Tuori, Kaarlo

<intR>²Dok

"The Eurozone Crisis": Reply by theAuthorsKaarlo Tuori 2014-04-12T17:55:50Our book on Eurozone Crisis has been reviewed and commented by fourdistinguished experts in the field, profs Joerges and Ruffert as well as DrsGeorgosouli and Jaros. The reviews show considerable variation in style and focus,but they all are based on a careful reading of our book and contain thoughtfulcomments. For this we want to express our gratitude. We comment first on somecommon themes of the reviews and then move on to a few more specific questions.Our conceptualization of the two layers of the European Economic constitution, themicroeconomic and macroeconomic one, seems to have been well received andconsidered helpful for analyzing the crisis. This encourages us to further elaborateon this order. We also perceived an understanding of the way we have tried tocombine legal and economic analysis. We were also pleased by the “majority view”that our argumentation was balanced, economically and politically sound, andindependent of mainstream official truth or a particular political position. This wasa result of our continuous questioning of each other’s arguments. Although weshare the same surname we share neither a common educational or professionalbackground, nor exactly the same political values. If some of our positions areseen to reflect our underlying ‘political conviction’, this might be due to unfortunatewordings.Dr. Georgosouli raises two additional issues: criticism and suggestions by the IMF,and financial resilience as an emerging theme in macro-prudential regulation. Bothare important aspects and their inclusion could have broadened the discussion. Itwas our deliberate choice not to go deeper into the economics of crisis managementfor two reasons: it would have lengthened the book considerably and changed itsfocus, but even more importantly it would have increased its speculative element.The economics of the crisis resolution were mainly analysed from the perspective ofthe background assumptions of the Maastricht economic constitution. The financialresilience discussion is interesting and problematizes further the key conceptof stability. Indeed, both ‘past normality’ and ‘stability’ are far more problematicconcepts than they first appear. They could be seen as countering necessarychange and functioning of the market economy, and, consequently, hamperingsustainable growth and prosperity. Dr. Georgosouli is also quite right to point outthat our discussion of a  possible euro exit is by far too narrow. We still felt it wasnecessary to mention the basic idea that if euro membership stands (even in thelonger term) in a fundamental contradiction with prospects of economic prosperityof a Member State, an exit option cannot be excluded, particularly if membershipconditions have substantially changed.Dr. Jaros correctly points to the link between the ‘economist’ view of macroeconomicconstitution and the social constitution. Europeanized social policy could have- 1 -served objectives of the economic constitution and facilitated approaching anoptimal currency area, by introducing cyclical fiscal transfers, such as unemploymentinsurance, at the euro area level. In other words, eligibility to some social insurancecould have been based on EU rather than national citizenship. Somewhatparadoxically, such ‘social policy’ approach has now been introduced in the contextof the banking union. Both deposit insurance and bank resolution have beensubjected to European criteria and transfers, and will be financed by euro-wide taxeson consumers (indirectly through banks). Dr. Janos is also more optimistic thanwe about the democratic legitimacy potential of intergovernmentalism. If our twoconditions, which she refers to, are met we do not disagree. Our pessimistic view isdue to the experiences of the crisisProf. Joerges elaborates further on the present relationship between themacroeconomic constitution and economic and political reality. He adds valuableinsights to our necessarily limited examination of the important rulings of the GermanConstitutional Court which must be seen as interventions in not only the Germanbut also the European constitutional discourse. The topics Joerges distils from therulings obviously relate to fundamental questions of democracy and legitimacy inthe EU. Joerges points out that for Karlsruhe, constitutionalising economic policyand substituting discretionary policies by legal rules was a necessary condition forGerman participation in EMU. Transfer of political competences would have beenin breach of Germany’s democratic statehood. However, Joerges seems to thinkthat the substitution of politics by law in the EMU has been overestimated and thatwhat in fact happened could even amount to a deliberate and open-ended transferof competences from the democratic process to independent experts. If Joergesinfers from our book that we supported this process because of democratic failuresat the Member State level, we would like to deny such a reading. On the issue ofsecond-order telos of the non-bail-out clause, namely, financial stability of the euroarea as a whole, Joerges correctly notices some hesitation in our position: this wasdue to our attempt to pay heed to all the relevant viewpoints. We also wanted to takethe CJEU Pringle case seriously and tried to find a coherent legal and economiclogic in it, even if we did not require full rationality of its uncertain effort to combinelegal argumentation and macroeconomic theory. But to conclude that we haveexplicitly accepted resort to discretionary managerialism, unfettered constitutional ordemocratic control, is a misinterpretation of our views.Prof. Ruffert comments are slightly more critical than other reviewers’. He is notconvinced of the theoretical framework we briefly presented in the first chapter.This framework draws on Kaarlo Tuori’s previous legal theoretical works and will beset out in more detail in his forthcoming book on European constitutionalism. Wehope that the book will dispel Rufferts doubts. With regard to the formal mistakesRuffert has discovered in his careful reading of our book, we would like to commentbriefly on the ‘myth’ of the influence of the Bundesbank model. We still stick to ourassessment that the Bundesbank’s independence was different from the ECB’s.It was not constitutionally anchored but first and foremost guaranteed by theBundesbank’s credibility among German decision-makers and citizenry at large.Furthermore, it was not isolated from public criticism or economic policy debates.Secondly, it is clear – and we do state this in our book – that Sweden does not have- 2 -a formal right to opt out from the EMU.  A decade or so ago, we would perhaps alsohave agreed that Sweden violated its legal obligation by refusing to join. However,the point is that the acceptance of Sweden’s de facto opting out has most likelycontributed to changing euro membership from a legal obligation to an economicoption.- 3 -

"The Eurozone Crisis": Reply by the Authors

https://intr2dok.vifa-recht.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/mir_derivate_00004050/The_Eurozone_Crisis_Reply_by_the_Authors.pdf

"The Eurozone Crisis": Reply by the Authors

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

<intR>²Dok