Making the European Union a viable construction
Mario Tonveronachi
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Abstract
The recent result of the UK referendum on exiting the European Union (EU) is the more visible sign of the shortcomings and fragmentation of the Union’s political, institutional and policy framework. The present policy brief, which was written months before the UK referendum and draws from earlier works (Tonveronachi 2014, 2015, 2016), proposes to revise the monetary operations of the European central bank, the euro area’s fiscal rules and the financial regulatory approach in order to overcome some of the main inconsistencies and fragilities of the current design. Thought of as requiring no treaty changes and a minimum of political convergence with respect to alternative proposals, if successfully implemented the new design would contribute to give a viable perspective to the Economic and Monetary Union, capable of attracting the EU non-euro area countries that consider the mismanagement of the recent crisis as reason enough for resisting further losses of sovereignty.
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