The issue of the lower bound on nominal interest rates has been extensively discussed in the literature and policy debates. The interest in this topic was renewed by the impact of the global financial crisis . In fact, in response to the crisis central banks around the world reduced rapidly policy rates, in some cases even with the introduction of negative policy rates, and have stayed at exceptionally low levels for several years (see Figure 1).1 The economic performance of the euro area has been further dampened by the sovereign crisis that started in 2010. Almost a decade after the global financial crisis, the pace of recovery in the euro area remains disappointing. Thus alternative strategies to revive economic growth have been in the forefront of the macroeconomic debate, in particular structural reforms.2 This paper looks at structural reforms in the euro area economy that has struggled to revive economic growth. The crisis implied persistent and severe output losses in the short-run and most likely also resulted in output losses in the longrun, i.e. in a fall in potential output. Arguably, the euro area was faced with a low potential growth even before the crisis (see Gros, Durrer, Jimeno, Monticelli, and Perotti (2002) and European Commission (2014a)). In fact, since the beginning of the 2000s the euro area has shown steadily decreasing potential output growth. According to European Commissions estimates, the euro area potential output growth went down from over 1.5 per cent before the crisis to below 0.5 per cent and recovered slightly over the last few years to levels close to 1 per cent (see Figure 2). While the need for reforms was not new, the financial and sovereign crisis made it more urgent. Several countries implemented structural reforms to boost economic activity and competitiveness. However European Commission (2014b) documents that for countries like Portugal, Greece, Spain or Italy, the distance with other Member States with the most flexible regulatory framework is still significant and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2016) documents that the reforms effort since the crisis has been larger in Southern European countries but that there has been a slowdown in the pace of structural reform over the period 2013 to 2015. Also, as referred by Draghi (2015), the need for structural reforms in the euro area is often mentioned not because there has not been any progress but because a lasting return to prosperity cannot merely rely on cyclical policies, including monetary policy, but also structural policies and both are strongly interdependent.