If it’s Broken, Don’t Fix it:The Government of the Euro area in the EU “Reform Treaty”

The government of the Euro area – the institutions, objectives and instruments of the regional area pooling together the monetary sovereignty of the 13 EU member states that share the euro – was obviously the blind spot in the otherwise animated negotiations of the sessions of the European Convention, and then of the Intergovernmental Conference in 2004. What seemed then a missed opportunity now looks like a major collective failure. This paper examines the reforms of the “economic governance” of the euro area proposed by the “Treaty amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community” (also called the “Reform Treaty”) and concludes that they do not match the challenges faced collectively by the euro area economies.