The eurozone, officially called the euro area, is a monetary union of 19 of the 28 European Union (EU) member states which have adopted the euro (€) as their common currency and sole legal tender. The monetary authority of the eurozone is the Eurosystem. The other nine members of the European Union continue to use their own national currencies, although most of them are obliged to adopt the euro in the future.
The Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) is an agreement, among the 28 member states of the European Union, to facilitate and maintain the stability of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Based primarily on Articles 121 and 126 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, it consists of fiscal monitoring of members by the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, and the issuing of a yearly recommendation for policy actions to ensure a full compliance with the SGP also in the medium-term. If a Member State breaches the SGP's outlined maximum limit for government deficit and debt, the surveillance and request for corrective action will intensify through the declaration of an Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP); and if these corrective actions continue to remain absent after multiple warnings, the Member State can ultimately be issued economic sanctions. The pact was outlined by a resolution and two council regulations in July 1997. The first regulation "on the strengthening of the surveillance of budgetary positions and the surveillance and coordination of economic policies", known as the "preventive arm", entered into force 1 July 1998. The second regulation "on speeding up and clarifying the implementation of the excessive deficit procedure", known as the "dissuasive arm", entered into force 1 January 1999.
Olli Ilmari Rehn is a Finnish politician, a member of the Centre Party of Finland. He is current Governor of the Bank of Finland. Previously, he served as the Minister of Economic Affairs in Juha Sipilä's cabinet, as the European Commissioner for Enlargement from 2004 to 2010, and as the European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro of the European Commission from 2009 to 2014.
C.M. (Corien) Wortmann-Kool is a Dutch politician for the Christian Democratic Appeal. She has a background in politics, public administration and business. She is a Member of the European Parliament and Vice President on Economic and Financial Affairs of the European People's Party (EPP) Group. Wortmann-Kool has an MA in Political Science and Economics from VU University Amsterdam.
Wolfgang Schäuble is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party whose political career has spanned more than four decades. He is one of the most experienced and longest serving politicians in German history and since 2017 has been the President of the Bundestag.
Clemens Fuest is a German economist. He has been President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and director of the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich (LMU) since 2016.
Giorgos Papakonstantinou, born October 30, 1961 in Athens, Greece, is a Greek economist and politician and former Minister for the Environment, Energy and Climate Change of Greece and former Minister for Finance. He is currently working in an advisory capacity in the private sector.
The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is a special purpose vehicle financed by members of the eurozone to address the European sovereign-debt crisis. It was agreed by the Council of the European Union on 9 May 2010, with the objective of preserving financial stability in Europe by providing financial assistance to eurozone states in economic difficulty. The Facility's headquarters are in Luxembourg City, as are those of the European Stability Mechanism. Treasury management services and administrative support are provided to the Facility by the European Investment Bank through a service level contract. Since the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, the activities of the EFSF are carried out by the ESM.
The European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) is an emergency funding programme reliant upon funds raised on the financial markets and guaranteed by the European Commission using the budget of the European Union as collateral. It runs under the supervision of the Commission and aims at preserving financial stability in Europe by providing financial assistance to member states of the European Union in economic difficulty.
Peter Kažimír is a Slovak politician and senior member of the social-democratic SMER-SD party. In the years 2006 – 2010 he served at the Slovak Finance Ministry. Since April 4, 2012, he is the Finance Minister of the Slovak government under prime ministers Robert Fico and Peter Pellegrini.
Tomáš Prouza is a Czech economist, former Deputy Minister of Finance (2004–2007) and from January 2014 to March 2017 State Secretary for European Affairs at the Czech Prime Minister's Office. On May 2016 the Government appointed Tomáš Prouza as the coordinator for the digital agenda. His main task was to synchronize and manage all governmental activities and communication for support of the digital economy and digitalization of public administration among the ministries and other central governmental institutions. He resigned his government positions on 31 March 2017 and went to establish his own consulting company EU Politics Advisory. On October 1, 2018 he has become President of the Confederation of Trade and Tourism of the Czech Republic.
Euclid Tsakalotos is a left-wing Greek economist and politician who has been Minister of Finance of Greece since 2015. He is also a member of the Central Committee of Syriza and has represented Athens B in the Hellenic Parliament since May 2012.
Nicholas Theocarakis, also transcribed as Nikos Theocharakis, is a Greek economist and professor of economics at Athens University. He is the author of several books and contributions on economic theory and history of economic thought.
Thomas Wieser is an American-Austrian economist working for the European Union. He is the president of Economic and Financial Committee (EFC) of the EU as well as the president of the Eurogroup Working Group (EWG), both advisory bodies of the Eurogroup.
The Public Debt Management Agency (PDMA) is a government agency in Greece. Its stated purpose is the: "improvement of the cost of funding and the achievement of the best possible structure of the public debt according to the needs of the Hellenic State and the prevailing international economic conditions."
Thanasis Laskaridis is a Greek shipowner and businessman based in the United Kingdom. He is the president and CEO of Lavinia Corporation. He is also founder of The People's Trust in Greece and co-founder of Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation. He has six children.
Irish Fiscal Advisory Council is a non-department statutory body providing independent assessment and analysis of the Irish Government's economic and budgetary forecasts, and fiscal approach. IFAC monitors compliance with EU fiscal rules and agreements. IFAC was created to counter the "green jersey agenda" which was identified as a contributor to the Irish financial crisis.
