Eurozone Watch

In 1999, 11 European countries embarked on an enormous economic project: They founded a currency union and thereby created the second largest economy in the world. Despite its undisputed success, the European Monetary Union is still far from complete.

We founded Eurozone Watch in 2006 out of two observations: The first was that a lot of important things happening in the economics and economic governance of the euro area get lost in the sheer volume of (mainly national) news reported every day. Although many economic and political developments in EMU member countries have a direct impact for the partners in the Eurozone, these are all too rarely assessed in the context we today live in: a common economy with a common currency. This blog provides a space to bring together and discuss the most salient current developments from a euro-economics and euro-politics perspective.

The second observation is that an increasing number of researchers in the EU and other places in the world compile interesting data on how EMU really works in practice; however, the debate on the policy implications of these findings remains underdeveloped. This is perhaps unsurprising as on most issues there is not even a consensus on the status quo analysis. Therefore Eurozone Watch is also supposed to provide researchers and practitioners of EMU with space for this policy debate.

With the financial and economic crisis, and in particular as a result of the sovereign debt crisis of 2010, EMU issues make their way to the front pages of the newspapers almost every day. On the internet, blogs and specialised websites have mushroomed. Our activity on Eurozone Watch is meanwhile reduced, as we see less need fuel the debate on EMU as we did when we founded Eurozone Watch. But we maintain the site and continue to publish our observations here.

The two founders of the blog are Daniela Schwarzer and Sebastian Dullien.

Sebastian is professor for international economics at the FHTW Berlin – University of Applied science. Until 2007, he has been working as an economics editor at the Financial Times Deutschland and prior as an editorialist. In addition, he has experience working for think tanks and international organisations. You can find more information on his work on his personal website www.dullien.net.

Daniela is a political economist. She works with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, (SWP) since 2005 specialising on EU issues and France. Since July 2008, she is Head of the Research Unit European Integration. Before joining the SWP, she worked with the Financial Times Deutschland for five years as an editorialist and France correspondent. From September 2007 to March 2008, she was a guest researcher at ifri in Paris and then a member of the working group "Europe" of the Commission working on the next Whitebook for French Foreign and European Policy.

P.S.: Please note that this blog has no formal affiliation with any of the above mentioned institutions. Statements on this site do not represent the views or policies of anyone other than the authors and contributors.

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