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Why a breakup of the Euro Area Must be Avoided: Lessons from Previous Breakups

Aslund Anders, (2012), ‘Why a breakup of the Euro Area Must be Avoided: Lessons from Previous Breakups’, www.iie.com, 22 August.

One of the big questions of our time is whether the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) will survive. Too often, analysts discuss a possible departure of one or several countries from the euro area as little more than a devaluation, but Åslund argues that any country’s exit from the euro area would be a far greater event with potentially odious consequences. A Greek exit would not be merely a devaluation for Greece but would unleash a domino effect of international bank runs and disrupt the EMU payments mechanism, which would lead to a serious, presumably mortal, disintegration of the EMU. It would inflict immense harm not only on Greece but also on other countries in the European Union and the world at large.