Walking the Highwire

Rebalancing the European Economy in Crisis
By Olli Rehn
17th March 2020
Softcover | 978-3-030-34591-4
£24.99 | $34.99 | 29,99 €

“Olli Rehn was at the epicentre of the earthquake that almost destroyed the euro between 2010 and 2014. No one is better placed to recount the anxious hours when the fate of Europe’s single currency hung in the balance.” 
—Paul Taylor, contributing editor, POLITICO, former Reuters European Affairs Editor
 
“As the EU’s top economics official, Olli Rehn served with distinction on the crisis management team that saved the euro.” 
—Janet Yellen, Chair of the Federal Reserve, 2014-2018 

“This book brilliantly provides an insider’s account of how institutional constraints during the euro crisis led to a series of second-best policies. A committed European, Olli Rehn takes a hardnosed look at the realities in the Eurozone.”
—Megan Greene, Harvard Kennedy School, and Financial Times columnist 
 

Walking the Highwire is an economic policy thriller on Europe’s critical years. It tells the story of the Eurozone Crisis from the perspective of Olli Rehn, the former Vice-President of the European Commission who was responsible for Economic and Monetary Affairs in 2010-2014. 

Thoroughly researched and based on economic analysis and the author's own notes, this book gives a unique insider view to the political economy of the euro. In what is the only Europe-wide comprehensive account of the crisis, Rehn explains how the euro was saved through second-best solutions and details the subsequent rebalancing and recovery of the European economy. 

This comprehensive European account covers events and decisions in Brussels and Frankfurt and in the member states, both in distressed countries and creditor states. It also provides an economic-political analysis of the crisis and its management, recognising that the euro was created politically, and saved politically.  

“It is crucial for the future of Europe that we draw analytically correct and evidence-based lessons of those tough times when Europe’s single currency and real economy were at the brink of collapse,” Rehn said.

His memoirs of this critical time fulfill a duty to analyse the essential lessons of the crisis for the next Eurozone reform, for the sake of future generations of Europeans.

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Olli Rehn is former European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro (2010-2014). He was the European Commissioner for Enlargement from 2004 to 2010, in charge of the accession process of prospective new member states to the European Union and stabilisation in the Western Balkans. He served as Minister of Economic Affairs (2015-2016) and is a former Member of European and Finnish Parliaments. Since July 2018, he is the Governor of the Bank of Finland. He holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford in international political economy.
 

For more information or to get in touch with the author please contact:
Rebecca Krahenbuhl – Communications Manager, Palgrave Macmillan
rebecca.krahenbuhl@palgrave.com, +44 020 7014 6634