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2 - The Future of the European Economic and Monetary Union

Issues of Constitutional Law

from I - Economic Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2019

By
Matthias Ruffert
Edited by
Francesca Bignami
Francesca Bignami
Affiliation:
George Washington University, Washington DC
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Summary

The state debt crisis is not over in Europe. To give the most extreme example, the Greek debt currently owed to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is €45.9 billion and the debt owed to the ESM’s predecessor, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), is €130.9 billion, for an average term of thirty years. This enormous debt burden is shouldered by a country with eleven million inhabitants and with a Gross National Product (GNP) per capita that ranks around fortieth place worldwide.1 State debt in the Eurozone in general is around 90 percent of GNP, and in Italy it is above 130 percent.2 Growth in both Greece and Italy is below the Eurozone average (2.5 percent). There is nearly full employment in Germany, i.e. unemployment is near 4 percent, but the unemployment rate is at 8.5 percent in the whole Eurozone, 11.0 percent in Italy, 8.8 percent in France, and a dismal 16.1 percent in Spain.3

Type
Chapter
Information
EU Law in Populist Times
Crises and Prospects
 , pp. 33 - 66
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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