I discuss some counterfactuals in Section 3 in order to provide comparisons to a scenario in which better national policymaking might have mitigated cyclical risks during this period and a “no monetary union” alternative benchmark.
I turn to the 2007-2012 period in Section 4, during which the euro area first had to deal with the global financial crisis and then the doom loop area-specific crisis during 2010-2012. I turn to the institutional reform agenda in Section 5, before offering some conclusions in Section 6. 2.