Chapter 5 critically assesses proposals to bring the EMU closer to the requirements of an optimum currency area. More specifically, I am interested in the possibility of establishing mechanisms capable of absorbing asymmetric economic shocks in the Eurozone. As it is often argued, the fact that these mechanisms have been conspicuously missing in the case of the Eurozone makes it difficult for individual economies of the EMU to withstand asymmetric shocks. The chapter determines the viability of each of the main shock absorption channels – the fiscal one, the banking one and through capital markets. The first of them is discussed from the perspective of practical fiscal shock absorption mechanisms envisaged recently by scholars in the European context. After explaining why none of the proposals would really have the faculties comparable to those existing in fully-fledged fiscal federations, the chapter then concentrates on the banking union and the capital markets union and compares them to their counterparts in prosperous monetary unions. As the chapter concludes, these two shock absorption channels could not be attuned to the reality of the Eurozone’s south, either.