On 16 December, the 3rd Annual Conference of Crisis Observatory took place at the French Institute of Athens with great success.

In the first part of the Conference, the eight best papers which were submitted to Crisis Observatory’s Postgraduate Essay Contest were presented.

The second part of the Conference included a round table discussion on the topic of: “Economic Governance in the EU: Challenges and Perspectives”. Iain Begg (Professorial Research Fellow, European Institute, London School of Economics), Zsolt Darvas (Senior Fellow, Bruegel), Stefano Micossi (General Director ASSONIME, Professor, College of Europe) and Nikos Christodoulakis (Former Minister, Professor, Athens University of Economics and Business) took part in this discussion.

The presentation of Stefano Micossi was about the causes of the crisis in the EU, with emphasis on the emergence of significant imbalances among European economies and the weaknesses of the European economic governance. Iain Begg analyzed the challenges faced by the main actors in the economic governance of the Eurozone . Nikos Christodoulakis presented a series of asymmetries in the way that the crisis has been handled so far and suggested corrective measures, while Zsolt Darvas made a detailed analysis of the weaknesses and challenges in the Eurozone’ s  economic governance, before and during the debt crisis.

After the completion of the round table discussion, the 4 best papers of the Crisis Observatory’s Postgraduate Essay Contest were awarded monetary prizes. The prizes were awarded by the President of ELIAMEP, Mr Loukas Tsoukalis.