拡大ユーロへの課題

中東欧諸国の加盟と欧州中央銀行の改革の展望

抄録

Enlargement of EU for 10 acceding countries does not lead directly to enlargement of Euro.
There are several unsolved issues both present Euro participating countries and future possible participating ones. We might make a best scenario as follows: a first step is 3 non-participating countries within EU, such as UK, Sweden and Denmark will join smoothly, a second step is several acceding countries will join ERM II scheme, and then some of them will turn to Euro fulfilling 4 criteria setting by Maastricht Treaty. Through these step-by-step scenario, possibility of softening for the value of Euro could be decreased and hardening and deepening of that would be increased.
However there are also several issues and some of those are envisaged now. First one is critical issue for present Euro participating countries that is a coordination between SGP regulations and budgetary policy in the Member countries. Some countries such as Germany, France and Portugal which have been combating with prolonged recession. Whether EU can manage these coordination without using loosening up interpretation of SGP regulations.
Second one is a resolution of above issue might influence on additional participation within EU Member countries UK, Sweden and Denmark. These three have now enjoyed so-called “sound free-ride positions” which is compared with participating countries because they can use both monetary and budgetary policy relatively freely. Actually their latest economic performances are relatively better than Euro participating countries. These results should be regarded as without rigid restraint by SGP. Their joining Euro zone could make hardening of value of the Euro. But up to modification or loosening up of interpretation of SGP, these hardening and deepening effects might be delay.
Third issue is step-by-step participating in EMU by 10 accessing countries after, they getting EU membership in 2004. Their participating in Euro would be good contribution for lots of entrepreneur and business people who seek to get higher productivity in their productions through locating their product platform in those frontier area and sell their products in pan-European market. But in order to avoid softening Euro, they should be examined by rigid judgement and criteria which will be modified or even loosened up adapting to cyclical economic changes as discussion occurred now.
In addition, ECB has to be modified not only voting system in the decision making process in the Governing Council by introducing rotation procedure in line with future enlargement but also strengthening accountability for their decision to the market and European citizen.