This means that crisis prevention mechanisms are even more important than crisis management facilities. And we have to recognize that before a fiscal deterioration occurs and needs corrective actions, we ought to detect early signals in the macro economic imbalances of economies that share a single currency.
To overcome the macro-economic heterogeneity within the Euro area, an explicit and clear framework for the surveillance of competitiveness is needed with the aim of correcting large imbalances. Despite having a single currency and central bank, national economic policies remain insufficiently aligned. Forty years ago (!)