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This chapter analyses the operational framework for monetary policy implementation in some central European countries that have recently joined the European Union (EU).¹ For the sake of simplicity, they will be referred to as “non-euro area countries” in the rest of the chapter (although such a classification also includes Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom) which are not analysed here. The analysis is based on public information collected for 2001; since then, the operational framework of these central banks has not changed substantially. Most of the recent changes in the operational framework have taken place in the Eurosystem (or euro area, as it is also commonly known). For this reason, more recent euro area data is reported for 2003 and 2004, and a detailed analysis is made wherever appropriate. The study therefore presents an uptodate comparison of operational frameworks across the countries. The remainder of the chapter is organised as follows. Section 2 examines the characteristics of the minimum reserve system in the euro area. Section 3 examines open market operations, Section 4 examines the standing facilities and Section 5 looks at counterparties. Finally, chapter 6 describes at eligible collateral.

This paper investigates the European Central Bank’s (ECB) monetary policies. It identifies an anti-growth bias in the ECB’s monetary policy approach: the ECB is quick to hike, but slow to ease. Similarly, while other players and institutional deficiencies share responsibility for the euro’s failure, the bank has generally done “too little, too late” with regard to managing the euro crisis, preventing protracted stagnation, and containing deflation threats. The bank remains attached to the euro area’s official competitive wage repression strategy which is in conflict with the ECB’s price stability mandate and undermines the bank’s more recent unconventional monetary policy initiatives designed to restore price stability. The ECB needs a “Euro Treasury” partner to overcome the euro regime’s most serious flaw: the divorce between central bank and treasury institutions.

Although the trigger for the European economic and financial crisis was the subprime and subsequently banking crisis in the USA, the true roots of theEuropean malaise are to be found in the structural weaknesses of the European growth and Euro area development model based on debt financing of public and private expenditure and investment. These drivers were amplified by the lack of effective economic policy mechanisms from both the monetary and fiscal sides of macro-economic management. The global financial crisis of 2007–2009 did not cause the underlying imbalances that are currently acting to tear apart the Euro area monetary and fiscal systems. Instead, it crystallised markets and public attention on the underlying core cause of the overall Euro crisis – the insolvency of the public financing system of the European Union (EU) member states.

Asynchronous current account trends between North and South of the Euro Area were accompanied by significant appreciations of real exchange rate originating in the strong shifts in consumer prices and unit labor costs in the periphery economies relative to the core countries of the Euro Area. The issue is whether the real exchange rate is a significant driver of persisting current account imbalances in the Euro Area considering that, according to some authors, differences in domestic demand are more important than is often realized. In the paper we examine relative importance of real exchange rate and demand shocks according to the current account adjustments in the Euro Area member countries. Our results indicate that while the prices and costs related determinants of external competitiveness affected current account adjustments primarily during the pre-crisis period, demand drivers shaped current account balances mainly during the crisis period.

On January 1, 1999, the euro became the common currency of the 11 Member States of the European Union (EU) – Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, to be joined by Greece in 2000. The 12 were joined by Slovenia on January 1, 2007, Malta and Cyprus on January 1, 2008, and Slovakia on January 1, 2009. Estonia was scheduled to be the 17th member of the Eurozone on January 1, 2011, and was admitted to the Eurozone membership in September 2010. Following Slovenia and Slovakia, Estonia is the third former Communist state to join the Euro regime. It is, however, the first former Soviet republic to earn this honor. The remaining East European countries, who were admitted to EU membership by the Treaty of Rome in 2004, will become members of the Eurozone after a process of scrutiny. Each must satisfy the terms of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, three of the original EU-15 countries, continue to be outside the Eurozone. However, Sweden and Denmark have limited exchange rate fluctuations with the euro. The United Kingdom has a different story. Its economic structure and its relatively small share of world GDP have become an issue. The declining share of the United Kingdom's pound sterling as an international reserve currency warrants much critical evaluation.

This chapter argues that monetary integration must precede, rather than follow, monetary unification, in order to avoid the occurrence of structural and systemic crises. It briefly overviews the relevant literature on european monetary union (EMU) with regard to the criteria to set up an optimum currency area (OCA) according to the mainstream view. It then points out that adopting the euro as single currency for a number of heterogeneous countries led inevitably to a number of major negative effects, so much so because of the counterproductive financial constraints induced by the Euro-area fiscal and monetary policies framework. Particularly, the lack of fiscal transfers between these countries and the dogmatic attitude of the European Central Bank (ECB) as regards its policy strategy and goal increase, rather than reducing, the unemployment rate, and the degree of financial instability across the euro area. In fact, a way out of the euro area exists without renouncing to the (long-run) benefits of monetary integration. It implies that countries whose population suffers most of “fiscal consolidation” introduce their national currencies again, limiting the use of the euro to their central banks only, in order for them to settle all international trade and financial-market transactions carried out by residents in these countries. This monetary–structural reform will be instrumental in increasing financial stability and employment levels across Europe, thereby inducing positive effects also for trade and public finance.

In this paper the techniques of zero-non-zero (ZNZ) patterned vector autoregressive modelling are utilized to examine two issues associated with the European single currency – the euro. First, “Granger causality” is employed to examine the causal linkages between the euro exchange rate, the euro area money supply and the gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the euro area. Second, we examine the hypothesis that the euro has become a major influence on international stock markets by testing for the causal relationships between movements in the euro exchange rate, the U.K. pound exchange rate and the London stock market index.

The growth in euro-denominated bond debt issued by emerging market sovereigns picked up considerably after the Asian currency crises. However, while many emerging market governments now have outstanding euro-denominated issues, the market for this debt remains considerably smaller and less liquid than its US dollar counterpart. This has implications for both investors and sovereigns as they try to balance liquidity and cost of capital considerations against portfolio diversification and exchange rate movements. Broadly speaking, spreads on emerging market bonds across countries tend to move in tandem over time. This chapter takes an introductory look at the market for euro-denominated sovereign debt, and investigates the degree to which spreads on euro-denominated emerging market sovereign debt react to common forces. Following a similar analysis of the US dollar market in McGuire and Schrijvers (2003) (hereafter MS2003), we use principal factor analysis to determine the number of common factors that drive movements in spreads, and then seek to assign meaning to these factors through simple correlations with economic variables.

The digital euro is not a monolithic project. On the contrary, the application fields are broad, and possible solutions are diverse. This chapter provides an overview of use cases, application domains, and infrastructures for the digital euro that differ significantly. A comparison with solutions for the digital dollar and the digital yuan leads to the conclusion that, in the most extreme case, the euro could become a regional currency for Europe. The main reason for this argument is the design and prioritization of current approaches within Europe as well as the European Central Bank’s digital euro project, and that stablecoin approaches seem to be neglected as solutions for the digital euro.