Promoting sustainable and inclusive growth and convergence in the European Union

This Policy Contribution was written for the Informal ECOFIN Meeting, Bucharest, 5 April 2019. The authors look at the EU’s economic agenda, discussin

Publishing date: 04 April 2019
Authors: André Sapir Guntram B. Wolff Maria Demertzis

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The European Union can look ahead at the next five years from a good economic position. Employment is comparatively high, the recovery has been uninterrupted for several years and income inequality remains less pronounced than elsewhere in the world. But the EU faces nevertheless formidable economic challenges. In the short-term, there is the potential for strong macroeconomic weakening, resulting partly from uncertainty generated by the global trade conflict. The EU also has a long-term growth and productivity weakness. Finally, the EU, especially the euro area, suffers from a lack of convergence and its social cohesion is threatened.

The EU must put together a European growth strategy that focuses on innovation while addressing climate change and improving social cohesion. Growth requires investment, research and innovation. While the current debate on industrial policy is welcome, the EU should be careful to maintain, or even improve, the conditions for growth in Europe and must avoid falling into the protectionism trap. To achieve its climate goals, the EU must ensure that its consumption and its production become greenhouse-gas emission neutral by 2050 or earlier, implying a massive transformation of all economic activities. This will pose major economic and social challenges. Distributional concerns will therefore have to figure prominently in this transformation. More generally, the benefits of growth need to be distributed more fairly in our societies. While social policy is and should remain a national responsibility, the EU needs to ensure that the single market, a key asset to promote growth and economic well-being, does not undermine the ability of countries to raise taxes on capital income, wealth and inheritance. A rising tax burden on the working middle class might have already become incompatible with Europe’s social market economy.

Convergence in the EU and in the euro area is a necessity: the European growth strategy cannot be blind to sustained regional growth differences. An EU in which economic growth does not spread through all of its major regions will be politically challenged. The paradox is that many of the policy instruments to address this problem remain in the hands of national policymakers, even though the way they use them has significant implications for the rest of the EU. The EU supports convergence through its budget and technical support but the fundamentals of this paradox remain. In the euro area, further measures are needed to address some of the systemic causes of divergence. In particular, it is imperative to complete banking union and for capital markets to become more integrated, since a well-functioning financial system is fundamental for growth.

A euro-area safe asset would bring benefits but is difficult to establish. EU fiscal rules need to be reformed to improve the macroeconomic management of the euro area. A euro-area budget and more responsive national fiscal policies are important tools to better respond to cyclical downturns. Finally, the relationship between the euro area and non-euro area countries needs to be addressed.

About the authors

André Sapir

André Sapir, a Belgian citizen, is a Senior fellow at Bruegel. He is also University Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Research fellow of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Between 1990 and 2004, he worked for the European Commission, first as Economic Advisor to the Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, and then as Principal Economic Advisor to President Prodi, also heading his Economic Advisory Group. In 2004, he published 'An Agenda for a Growing Europe', a report to the president of the Commission by a group of independent experts that is known as the Sapir report. After leaving the Commission, he first served as External Member of President Barroso’s Economic Advisory Group and then as Member of the General Board (and Chair of the Advisory Scientific Committee) of the European Systemic Risk Board based at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

André has written extensively on European integration, international trade and globalisation. He holds a PhD in economics from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he worked under the supervision of Béla Balassa. He was elected Member of the Academia Europaea and of the Royal Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.
Guntram B. Wolff

Guntram Wolff is a Senior fellow at Bruegel. He is also a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy. From 2022-2024, he was the Director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and from 2013-22 the director of Bruegel. Over his career, he has contributed to research on European political economy, climate policy, geoeconomics, macroeconomics and foreign affairs. His work was published in academic journals such as Nature, Science, Research Policy, Energy Policy, Climate Policy, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Banking and Finance. His co-authored book “The macroeconomics of decarbonization” is published in Cambridge University Press.

An experienced public adviser, he has been testifying twice a year since 2013 to the informal European finance ministers’ and central bank governors’ ECOFIN Council meeting on a large variety of topics. He also regularly testifies to the European Parliament, the Bundestag and speaks to corporate boards. In 2020, Business Insider ranked him one of the 28 most influential “power players” in Europe. From 2012-16, he was a member of the French prime minister’s Conseil d’Analyse Economique. In 2018, then IMF managing director Christine Lagarde appointed him to the external advisory group on surveillance to review the Fund’s priorities. In 2021, he was appointed member and co-director to the G20 High level independent panel on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response under the co-chairs Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Lawrence H. Summers and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. From 2013-22, he was an advisor to the Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth. He is a member of the Bulgarian Council of Economic Analysis, the European Council on Foreign Affairs and advisory board of Elcano.

Guntram joined Bruegel from the European Commission, where he worked on the macroeconomics of the euro area and the reform of euro area governance. Prior to joining the Commission, he worked in the research department at the Bundesbank, which he joined after completing his PhD in economics at the University of Bonn. He also worked as an external adviser to the International Monetary Fund. He is fluent in German, English, and French. His work is regularly published and cited in leading media.
Maria Demertzis

Maria Demertzis is a 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.