Structural reforms in the Europena Union. What is new after the crisis?

This study analyses how individual countries in the European Union have to react to the recent global crisis by significantly changing their policy priorities, in different ways and to a different extent, in order to implement a plan of structural reforms aiming at effectively relaunching their process of economic growth in the new post-crisis scenario. The paper argues that three factors turn out to be particularly relevant: (i) vulnerabilities in public finance, especially in a number of Eurozone countries; (ii) the tendency towards widespread and growing income inequalities threatening social cohesion and negatively affecting long-term economic growth; (iii) the persisting cyclical weakness of certain important areas of the European Union.