Economic Policies in the European Union

Abstract

With the birth of European Monetary Union, management of monetary policy was transferred to the European Central Bank and the European System of Central Banks, and for member countries of the Union, fiscal policy remains the only instrument of economic policy directly controllable by national governments. Over the last few years, given an unemployment rate of about and higher than 10 percent of the work force and a monetary policy that is certainly not accommodating, the debate on management of fiscal policy didn’t take long to materialize, and the points of the dispute have concerned choosing the best combination of fiscal policies.