Euro Area Reform Preferences of Central and Eastern European Economic Experts

A variety of reforms have been implemented to improve the institutional set-up of the euro area over the last decade, yet the political and academic reform debate remains intense and the future of the euro area is unclear. One striking feature of the ongoing debate is that it is characterized prominently by contributions from larger euro countries from Western Europe. This study, by Sebastian Blesse (EconPol Europe, ZEW Mannheim), Annika Havlik (EconPol Europe, ZEW Mannheim and University of Mannheim) and Friedrich Heinemann (EconPol Europe, ZEW Mannheim and University of Heidelberg), was conducted to balance the dominance of Western European politicians and academics in the euro area reform debate. It explored the positions of 1800 economic experts from Central and Eastern European member states on a range of European Monetary Union reform topics, which were compared to benchmarks of surveyed experts in France, Germany and Italy. The results provide the first database to map expert communities in all CEE EU member states relative to the three reference countries.