No Rest For The Wicked, Or The Eurozone

While the trouble in Greece is still far from over, an interim bailout deal and open lines of communication appear to have put out the fire for now. However, the International Monetary Fund's annual review of the eurozone pointed out that the region still has a long way to go before policymakers can put their feet up and relax. Instead, the fund warned that the bloc has the potential to fall even further behind its peers in the coming years unless necessary steps are taken to shore up the economy. Unable To Keep Pace While the bloc has made a lot of progress since the financial crisis, the IMF warned that its current pace of recovery isn't fast enough. After returning to growth in 2013, the bloc has grown only modestly each quarter. At that rate, the IMF said, in 2020 the bloc's inflation rate will still be below the European Central Bank's 2 percent target. Banking Reform The fund also called on EU policymakers to continue reforming the region's financial sector to ensure that another crisis won't take place. The bloc's new banking supervisor has been a step in the right direction, but the fund urged more scrutiny on banks' balance sheets in order to restructure bad loans. Unified Governing Body? Keeping the bloc's economy healthy has proven difficult for EU policy makers as the region is made up of several different cultures with differing ideas on how to manage the region's finances. Some lawmakers have called for a central governing body that could manage the bloc's economy collectively in order to create unified policies. However many nations, like Germany, oppose this idea as they believe it gives up too much control.