64th Annual General Meeting of the Ifo Institute

On 26 June 2013 the 64th Annual General Meeting of the Ifo Institute was held in the Great Hall of the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU). Prior to the meeting Kai Carstensen, head of Ifo’s Business Cycle Analysis and Surveys Department, presented the Ifo Institute’s latest economic forecast. In the public part of Ifo’s Annual General Meeting, which focused on the theme of “Further Development of European Monetary Union” Bernd Huber, President of the LMU, welcomed the large number of guests attending the meeting. As the first of this year’s three speakers, Ifo President Hans-Werner Sinn gave an introduction to the topic. After taking stock of the current situation in the monetary union and describing the various stages of the crisis, Sinn presented what he sees as possible options for Europe. In the opinion of Dietrich Murswiek, the second speaker and Managing Director of the Institute for Public Law, University of Freiburg, monetary union has developed towards too little market and too much centralism, too little autonomy and too much control, too little democracy and too much bureaucracy since the outbreak of the euro crisis. Otmar Issing, President of the Center for Financial Studies, Goethe-University Frankfurt, the third speaker, agreed with the two previous speakers. In his view, there must be a return to the no bail-out principle once the crisis has been managed.