Will the European Experience Help to Establish a Better Regional Financial Safety Net in East Asia?

The East Asian financial safety net, which is now built on the institutional framework of the CMIM and the AMRO, has made considerable progress during the last decade. But it has still serious shortcomings and might not be effective to prevent and resolve financial disturbances in the region. There was no effective regional financial safety net either in Europe right after the GFC and the European fiscal crisis. Europe, on the other hand, has effectively provided provisions to overcome crises by swiftly introducing new systems and improving existing ones. Europe has also shown peculiar example of cooperation between the IMF and regional institutions. Based on these considerations, this paper outlines the history of establishing regional financial safety net in the two regions respectively with critical assessments, and draws four lessons from the European experience for East Asia’s safety net in terms of the predictability, the fund size, the surveillance, and the cooperation between the IMF and regional institutions.