Rebalancing the eurozone

A proposal for Target2 reform and a capped mutualisation debt scheme in Europe

‘Under a monetary union, fiscal and monetary discipline have to go hand in hand if macroeconomic stability is to be maintained. The question is how to set up the right institutions to achieve this stability in a credible manner. This policy brief proposes a new institutional arrangement for the euro area to restore fiscal discipline. It places the responsibility for compliance entirely on the shoulders of the member states. It also provides for the mutualisation of 30% of the member states’ debt-to-GDP ratio.
This would help to maintain a stable currency and to limit the risk of contagion should another crisis occur in the future. However, this comes at a cost. Under the fiscal scheme proposed, member states, which would be fully fiscally sovereign, would need to run long-term sound fiscal policies to benefit from euro membership. In addition, this brief proposes a reform of Target2 under which overspending economies would have to pay the financial cost of accessing extra euros, which would deter the accumulation of internal imbalances within the euro area. All this is expected to change the current fragility of the architecture of the euro, provide member states with the right incentives to abide by sounder economic principles and make them fully responsible for the policies they adopt.’

The above is the abstract of a research report I have just written on the reforms needed to undertake to re-balance the eurozone economy, published by the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies. As you will read in the report, I don’t favour more centralisation of fiscal competences to the ‘federal’ level (be it Brussels or Frankfurt), but instead to abide by the subsidiarity principle as much as possible; and thus to make Member States (MSs) fully responsible for their own macroeconomic policies and public finances. The euro is a sort of a ‘monetary club’ (some will claim, and quite rightly, that it is much more than that) with benefits and costs of membership. As to the benefits, these are particularly evident for those economies with a poor inflation record in the running of their own national currencies in the past; for which the euro has provided a strong monetary anchor and therefore greater  price stability and lower borrowing costs. As to the costs, these were more subtle before the Eurozone crisis (and indeed less publicised at the time of the launch of the euro), and have become much more evident since then: simply put, MSs do not have access to their own (national) monetary policy anymore in order to ‘alleviate’ the costs of adjustment to a crisis, and also have limited sovereignty over their fiscal policy.

The reforms introduced during and after the recent crisis have confirmed the direction of change in the eurozone towards ever more co-ordination of macro policies; and therefore more and more conditions and criteria are now in place to closely monitor and eventually fine MSs for the running of (severe) fiscal and also macroeconomic imbalances (see the the new ‘Fiscal Compact’ and the new ‘Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure’ for more details). If anything, the experience of how the excessive public deficits and public debt by different MSs were handled by the eurozone institutions before the crisis is not very promising; even less so now that the complexity and degree of macroeconomic integration and regulation are even greater. The approach I adopt in this report is quite different.

In a nutshell:

(1) I put forward a (capped) debt mutualisation scheme, so those MSs running sound fiscal policies and sustainable budgets can benefit from it; and those in excess of the annual debt threshold will have to issue their own bonds, backed only by their own national revenues and credibility. The scheme, once launched, is communicated to the MS and it is not negotiable; the scheme also decreases in the coverage of the MSs public debt for the current levels down to a 30% ratio of the GDP in ten years. With this scheme, the MSs will have the incentives to meet the pre-announced annual targets, as their debt will be covered under the debt mutualisation programme, and thus will benefit from much lower borrowing costs. And, crucially, there is no need to monitor nor regulate further the fiscal or macroeconomic performance of the MSs.

(2) I also propose a major reform of Target2, which has accumulated (particularly since 2008) enormous imbalances among MSs (see the latest balances across MSs at the ECB website here): On the one hand, Italy holds a debit position amounting to approx. 30% of its GDP while Spain’s is 25% of its GDP; on the other hand, Germany holds a credit position close for the value of nearly 30% of its GDP. The reform proposed in the report would consist of setting a price for access to credit (if only the ECB policy rate), so overspending economies find it more and more costly to keep on borrowing and thus accumulate further imbalances. A way to settle the existing balances cross MSs must be also addressed.

(3) There are other key elements in the report for the proposals above to be effective, such as the return to the ‘no bailout clause’ of MSs, and the possibility of an errant economy to leave the eurozone (or be temporarily suspended). More details in the report.

 

Juan Castañeda

Full text of the report at: https://www.martenscentre.eu/publications/rebalancing-euro-area-proposal-future-reform

Feedback most welcome.

 

 

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A market solution for the Euro crisis

This month the Institute of Economic Affairs (London) has published a new book with a collection of essays of different authors on the crisis of the euro, edited by Philip Booth: “The Euro- the beginning, the middle … and the end?“. In these troubled times, dominated by those who only see more fiscal centralisation as the single way to overcome the euro crisis, this book is a true rarity; as, amongst others, it has several chapters with practical proposals to foster the introduction of more monetary competition to address and finally tackle some of the major problems affecting the European Monetary Union. And yes, I said “practical” proposals because, some of the chapters of the book do contain not only a description of the benefits of having more monetary competition in order to achieve more monetary stability in the medium to the long run, but also the institutional and market arrangements needed to be implemented in the current scenario in Europe.  A novelty indeed! In this regard, the proposal I support in the book (chapter 6), which consist of (1) at least the elimination of the legal tender clause and (2) the competition of the euro with the former national currencies, could be just a starting point in the right direction. Even more, we (profs. Schwartz, Cabrillo and myself) have calculated the costs of this alternative (more open) monetary regime and they are by far less than the costs we are all still paying just to maintain the current (flawed) system.

The publication of the book (12th April) was accompanied by the following (joint) statement of the contributing authors (see their names and  affiliations here):

“The euro zone as we know it must end or be radically reformed. Current mechanisms being used to manage the euro crisis are inadequate at every level. And as Cyprus shows us, the euro-zone crisis is far from over.

In new research from the Institute of Economic Affairs, The Euro: The Beginning, the Middle … and the End?, leading economists in this field, analyse the problems with the current approach being taken to resolve the euro zone crisis and argue:

• Product and labour markets in euro-zone member states are far too rigid to respond adequately to economic shocks. The result has been high unemployment and prolonged recession in a number of euro-zone countries.

• The EU must therefore face up to the inadequacies of its policies both in terms of the long-term structural errors in policy and of the short-term management of the euro-zone crisis.

• There should not be a debt union of any form. Governments must be responsible for servicing their debts without bailouts.

• Euro-zone countries must deregulate their labour markets and reduce government spending. Decentralisation and the promotion of a market economy must be at the heart of EU policy.

The report outlines several options for radical reform of monetary arrangements within the euro zone, including:

• A complete and orderly break-up of the euro and a return to national currencies combined with the vigorous pursuit of free trade policies.

• The suspension of Greece, and possibly other failing euro members, from all the decision-making mechanisms of the euro. These countries could then re-establish their own national currency to run in parallel with the euro. Both would be legal tender currencies with free exchange rates. Such an approach should be part of a more general agenda for decentralisation in the EU. This proposal mirrors the “hard ecu” proposal of the UK government before the euro was adopted as a single currency.

• The enforcement of strict rules relating to government borrowing and debt that all member countries would have to meet. Member countries who did not obey the rules would not be able to take part in the decision-making mechanisms of the ECB. Furthermore, the ECB should play no part in underpinning the government debt of member countries.

• A system of liberalised free-banking within which businesses and individuals choose the currency they wish to use.”

You can find more details on the book (and the full book free online) here, at the IEA website. The book will be presented at the IEA on the 9th of May (18:30); see more details here if you wish to attend.

I hope you find it interesting to promote the discussion on these important issues. All comments on our proposal on parallel currencies for the Euro zone will be very welcome.

Juan Castañeda

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