European Union = Eurozone?

Will the Eurozone become the real European Union in a few years with the rest of the EU member states forming just a periphery of Europe’s core? What will this core look like and which rules will it apply?

Guests

Piotr Serafin, Secretary of State for European Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Jean Pisani – Ferry, Director of the Bruegel, the Brussels based economic policy think-tank

Jose Ignacio Torreblanca, Head of the ECFR Madrid office and co-author of the shortly published ECFR Policy Brief “What is Political Union”

Chaired by

Piotr Buras, Head of the ECFR Warsaw

Will the Eurozone become the real European Union in a few years with the rest of the EU member states forming just a periphery of Europe’s core? What will this core look like and which rules will it apply? Is the way “towards a genuine and economic union” initiated at the EU summit in 2012 by the agreement on the bank supervision in the Eurozone inevitably leading to a fundamental change in the system of the EU governance? After the negotiations on the EU financial perspective 2014-2020 have been completed the European and Polish debate on the future of the EU will focus on these questions rising controversies and necessitating difficult political choices.

The event was opened by a keynote address by Piotr Serafin, Secretary of State for European Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who presented the Polish view on the developments in the Eurozone. His speech was followed by a panel discussion with Jean Pisani-Ferry, Director of the Bruegel, the Brussels based economic policy think-tank, and Jose Ignacio Torreblanca, Head of the ECFR Madrid office and co-author of the shortly published ECFR Policy Brief “What is Political Union”, in which he analyzed various scenarios of deeper integration in the EU.

Conference was held in English