This full coordination of national fiscal and structural policies can only be achieved by setting up a legitimate decision-making institution, embodied by a euro area Finance Minister, whose role is here concretely specified. This would make the euro area more than the sum of its parts. Within a mandate to achieve the strongest, sustainable and balanced growth, this institution’s role would be to prepare and propose the euro area collective strategy, and to supervise its implementation by Member States. Furthermore, the Finance Minister would also be responsible for implementing efficient crisis management. While moving towards further integration, the Minister could be given the authority to manage a euro area Convergence Fund, evolving in three stages towards a euro area budget. In all events, the Minister will need to be backed by: a legitimacy-enhancing appointment process; a genuine Treasury administration; and a strong democratic control over euro area affairs. To echo Robert Mundell, economic policy as a whole “isn’t just the best game in town, it is the only game”, not monetary policy alone. We cannot afford another missed opportunity: for EMU, for its citizens, 2016–2017 is the decisive time to act. *** All of us probably agree that there is one necessity: the euro area needs to rethink its economic governance, notwithstanding significant institutional changes implemented during the crisis. Progress is badly needed, although progress is very difficult to achieve, in a climate of growing Euroscepticism.
Second, the Finance Minister would be responsible for supervising the implementation of policy objectives and institutional discipline, using adequate instruments to provide symmetric incentives. Negative incentives would of course include the effective implementation of existing sanction mechanisms. They could be broadened in contractual procedures, already put forward in the 2013 Franco-German contribution on EMU, or in Chancellor Merkel’s 9 “binding reform contracts” proposal, and including positive incentives. One of them would be the access to a euro area ”Convergence Fund”, through which Member States could benefit from common funding, once they have established a track record and convincingly avoided moral hazard. In addition conditioning the participation in economic governance on compliant implementation could provide strong incentives. Third, the Finance Minister would be responsible for implementing centralised crisis management. The specific features of the ESM set-up shed light on inherent euro area limitations, as Member States decided solidarity would not be part of the usual governance system. As a result, the ESM is grounded in an intergovernmental treaty. A Finance Minister for the euro area would naturally be in charge of overseeing ESM operations. Crisis management methods themselves could surely better integrate debt sustainability, liquidity support, and financial stability, some weak points recently underlined by the IMF. Last, while moving towards further integration, the Minister could be given the authority for managing a Euro area Convergence Fund, evolving towards a Euro budget. We are touching here on the issue of a common fiscal capacity, promoted recently by Pier Carlo Padoan or Benoît Coeuré.