CEPR Policy Paper 1: Alice in Euroland

The legal framework, institutional arrangements and emerging operating practices of the ECB/ESCB are flawed and in urgent need of modification. A threat to the common currency is a threat to the entire EMU edifice and to the continued success of the post Second World War European integration process. Change will have to come quickly to the ECB, but some of the necessary changes are constitutional in nature and require amendments to the Maastricht Treaty. This is a difficult, cumbersome and slow process. In the first title in CEPR's Policy Paper series, Willem H Buiter discusses these issues in depth and makes his own recommendations for change within the ECB/ESCB.