L'Eurosystème : un mécanisme de transferts en faveur des pays déficitaires ?. Le débat

A number of economists, following Professor Hans-Werner SINN, President of the Munich Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (Ifo), have opened a debate on the true significance and the risks entailed by the system of compensation operating within the Eurozone, TARGET2 (Trans-European Automated Real-Time Gross Settlement Express Transfer). They criticize it under three major counts. Firstly, they contend that the Eurosystem tends to utilize Target2 as a means to provide unavowed assistance to some European States in trouble against the interests of other States - chiefly Germany. The next point is in their opinion, that a credit granted through TARGET2 to a deficit country necessarily goes against the interests of the other Eurozone countries, thereby putting deficit countries in a prominent position in terms of money creation within the Eurozone. And lastly, they warn that the debtors? problems will sooner or later contaminate the creditors of TARGET2 and in turn, send them into trouble. Several authors have challenged these criticisms, stressing that a drastic limitation of the system of compensation provided by TARGET2 could definitely jam the whole system. Although there is no discussion that TARGET2 has thoroughly contributed to allow the Eurozone to surmount the financial and commercial imbalances that threatened to destroy it, yet, its very survival depends on the capacity of the member countries to deal with the structural imbalances between them. JEL classification: F34, F31, F32, F33, E5, E52, E58, G1, G18, G28