The successive financial and sovereign debt crises that affected large parts of the world economy between 2008 and 2013, together with the deep recession they brought about, generated a number of new challenges in the design of appropriate macroeconomic policies, especially in the Euro area. In 2012 and 2015, respectively, the Four and the Five Presidents’ Reports had provided a roadmap of how EMU should be completed with five components: Monetary Union, Economic Union, Fiscal Union, Financial Union and Political Union. In 2015, building on this yet incomplete roadmap, the project ADEMU - A Dynamic Economic and Monetary Union – set a three-year plan aimed at reassessing the EMU fiscal and monetary framework, providing insights into how to reform and complete it and developing new theories and applied works. In particular, the project involved eight leading European Universities engaged in the rigorous investigation of risks to the long-run sustainability of EMU, as well as in the design of credible EMU policies and institutions, taking into account the political and legal constraints within the framework of which the EMU project is being developed.
ADEMU research was divided into four main areas of investigation:
1) Long-term sustainability of monetary and fiscal union, in particular the sustainability of sovereign debt, and of union-wide burden-sharing mechanisms.
2) Stabilization policy in currency unions, for the improvement of resilience to macroeconomic shocks.
3) Macroeconomic and financial interdependencies, with a main focus on international spillovers associated with fiscal policies and macroeconomic and financial imbalances.
4) Implementation of institutional reforms for the better management of fiscal policy within the EU, with a particular focus on the legal, political and behavioural constraints that the current and the alternative, future EMU fiscal institutional structures may face.
The ADEMU project produced a vast quantity of research on the long-term sustainability of the EMU: over three years, hundreds of participants have attended 13 conferences,16 workshops, 4 seminars,13 lectures and a summer school in 11 cities across Europe.
Experts from global institutions including the IMF, the EC, the Federal Reserve of the United States, the ESM, the ECB, the European Fiscal Board, national governments and central banks have attended conferences, workshops and seminars and ADEMU’s research has been discussed, analysed and refined at a series of events around Europe, often organized in collaboration with these institutions (e.g. Banco de España, Deutsche Bundesbank, IMF, and the ESM).
ADEMU researchers and associates have produced a total of 139 working papers, all of which are archived in an open access repository, in compliance with the Horizon 2020 rules on open access to scientific publications.
A set of Policy Briefs has also been published in a VoxEu eBook, thus ensuring an accurate and thorough dissemination of the main ADEMU outcomes.
The success of the project is well summarized by the final report of its Advisory Committee: “The accomplishments of the ADEMU project have been many. Importantly the project underscores the critical role of innovative research focused intensely on the underlying issues of the Eurozone and the compelling policy issues they create. (…) It would be impossible to summarize the vast quantity of research and the wealth of ideas that have emerged from the ADEMU project (...). This is research that offers a path forward for the Eurozone and it is impressive in its scope. Our assessment is that the ADEMU project has delivered on its promise”.
