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Foreword

Hans-Werner Sinn
CESifo Group Munich, Munich, 2014

EEAG Report on the European Economy 2014, 01

Expanding on topics that were discussed in previous issues, this year’s report of the European Economic Advisory Group at CESifo (EEAG), the thirteenth of the series, shows that austerity is still necessary to achieve a rebalancing of relative prices within the euro area and offers a critical analysis of the concept of a unified banking system, which suffers from the attempt to implicitly socialise legacy assets, rather than offering a convincing bail-in strategy. Regardless of the diversity of the euro area, the report emphasises the importance of remaining on “The Road to Cohesion” and proposes Switzerland as a successful example. Despite its separate language groups, Switzerland has managed to build a functioning state with a decentralised structure based on the no-bailout principle, after being created as a defence union with a common army.

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Giuseppe Bertola, John Driffill, Harold James, Hans-Werner Sinn, Jan-Egbert Sturm, Ákos Valentinyi
CESifo Group Munich, Munich, 2014