate.

• Primary Source

Project Syndicate, 11.12.17: Does Europe Really Need Fiscal and Political Union? (et al) http://www.europeansources.info/record/does-europe-really-need-fiscal-and-political-union/

ESO in Focus, December 2017: European Commission launches Roadmap for deepening Europe's Economic and Monetary Union http://www.europeansources.info/record/european-commission-launches-roadmap-for-deepening-europes-economic-and-monetary-union/

---