Reforming the Eurozone: from failures to integration strategies

Scuola Sant'Anna Pisa

The promotion of a European strategic framework able to foster a path of innovative and inclusive growth is the main objective of the GROWINPRO project.

In the last decade, the Great Recession and the following national debt crises have been a major historical challenge threatening the process of European integration. And indeed, the political and economic agenda followed so far have been exacerbating national asymmetries, paving the way for the emergence of a core-periphery divide among the European economies. In this respect, the management of the national debt crises heralded fiscal consolidation whose failure yielded both a sluggish growth and an upsurge of social inequalities. In many European countries, the economic and social fragilities turned into political support for populist movements, several of which characterized by anti-democratic tendencies and advocacy for exit strategies.

In the context of such a fragile European Union, both in terms of political legitimacy and of economic-policy tools, defining a coherent agenda to promote a process of integration looks rather urgent. To deal with that, the GROWINPRO project promotes a debate, open to the civil society, in order to dissect the causes of the disintegration tendencies, and to propose implementable policy schemes able to foster economic, social and political integration. The workshop will feature the scientific coordinators of the project, Giovanni Dosi and Andrea Roventini – both affiliated to the Institute of Economics of Sant’Anna School - interacting with two leading European economists, Francisco Louça (professor of economics at Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, Lisbon University) and Xavier Ragot (President of the Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques – OFCE), proponents of multi-level integration strategies.

Programme

14.30      Welcome  - Sabina Nuti (Rector, Sant’Anna School) 

14.40      The euro at twenty: can it still be saved? -  Francisco Louça (ISEG,Lisbon)

15.20      What policies to rebalance the European construction? – Xavier Ragot (OFCE, Paris)

16.00      Round-table: Giovanni Dosi, Andrea Roventini, Xavier Ragot, Francisco Louça

16.45      Open Discussion

17.30      Conclusions