EUROPEAN MONETARY UNION: ACHIEVEMENTS AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

The European governance has constantly evolved since the acceptance of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. The evolution of the European institutions is especially marked by the economic impact of the 2008 crisis. Indeed, following the crisis new institutions with new functions emerged in order to allow for a better management of the crisis. Further reforms are likely to give way to the creation of new institutions in the future, such as the European monetary fund or the European Ministry of Economy and Finance. The present paper analyzes the interaction between the innovations in the functioning of the euro area and the economic business cycles. For this, the present paper first gives the evolution of the key economic indicators in the euro area compared to the USA. Then, the new institutions are analyzed with respect to their economic stabilization capacity. The supra-national character of these new institutions implies higher policy cooperation within the euro area. However, the order of priority assigned to the policy targets seems to be more decisive than the institutional innovation in stabilizing the business cycles.