Memo

Memo to the commissioner responsible for economic and financial affairs

Publishing date: 04 September 2024
Authors: Zsolt Darvas Maria Demertzis Stavros Zenios

The European Union withstood multiple economic shocks during the last five years but the productivity gap between the EU and other parts of the world is persistent. Your tasks include management of some of the structural factors that can help close this gap. You have three main challenges for the next five years: ensure credible implementation of the new EU fiscal rules, encourage the reduction of current account surpluses if they reflect a savings/investment imbalance and enforce the implementation of country-specific recommendations in the remaining period of deployment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. You will need to maximise the value of the money that the EU invests, enforce implementation of rules and structural reforms and help prepare negotiations for the next Multiannual Financial Framework, in order to achieve the EU’s strategic objectives.

Key actions:

Rigorous implementation of fiscal rules
Promote reform and deployment of excess savings
Focus the EU budget on investment

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About the authors

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.
Maria Demertzis

Maria Demertzis is a Leader at ESF, The Conference Board Europe, former Senior fellow at Bruegel and part-time Professor of Economic Policy at the Florence School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute. She was Bruegel’s Deputy Director until December 2022. She has previously worked at the European Commission and the research department of the Dutch Central Bank. She has also held academic positions at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in the USA and the University of Strathclyde in the UK, from where she holds a PhD in economics. She has published extensively in international academic journals and contributed regular policy inputs to both the European Commission's and the Dutch Central Bank's policy outlets. She contributes regularly to national and international press and has regular column that appears twice a month in various EU newspapers and on Bruegel’s opinion page.
Stavros Zenios

Stavros Zenios is a Cypriot citizen with a long career in the USA. His current research focuses on sovereign debt issues, especially in relation to the challenges posed by climate change and political risks. He is working on the development of stochastic dynamic models for debt sustainability analysis and risk management for sovereigns, on sovereign contingent debt, and on the asset pricing effects of political risks. He has published more than 150 articles in leading academic journals, encyclopedias, and handbooks, and edited numerous collected works. He regularly appears on national media discussing issues relating to the economy, transparency and corruption and is consulted by the international press on Eurozone crisis issues. He was Vice chairman of the Cyprus Council of Economic Advisors and served on the Board of the Central Bank of Cyprus. He served two terms as President of UNICA-Universities of European Capitals and two terms as Rector of the University of Cyprus.

He is a Professor of Operations Management and Finance at Durham University (UK), on sabbatical leave from the University of Cyprus, where he has been a Professor of Finance and Management Science since 1991. Prior to that, he was a tenured faculty member at the Wharton School, USA, where he remains a Senior fellow of the Financial Institutions Center.