The deflationary bias of exit strategies in the EMU countries

This article investigates the roots, the nature and the consequences of the exit strategies that have been or are likely to be implemented in the euro-area countries following the financial and economic crisis. The institutional architecture of the European Monetary Union has a deflationary bias that will be exacerbated by the way in governments have set about fixing it, i.e. by means of exit strategies that are both premature and rigorous in the extreme. This will have an appreciable extra contractionary effect on the European economy.