IMF official: more Europe, not less

Returning to a theme International Monetary Fund officials have sounded consistently, the director of the Fund’s Europe department is calling for deeper European integration to resolve the sovereign debt crisis:  If today’s policymakers want to successfully stay the course, they will have to press ahead with structural changes and deeper economic integration. Many welcome initiatives ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

Returning to a theme International Monetary Fund officials have sounded consistently, the director of the Fund's Europe department is calling for deeper European integration to resolve the sovereign debt crisis: 

Returning to a theme International Monetary Fund officials have sounded consistently, the director of the Fund’s Europe department is calling for deeper European integration to resolve the sovereign debt crisis: 

If today’s policymakers want to successfully stay the course, they will have to press ahead with structural changes and deeper economic integration. Many welcome initiatives are under way—from planned improvements to the Stability and Growth pact, to the measures promised under the Euro Plus Pact to improve competitiveness and strengthen fiscal discipline. But the reforms are not yet strong enough to ensure success, and politicians and the public remain reluctant to renew their vows to the European project. Additional steps are needed to make them succeed.

To put the crisis behind us, we need more Europe, not less. And we need it now.

The world’s leading global financial institution is therefore defending the most advanced experiment in regional economic integration. At the moment, this alignment makes sense, and the two institutions are working hand-in-hand (though not without friction) to combat the debt crisis.  But we shouldn’t forget that the IMF’s mandate is very distinct from that of the European Union. The Fund’s mission is to safeguard global financial stability and, ultimately, it should only care about the European integration project so long as it is not endangering that principal goal.  Could a moment arrive when the IMF decides that supporting the Eurozone in its current form is simply too risky?

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

Tags: EU, IMF

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