Were 'It' to Happen: Contract Continuity Under Euro Regime Change

Abstract

One way or another, the European Monetary Union (EMU) is apt to endure. The prospect of continuation under the precise contours of the regime as we presently find it, however, is anything but certain. Hence many investors and other actual or prospective contract parties are likely to remain skittish until matters grow clearer.

This skittishness, importantly, can itself hamper the prospect of expeditious European recovery. Addressing particular sources of ongoing uncertainty about EMU prospects can itself therefore aid in the project of recovery. This Essay accordingly aims to impose structure upon one particular, and indeed particularly complex, source of uncertainty now damaging EMU prospects. That is the matter of how best to defend, legally speaking, continuity of contract in the event of some basic change in the current Euro regime.

The hope is that sizing up and breaking down this question into its constituent parts might accomplish at least three related aims. One is to render the hypothetical problems raised by the question more tractable than they would otherwise be. Another is to facilitate the development of provisional plans of approach to such problems in the event they should present themselves. Finally, yet another is to afford confidence to the markets by enabling contingency planning of the sort just suggested, thereby lessening the likelihood of self-fulfilling ‘run’-like activity on European debt instruments.

Keywords: Euro, monetay policy, economics, recovery, debt instruments