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Wednesday 22 March 2017

Greece and the Euro Zone: The IMF Perspective

Speaker: Poul Thomsen (Director, European Department, IMF)
Chair: Adam Bennett (St Antony’s College)

In the midst of ongoing negotiations with Greece over a third IMF financial assistance program, PEFM had the pleasure of hosting Poul Thomsen, the Director of the European Department at the IMF. Drawing on his extensive experience as mission head for IMF teams in Greece, Mr. Thomsen presented the Fund’s perspective on the problems that continue to plague the Greek economy and the way forward.

Mr. Thomsen began by offering some comments on the prospects of the euro area as a while. Overall, the recovery is gaining momentum and cyclical unemployment is low. This is partly due to fiscal relaxation, but most of it is happening in precisely the countries with the least fiscal space, leaving them potentially vulnerable to renewed shocks. More worrying still, the euro area long-term potential is limited because of structural problems that predate the euro crisis, particularly low productivity growth that was contributing to stalled convergence. Therefore, while there are missing elements of EMU architecture that clearly needed to be added or completed, the main problems were really at the national level. In a currency union that is not a political union the ability to deal with shocks depends on policies at the national level.

Monday 6 March 2017

Ireland and Brexit


Speakers: Lord Jay of Ewelme (House of Lords), Kalypso Nicolaides (St Antony’s College), Cathryn Costello (St Antony’s College)
Chair: Graham Avery (St Antony’s College)

The ‘Irish question’ did not necessarily receive a lot of attention in the run-up to the Brexit vote, but has since then emerged as one of the hardest issues for Theresa May. It also resonates beyond the corridors of Whitehall as an overflowing crowd in attendance at the European Studies Centre made evident. In response, the three speakers sought to highlight some ways to manage the risks involved, but warned that the stakes are high.

Lord Jay, part of the House of Lords EU Select Committee, began the discussion by saying he fears the Irish dimension would be seen as a consequence of decisions taken on other grounds. He sees a risk that Brexit might bring into question the remarkable progress in the peace process in Northern Ireland. In particular, should the UK leave the Customs Union some kind of controls along the border become very hard to avoid. In turn, this is a serious issue for the nationalist communities along the border and is not impossible for some level of violence to re-emerge.