Van den Bogaert, Stefaan; Borger, Vestert --- "Differentiated integration in EMU" [2017] ELECD 395; in De Witte, Bruno; Ott, Andrea; Vos, Ellen (eds), "Between Flexibility and Disintegration" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 209

Book Title: Between Flexibility and Disintegration

Editor(s): De Witte, Bruno; Ott, Andrea; Vos, Ellen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783475889

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Differentiated integration in EMU

Author(s): Van den Bogaert, Stefaan; Borger, Vestert

Number of pages: 28

Abstract/Description:

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is often regarded as the paradigm of differentiated integration in the EU. The straightforward explanation is that, up to today, only 19 of the 28 Member States have exchanged their national currencies for the euro. The remaining Member States have not adopted the single currency yet, and they may very well not all do so in the foreseeable future. But differentiation is a concept that covers multiple realities within EMU, reaching far beyond the mere differentiation in terms of membership of the euro area. In a desperate effort to contain the damage caused by the debt crisis and subsequently to strengthen the economic set-up of EMU, the Union and the Member States have pulled out all the stops and have taken decisive action, thereby giving rise to three other forms of differentiation: in participation, in objectives and instruments and in law. Differentiation in participation is closest to that in membership, the difference being that it does not run along the lines of Member States within and outside the euro area. Given that states take part in rescue and structural reform measures to varying degrees and in differing compositions, it no longer suffices merely to distinguish between the ‘ins’ and the ‘outs’. These measures, in turn, equip the Union and its Member States with a larger set of tools to conduct economic policy, thereby giving rise to differentiation in terms of objectives and instruments.