IMF Spring Meeting Seminar 2013: Towards a Stronger Eurozone: Boosting Growth and Completing the Architecture of EMU, Saturday, April 20, 3:00 p.m.

Recovering from the European crisis and ensuring future financial and macroeconomic stability will require measures to boost growth and complete the structure of the monetary union. Over the past year, European policymakers have taken important steps. At the national level, many governments have undertaken significant adjustments and structural changes. At the regional level, important developments were made, including the announcement of the European Central Bank's OMT programme, the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, and commitment to a banking union.

However, the euro area's economic outlook remains weak, with unemployment rates unacceptably high and high debt burdens in the public and private sectors weighing down demand in many countries. The seminar brings together high-level policymakers from Europe, the United States, and emerging countries to exchange views on how to foster growth and further strengthen the EMU architecture, as well as its implications for other regions of the world. .

The questions covered in this session are:

• How can we achieve faster economic growth? Is debt holding back eurozone growth? If so, how can the problem of legacy debt in the public and private sectors be addressed? What are the implications for both structural reforms and macroeconomic policies?
• What gaps in the EMU architecture have the eurozone crisis revealed and how can progress in addressing those gaps be assessed? The long-term prospects of monetary union What is the vision and how can a more viable transition to EMU be achieved?