Max Watson, a former senior official at the IMF and the European Union, identifies five key lessons from recent decades of experience managing economic crises, and asks, how can change be catalysed by external actors such as the EU and IMF in the face of deeply entrenched obstacles to reform. 

Despite the fact that many of these lessons, he suggests, were neglected or forgotten when the euro area crisis broke out, he sounds an optimistic note for the future.