Opções para Portugal

"The current financial and economic crisis has drawn renewed attention to the national and regional disequilibria in the European Monetary Union (EMU). After a bumpy catch-up by the periphery countries over the last few decades, several southern European countries suffered severe setbacks, culminating in twin deficits in the public sector and the current account, and – since the beginning of the consolidation period – negative growth and rising unemployment. Disequilibria across European countries push down stability and growth in Europe and challenge both European cohesion and the monetary union.
This policy brief uses the experience of low income regions to investigate which strategies led to the sucessful catch-up in these regions over the last two decades, and which did not. This approach allows an assessment of the options available to peripheral countries in a monetary union, since – like regions within a country – they cannot promote growth or correct policy failures by devaluing the currency. Based on these regional experiences as well as on the results from the literature on growth drivers, we draw policy conclusions on the regional, national and EU-wide strategies needed to successfully restart growth in the southern European periphery.
We focus on Greece, Portugal and Spain (the "southern" peripheral countries which we refer to as the P3 countries), but a number of recommendations are also relevant for Ireland, southern Italy and other peripheral regions of the European Union. Of course no size fits for all and differences across countries are large."
Karl Aiginger, Peter Huber e Matthias Firgo, "Policy options for the development of peripheral regions and countries of Europe" (European Policy Brief, No. 2, 2012).