One step too far? The euro and European integration

ABSTRACT

This review discusses four recent books which engage in a discussion on the euro and its meaning for European integration. Two of the reviewed books claim that the single currency is killing the European Union from the inside. They argue that even the most comprehensive proposals for the Eurozone reform are unable to repair the monetary union that was doomed to fail from the start. The other two studies reject this notion and insist that Europe’s greatest mistake was not the creation of the single currency itself, but rather the negligence to supplement the euro with an institutional set-up appropriate for handling the banking crisis and overreliance on the US-style wholesale funding market. Read together, these contributions shed new light on the euro’s biggest dilemmas after its twentieth anniversary and provide a valuable overview of the possible paths the euro might take in its third decade.

KEYWORDS:

• Euro
• euro area
• European Union
• eurozone crisis
• Economic and Monetary Union

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by European Commission Erasmus + programme – Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence ‘EU external actions in the contested global order – (In)coherence, (dis)continuity, resilience’ [599622-EPP-1-2018-1-PL-EPPJMO-CoE]. The European Commission support does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.