The European Central Bank (ECB) recently became engaged in macro-prudential policies and the micro-prudential supervision of the largest Euro area banks. These new tasks should help complete financial integration, and make the Euro area more resilient to financial instability risks. However, the...

The European debt crisis triggered a debate on the lacking components of the EU and EMU integration architecture. Many believe that a common currency requires closer fiscal and political integration as a condition for its survival. This opinion is not necessarily supported by the experience of...

The excess liquidity in the euro area is a product of a long period of quantitative easing. It changed the operational framework of the European Central Bank (ECB)’s monetary policy from the scarce reserves system (SRS) to the abundant reserves system (ARS). To eliminate excess liquidity and...

The euro area suffers from excessive public debt, which is the primary cause of the so-called fragmentation. It should be remedied by fiscal consolidation instead of the quasi-fiscal activities of the European Central Bank, which are inconsistent with its legal status, compromise its...

In the 1990s, the CIS region experienced a painful transformation following the collapse of the USSR and the command economy. For the less developed republics of the former USSR, this process was even more dramatic as they lost subsidies from the Union's budget and some of them suffered...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the various challenges facing European integration and the EU institutional architecture as result of the global financial crisis. The European integration process is not yet complete, both in terms of its content and geographical coverage. It can be...

Emerging market economies were major beneficiaries of the economic boom before 2007. More recently, they have become victims of the global financial crisis. Their future development depends, to a large extent, on global economic prospects. Today the global economy and the European economy are...