From the Center for European Reform, this is the CERR podcast.

Welcome. This is the third episode of our special podcast from our annual CR Digital

Conference, where we bring together 50 economists from Europe and the US to discuss the most important

issue of the day.

And this year is about saving the EU.

My name is Christian Odell, and I'm joined in this episode by Catherine Mann, OECD's chief

economists and Barry Eidgen-Green from Berkeley.

Thanks for joining me.

Thank you.

In this episode, I want to talk about the two big economic projects of the EU,

the single market and the euro, both in terms of the recent political backlash against deeper

economic integration. And let us start with a single market. The single market is a sort of

super globalization in a way on a regional level, deep economic integration and market opening,

but combined with a sort of supranational institutions, democracy, even central funds to compensate weaker regions.

It seems an ideal form of globalization. Is that right? Would you agree with that? Or do you think in Europe we have gone already a bit too far?

Well, in my view, what you've done is you've come up with some funds to try to help various countries and regions to achieve a higher rate of growth and a higher level of per capita income.

That's the convergence, That's the structural funds

focusing on convergence, particularly of the periphery. But what really has not been done at all

is to complete the single market in some key areas of services. Banking and capital markets

union being one, broad-based services, professional telecoms, transport, energy,

these have not been harmonized, the regulations have not been harmonized, and then, of course,

in the digital single market. That's really in its infancy, if anything, it's going backwards.

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