The Proposed Legal Framework for Establishing a European Monetary Fund (EMF): A Systematic Presentation and a Preliminary Assessment

Abstract

The aim of this paper is a systematic presentation of the European Commission’s proposal for a Council Regulation “on the establishment of the European Monetary Fund” (EMF) of 6 December 2017, including the European Monetary Fund’s Statute, annexed thereto. It is beyond the paper’s scope to review and refer to the extensive literature on this subject-area (or any other relevant secondary sources)pre-dating the submission of the above proposal; thus, it is based exclusively on primary sources and the related Communication(s) of the European Commission. The paper is structured in seven (7) Sections. Section A deals with the (eight) provisions of the proposal for a Council Regulation which are very limited (in number) compared with the extensive provisions of the EMF Statute reviewed in Sections B-F, as follows: • Section B introduces the Statute’s general provisions (including the legal status of the EMF and membership therein), • Section C discusses the EMF’s objective and its two tasks, namely the stability support operation and the provision of financial support (‘common backstop’) to the Single Resolution Fund, • Section D looks into the EMF’s capital and lending capacity, • Section E touches upon the EMF’s organisation and decision-making processes, and • Section F approaches the EMF’s financial management and its financial provisions. Finally, Section G contains a preliminary assessment of the Commission’s proposal, as a premise for further reflection on which the author may return (hopefully soon) with a more detailed analysis in a revised version (including due references to secondary sources).