In response to the Great Financial and the subsequent Euro Area sovereign debt crisis, Europe implemented a number of institutional reforms. They concern fiscal rules and the regulatory and supervisory environment. Those measures have been effective, though this is still work in progress. Related to this, the European economy is clearly on a recovering trend since 2014. However, new, potentially more fundamental challenges are looming. They have to do with the mediocre trend in productivity, the sovereign-banks doom loop not completely severed, the absence of a central fiscal capacity to respond to shocks.
In his EEPF Lecture, Marco Buti, Director General Directorate for Economic and Financial Affairs at the European Commission, will address those issues which are on top of the agenda of European policy makers. After studies at the Universities of Florence and Oxford, Marco Buti joined the EU Commission in 1987. He has been shaping the EU’s economic policy for a long time, not only as policymaker, i.e. as Director General since 2008 or as Deputy DG before that. He has also been most prolific in contributing to the public debate in numerous books and articles on fiscal and monetary policy as well as issues of growth and structural reforms ever since the late 1980s.
