Blog post

Eastern European currencies need help now

Publishing date: 12 March 2009
Authors: Jean Pisani-Ferry Zsolt Darvas

Zsolt Darvas and Jean Pisani-Ferry warn that markets are worried that the EU has no real response to the crisis in the postcommunist member states. Decisive action is therefore needed, which the authors outline in six different possible steps: avoid further excessive exchange-rate depreciations; temporarily substitute missing private capital inflows with public capital inflow; make the entry to the euro criteria not softer, but economically sensible; have the ECB further recoginise the extent of its regional responsibilities; put the issue of private debt restructuring on the agenda; avoid Europe displaying the lack of coordination it has openly demonstrated in recent time.

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About the authors

Jean Pisani-Ferry

Jean Pisani-Ferry is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel. He specialises in the economic impact of climate action, European economic policy issues and international collective action.

His research covers macroeconomic policy (including the economic implications of climate action and post-COVID recovery), global economic governance and multilateralism (examining how multilateral institutions confront global asymmetries), European integration, monetary-fiscal union, the euro area’s reform path and national policy analyses, especially French economic strategy and public-investment agendas.

He speaks English and French.

He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute (Washington DC) and a Professor of Economics at Sciences Po (Paris). He serves as non-executive chair of I4CE, the French institute for climate economics. Pisani-Ferry served as Commissioner-General of France Stratégie from 2013 to 2016. In 2017, he contributed to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential bid as the Director of programme and ideas of his campaign. From 2005–2013, he was the Founding Director of Bruegel. Beforehand, he was Executive President of the French PM’s Council of Economic Analysis (2001-2002), Senior Economic Adviser to the French Minister of Finance (1997-2000) and Director of CEPII, the French institute for international economics (1992-1997).
Zsolt Darvas

Zsolt Darvas is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel and a part-time Senior Research Fellow at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He joined Bruegel in 2008 as a Visiting Fellow, and became a Research Fellow in 2009 and a Senior Fellow in 2013.

From 2005 to 2008, he was the Research Advisor of the Argenta Financial Research Group in Budapest. Before that, he worked at the research unit of the Central Bank of Hungary (1994-2005) where he served as Deputy Head.

Zsolt holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Corvinus University of Budapest where he teaches courses in Econometrics but also at other institutions since 1994. His research interests include macroeconomics, international economics, central banking and time series analysis.

Personal website: https://www.darvas.online/