Venice Summer Institute 2015: Rethinking the Need for a Fiscal Union in the Eurozone

Many voices in academia and the policy arena call for a fiscal union to complement the current design of the Economic and Monetary Union in Europe. Concrete suggestions towards fiscal unification range from the mutualisation of public debt to setting up an area-wide tax-transfer system. However, there are also sceptical views about the need and/or the effectiveness of deeper fiscal integration in the Eurozone. A number of years after the onset of the financial and economic crisis in Europe, and the institutional changes in response to the crisis, the objective of this workshop is to rethink the current fiscal architecture and explore the pros and cons of potential steps towards deeper fiscal integration in the Eurozone.