Published on 27th November 2023

Eurozone unemployment is an average and disguises wide variations, with youth unemployment being unacceptably high in several Club Med countries.

That is the problem with making important policy decisions at several levels removed from economic units whose characteristics widely diverge.

The fact that this is the situation is a testament to the failure of Economic and Monetary Union, and to the deconvergence since the euro was introduced, compared to the gradual convergence that had been achieved thanks to the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

But the euro needed to be rushed into being in order to gain France’s approval of German reunification after the end of the Cold War, and that has undone much of what was achieved over the preceding 40 years.

How high is Eurozone unemployment? It depends entirely on which individual member state you look at, and that totally mismatches the organisation put in place to manage monetary policy.

Here is a link to the full article in which I was quoted:

https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/1819418/eurozone-unemployment-inflation-germany-spain-greece