School of Law

Panel 1: The pandemic response in the Eurozone – towards a fiscal union? 

9.30 - 11.00

Chair: Prof. John Tsoukalas, Head of Economics, Adam Smith Business School 

John Tsoukalas is the Head of Economics at the Adam Smith Business School.  He holds a BSc in Economics from the Athens University of Economic and Business, Greece, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland College Park in the USA. He has served as an Economist at the Bank of England from 2003 to 2006 and  has held visiting positions at Johns Hopkins University, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Hong Kong Monetary Authority. His research interests and publications are in macroeconomics, political economy, financial and investment cycles, financial regulation and the European debt crisis. 

Is sovereign debt management and consolidation a public good? Stefano Micossi Director General of Assonime


Micossi will discuss the need for a common European policy to manage a new massive accumulation of sovereign debt following the coronavirus pandemic. The simple idea is that Europe should deploy its financial strength to bring about a significant lengthening of maturity of sovereigns as well as a lowering its cost to about zero, de facto ensuring a painless restructuring of excessive national sovereigns, by issuing its own debts in large quantities whose service would be taken up by the Union. In order to be able to do, the European Union should lever its budget, first of all by creating a true ‘own resource’ revenue basis, which could be deployed to service the extra debt incurred for its members.  

Micossi is the director general of Assonime, Member of the Board of Directors of Unicredit and chairman of the Board Committee for Corporate Governance, Nomination and Sustainability, the chairman of the Scientific Council of the LUISS-School of European Political Economy (LUISS-SEP) and a member of the CEPS Board of Directors. 

ECB Policy & practice in response to the pandemic Lorenzo Bini Smaghi Chairman of Société Générale

Bini Smaghi will examine the main issues related to the ECB’s monetary policy response to the crisis, the risks arising from an over burdening of central banks and the potential impact on inflation and financial stability over the medium term. 

Bini Smaghi is Chairman of Société Gènérale and Senior Fellow at LUISS Univeristy, Rome. He was a member of the ECB Executive Board between 2005 and 2011.  

Prof. Paul de Grauwe 

Topic tbc

Prof. de Grauwe is the John Paulson Professor in European Political Economy, London School of Economics and Political Science 

Central Bank competences - The ECB’s Mandate Prof. Dr. Losa Lastra  Centre for Commercial Law Studies Queen Mary University of London

The evolving nature of central banking helps us understand the role central banks can play in reducing the economic and financial risks arising from unsustainable activity, in light of climate change, financial crises and pandemics like COVID-19.  Drawing on a recent European Parliament report co-authored with Kern Alexander, Professor Lastra will look in particular at the ECB mandate, taking into account the interaction between the ECB’s primary price stability objective and the broader secondary objectives, whereby the ECB supports the general economic policies of the European Union (in accordance with Article 127.1 TFEU and Article 3 TEU), as well as the contribution by the ECB to financial stability (Article 127.5 TFEU).  The COVID-19 public health crisis has brought again to the fore the contours of monetary policy, exposing the asymmetry between a centralised monetary policy and decentralised fiscal policies in the euro area.  

Prof. Dr Rosa María Lastra is the Sir John Lubbock Chair in Banking Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London. She is a member of the Monetary Committee of the International Law Association, the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee, the European Banking Institute, the European Law Institute, the Financial Markets Group of the London School of Economics and P.R.I.M.E. She has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the World Bank, the United Nations (UNCTAD), the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the European Parliament and the House of Lords. She is the principal investigator in a research project on the Legal and Economic Conceptions of Money funded by an ESRC/NIESR award in May 2019. Prior to coming to London she taught in Columbia University. She has written extensively in her fields of expertise, including inter alia the following authored and edited books: , Research Handbook on Central Banking (Elgar, 2018) International Financial and Monetary Law (Oxford University Press, 2015), The Rule of Law in Monetary Affairs (Cambridge University Press, 2014), International Law in Financial Regulation and Monetary Affairs, (OUP, 2012), 2011), Legal Foundation of International Monetary Stability (OUP, 2006, authored), Central Banking and Banking Regulation (LSE, 1996).