The euro and political union: do economic spillovers from monetary integration affect the legitimacy of EMU?

Abstract:

The technical and institutional achievements of Economic and Monetary Union in Europe (EMU) are just the necessary condition for its overall success: the sufficient condition implies a widespread acceptance of the spillover effects triggered by EMU for other areas of economic policy-making, such as possible redistributive effects across euro-area member states. The article notes that much of the recent academic debate on EMU's legitimacy can be reduced to differences in assumptions on those effects. It thus calls for resuming the debate with a specific emphasis on analysing data that would provide information on observable spillover effects from EMU and allow for more solid arguments in that debate.