The EU on the 50th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome

March 25, 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the signing of which is considered to be the birth of the European Union. On this occasion the following articles discuss past and present developments in a number of important European policy fields. *Member of the Panel of Experts of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament to which the article was first presented as a Briefing Paper for the Monetary Dialogue with the President of the European Central Bank in December 2006.     

Zur Problematik einer politisierten Europäischen Zentralbank

In September 2012, in order to save the euro, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) announced unlimited purchases of crisis-country bonds if necessary (Outright Monetary Transactions). This was a significant change in monetary policy, leading to a controversial integration with fiscal policy and endangering the ECB’s independence as well as the preservation of price stability as its primary target. To restore the strict distinction between monetary and fiscal policy and to avoid monetary deficit financing, the author proposes to forbid purchases of government bonds not only on primary but also on secondary financial markets.     

Common European monetary policy with different financial structures

If Economic and Monetary Union comes about, it will comprise countries with different financial systems and financing practices. This implies differences as regards the transmission of impulses both within the financial sector and from the monetary sphere to the real economy. Professor Renate Ohr and Torsten Gruber take the example of the United Kingdom to illustrate the significance these differences could have for the monetary policy of the European Central Bank.     

Problems of measuring money supply in the Euro Area

With just a few weeks left to go before responsibility for monetary policy is transferred from the EMU member countries to the European Central Bank, there is still no standardised concept for measuring a euro area money supply which could serve as a statistical basis for a money-supply oriented monetary policy strategy. Which problems remain to be solved?     

The Euro and the World Monetary system

Stage Three of European Economic and Monetary Union is scheduled to begin on 1st January 1999 at the latest; by 1st July 2002 the euro will probably be the only legal tender in the participating countries. The role of the European Central Bank and the euro in the international monetary system is still very unclear, however. This poses a risk for the intended independence of the ECB.     

25 Jahre Maastrichter Verträge — reale Divergenzen und institutionelle Reformen

The paper argues that 18 years after the introduction of the Euro, the European Monetary Union has yet been unable to achieve sufficient real economic convergence among its member economies. As a result, the European Central Bank (ECB) still faces a dilemma in the sense that the common monetary policy is unable to meet current policy requirements in both boom and recession countries. Of course, the extensive asset purchase programmes of the ECB in the aftermath of the Euro crisis provided the necessary time for policy reforms, but deep rooted structural problems in a number of member countries and a divergent understanding of macroeconomic policy have remained and will lead to sustained high tensions in the eurozone in the foreseeable future.     

An assessment of the effectiveness of the monetary dialogue on the ECB’s accountability and transparency: A qualitative approach

The European Central Bank has been seen by some observers as lacking transparency and accountability. The following article examines whether the monetary dialogue between the European Pariliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) influences the ECB’s behaviour in this regard. This is done by comparing the issues raised by the ECON and its panel of experts and the changes in the ECB’s procedures and arrangements.     

Change at the ECB Executive Board

In view of the future enlargement of the euro area the European Central Bank (ECB) will have to be reformed. The ECB itself has presented a reform proposal which points in the right direction, but which could be improved upon for more efficient decision-making.

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*Sylvester C. W. Eijffinger, Professor of European Financial Economics and Jean Monnet Professor of European Financial and Monetary Integration, CentER, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; Professor of European Financial Integration, RSM Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Research Fellow, CEPR, London; Member of the Panel of Experts of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament to which the article was first presented as a Briefing Paper in March 2006. Comments on an earlier version of the Briefing Paper by Prof. Hans Blommestein and Dr. Edin Mujagic are gratefully acknowledged.     

ECB: Quo Vadis?

The European Central Bank has implemented a very ambitious monetary policy since the financial crisis of 2008, intervening heavily in the eurozone economies. This policy has generated substantial risks to both the ECB’s primary task and its independence. It is therefore time for a fundamental evaluation of the ECB’s monetary policy strategy.     

How Large Is the Risk of Stagflation in the Eurozone?

The rapid recovery of demand combined with supply constraints has led to rising prices during the past months. This is evident in oil and gas markets, but also in international trade, which has been thrown out of step by bottlenecks at Asian ports. This situation creates a trade-off for the European Central Bank, because a more expansionary monetary policy cannot mitigate the supply bottlenecks and supply-side restrictions, while a more restrictive monetary policy would slow down the economic recovery. For this reason, key interest rate hikes in the eurozone are not to be expected for 2022. If the supply-side factors become persistent and wage policy tries to pass the price effects on, monetary policy will be forced to become restrictive.

     

Emerging Markets and the Global Monetary System: The Challenge of Rising Inflation

While spillovers of the present financial turmoil in mature economies to emerging economies have so far largely been contained, the monetary policy implications of the financial turbulence present a challenge to the approach pursued by emerging markets in integrating into the global monetary system following the crises of the mid to late 1990s. Specifically, the period of a smooth coexistence between meeting inflation targets and maintaining a high degree of exchange rate stability is likely to come to an end. * At the time of writing this paper, the second author was an advisor at the Deutsche Bundesbank on secondment from the European Central Bank. The views expressed are solely those of the authors. They wish to thank Karlheinz Bischofberger, Ulrich Grosch and Sabine Herrmann for their valuable comments and suggestions, as well as Livia Chitu for excellent research assistance.     

Who Supports the ECB? Evidence from Eurobarometer Survey Data

This paper studies the determinants of the support for the European Central Bank (ECB) in the member countries of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and their evolution from 1999 to 2015. Our contribution is to examine micro‐level sociodemographic characteristics from the Eurobarometer surveys jointly with macroeconomic indicators of trust in a central bank in order to evaluate econometrically their relative importance over time. Pseudo‐panel logit estimates reveal that the former have a dynamically stable, and generally stronger influence taken altogether, when compared with the latter. Interestingly, we find that while expected inflation becomes a positive determinant of trust in the ECB after the global financial crisis (GFC), actual inflation gets no statistical significance. Having taken centre stage in the monetary policy debate in the Euro‐area post‐GFC and especially since 2013, excessive disinflation and risk of deflation attracted strong attention by the public and have consequently affected its perceptions about the ECB. Accordingly, our results emphasise forward lookingness of the EMU population with regard to ‘deflation scares’ in determining trust in the ECB, in addition to disentangling the contributions of the key individual‐level sociodemographic factors, and can duly inform ECB's communication strategy.     

ECB monetary policy during the “Weak Euro” period of 1999/2001

The European Central Bank has often been accused of lacking transparency in the conduct of its monetary policy. This article analyses the theoretical strategy of the ECB and compares it with the policy actually pursued. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations made for future policy.     

Issues of European monetary integration

In recent years significant progress has been made towards European monetary integration. Widespread agreement as to the role of monetary policy has been established and there were no realignments of exchange rates within the European Monetary System between March 1983 and July 1985. This was the longest period without realignment in the EMS and contrasted sharply with the six realignments observed in the four years previously. What are the prospects for the further strengthening of the EMS? How can the present system be developed further?     

The Euro's place in the world monetary system

The European Union is striding ahead on schedule towards European monetary union (EMU). Eleven member states will introduce the euro for book-keeping purposes on 1.1.1999, assigning responsibility for monetary policy to the European System of Central Banks. On 1.1.2002, the euro will also be in circulation as notes and coins, and the participating countries will abandon their national currencies by 30.6.2002 at the latest. But what part will the euro play in the world monetary system? And what conclusions do we need to draw?     

Wie soll die EZB aus ihrer unkonventionellen Geldpolitik aussteigen?

As economic conditions improve in the euro area, the European Central Bank (ECB) has to decide how to sequence the normalisation of monetary policy. Phasing out asset purchases first would mainly increase long-term rates and help to mitigate some of the most negative side effects of the extremely expansionary monetary policy, such as misallocations in asset markets. In contrast, starting with an increase of the rate on the deposit facility would reduce the implicit tax on banks’ liquidity holdings at the ECB, which could improve financial stability. Forward guidance and clear communication from the ECB are crucial to safeguarding a smooth transition back to a more conventional monetary policy.     

The euro — a story of misunderstanding

From the very beginning of the European Monetary Union the crucial institutions, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, led by mainstream economic thinking, were not up to their task of controlling the core of the system effectively. A huge gap in competitiveness among the member states has arisen due to German wage-dumping policy on the one hand and, on the other, wage growth in Southern Europe which is above the growth of productivity plus the inflation target of 2%. A European-wide coordination of wage policy is the only promising way to close this gap. However, as wages and competitiveness are not high on the agenda of the politicians responsible and their advisers, time to save the euro is running out.     

Driven by the markets? ECB sovereign bond purchases and the securities markets programme

At the height of the European sovereign debt crisis, the European Central Bank decided to purchase distressed European government bonds. Even worse, and more importantly, the ECB is providing direct support of several hundred billions of euros to troubled banks via its normal monetary policy operations by granting them the opportunity to refinance at an interest rate of 1%. This article argues that these purchases will result in common monetary policy being dominated by national fiscal policies. The most worrisome aspect is that the euro area appears to have stumbled into unconventional monetary policies that, once started, will be difficult to exit. In the euro area, properly functioning financial markets are at risk.     

Economic Policy within a European Monetary Union

A European Monetary Union (EMU) and the complete transfer of the responsibility for monetary policy to a European central bank are no longer utopian ideas, but a politically highly relevant possibility. The question how economic policy goals can be achieved within such a monetary union is therefore gaining in importance.     

The unconventional monetary policy of the European Central Bank: Effectiveness and transmission analysis

Since the beginning of the financial crisis in summer 2007, the European Central Bank (ECB) has redirected traditional monetary policy, based on interest rates, to an unconventional monetary policy focused on the quantitative expansion of its balance sheet. In this context, the present paper aims to assess the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policy instruments with regard to inflation and economic growth. To this end, the methodology is based on the estimation of a structural vector autoregressive model for the period 2007:Q1–2018:Q4, using four variables: EONIA, the total amount of assets on the ECB's balance sheet, the Eurozone inflation rate and the Eurozone economic growth rate. The results show a slight impact of the different balance sheet policies on inflation and economic activity behaviour, especially during the last year of the financial crisis. The robustness of these results is supported by the estimation of the same model replacing EONIA rates with shadow rates. Therefore, the results support the existence of monetary transmission for the period during which the unconventional monetary policy was developed as well as the effectiveness of the monetary policy adopted by the ECB in its commitment to price stability.