Here, Italy seems hard put to keep up with the other advanced countries: again in 2009, the proportion of graduates in the 25–64 age group was less than 15 per cent, or just half the OECD average; amongst people aged between 25 and 34 years, it exceeded 20 per cent, compared to an OECD average of around 37 per cent.
Such questions are intensely debated on this side of the Channel. Tonight I would like to look at this issue from a euro area perspective, and more precisely, from the perspective of the euro area’s central bank, the ECB. How has the balance of competences between the national and the euro area level evolved during the crisis?