Repair and Prepare: Growth and the Euro after Brexit

Report

An international experts group led by the director of our office in Germany Henrik Enderlein and our president Enrico Letta presents a three-step plan to reform economic and monetary union after the Brexit.

| 20/09/2016

| Economics and finance

Reforms and a deepening of European economic and monetary union are vital for the future of the EU. If the euro fails, the entire European project is at risk. These are the key findings of the report “Repair and Prepare: Growth and the Euro after Brexit”, prepared by a group of international experts convened under our auspices and that of the Bertelsmann Foundation and prefaced by Jacques Delors.

The group is led by Henrik Enderlein, Director of our office in Germany, the Jacques Delors Institut-Berlin and Professor at the Hertie School of Governance, and Enrico Letta, President of the Jacques Delors Institute and former Italian Prime Minister. The other members of the working group are:
Jörg Asmussen, Managing Director of Lazard, former State Secretary In the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and former Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank;
Laurence Boone, Chief Economist at AXA;
Aart De Geus, Chairman and CEO of the Bertelsmann Stiftung;
Pascal Lamy, President emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute and former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO);
Philippe Maystadt, President of the Centre international de formation européene (CIFE), honorary President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and former deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Belgium;
Maria João Rodrigues, Member of the European Parliament and Vice President of the S&D Group in charge of economic and social policies;
Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell, Emerita Consultant at the Austrian Institute for Economic Research (WIFO) and former Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank;
António Vitorino, lawyer, former President of the Jacques Delors Institute and former European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs.

The recommendations are based on their conviction that only an overhaul of the EMU and the existing crisis mechanisms can guarantee the long-term survival of the EU. The report puts forward a three-step plan to reform economic and monetary union:

1. A first-aid kit for monetary union that addresses shortcomings in crisis management and economic coordination.
2. Growth in the EU has to be strengthened by a combination of investments and reforms.
3. In the medium term, the euro has to be based on a large degree of risk sharing and sovereignty sharing. This goes hand in hand with developing the permanent European rescue mechanism, the ESM, into a European Monetary Fund under greater parliamentary control.