CEPS Commentaries


241 - 270 of 315
30 October 2008

Increasingly people ask how the financial crisis will impact future climate change policy. While intuitively many assume that a recession will reduce the ambition of EU and other countries to press ahead with climate change policies, CEPS researcher Christian Egenhofer argues in this commentary that the opposite may well be the case.

30 October 2008

At the EU-Canada Summit on the 17th October in Montreal, it was announced that both parties got the green light to draw up the negotiating mandates for an “enhanced economic partnership” agreement. CEPS Research Fellow Selen Sarisoy Guerin argues that this ambitious new generation bilateral agreement will be one of a kind.

21 October 2008

Some have argued that the financial crisis has set back progress in EU integration by 15 years. CEPS Chief Executive argues in this Commentary that the EU can demonstrate that this is not the case by rapidly drawing the lessons from the crisis and taking it as a challenge for a further step in European integration. He acknowledges that this will require plenty of effort and determination, but it will certainly benefit the EU’s financial services industry and economy.

14 October 2008

In assessing the October 12th euro area summit, Daniel Gros applauds the national leaders for taking decisive action that avoided a total breakdown in the short run, but laments the fact that the cost of the lack of fiscal solidarity will set back the integration of European financial markets by decades.

10 October 2008

In this commentary, Paul De Grauwe traces the origins of the turmoil in the global financial system and explores how to get out of this bad equilibrium. In his view, there is only one way: the governments of the major countries (US, UK, the eurozone, possibly Japan) must take over their banking systems (or at least the significant banks). Governments are the only institutions that can solve the co-ordination failure at the heart of the liquidity crisis. They can do this because once the banks are in the hands of the state, they can be ordered to trust each other and to lend to each other.

10 October 2008

On the eve of the G7 meetings in Washington, Daniel Gros and Stefano Micossi find that what is missing is a body or a concerted initiative to take care of the inter-bank market, which has become dysfunctional almost everywhere. They warn that the G-7 governments must tackle this issue or be prepared to witness the funding crisis mutate into a global depression.

07 October 2008

Finding the uncoordinated national measures agreed by the self-styled European G-4 leaders in Paris this past weekend not only inadequate but also contradictory, Daniel Gros and Stefano Micossi call upon national economics and finance ministers to address the real problem at their forthcoming meeting and come up with serious solutions to avoid a full-scale banking crisis in Europe.

07 October 2008

Observing that the US Congress was able to reach agreement over support to the US banking sector within two weeks, Arno Behrens bemoans the fact that the US and other governments remain reluctant to contribute significantly to the global climate change bill. Instead of buying bad assets, however, he asserts that climate change mitigation is an investment in a global public good and in future prosperity. While cautioning against taking a hasty decision, he argues that there is a strong case to be made for increasing global resources for adaptation and mitigation with all due speed.

30 September 2008

Observing that we are living in extraordinary times, Daniel Gros and Stefano Micossi warn in a new CEPS Commentary that policy-makers in Europe cannot continue to muddle through. They put forward simple proposals aimed to putting the euro area ahead of events in the unfolding crisis. Daniel Gros is Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. Stefano Micossi is Director of Assonime, a business association and think-tank in Rome.

16 September 2008

This CEPS Commentary explores the cause of the rapid and intense deterioration suffered by the eurozone business cycle since early 2007. It finds that the key explanation lies in the exchange rate of the euro and points a finger at the European Central Bank for abdicating its responsibility to intervene in the foreign exchange market and to oppose exchange rate developments that are out of touch with economic forces.

Paul De Grauwe is Professor of Economics at the University of Leuven and Associate Senior Fellow at CEPS.

07 August 2008

This Commentary by CEPS Chief Executive looks at the financial crisis that has gripped Europe since the massive liquidity injection by the European Central Bank on 9 August 2007. One year on, he notes that some clear shifts are discernible in the institutional set-up, but they have probably not been explicitly acknowledged. At the same time, the crisis has brought to the fore important gaps in the European and global supervisory architecture.

24 July 2008

In this commentary, CEPS Associate Fellow Paul De Grauwe looks at the lessons that can be learnt from the financial crisis, arguing that tighter market regulations should be re-introduced, and that new macroeconomic models will have to be developed in order to factor in financial stability as a new target.

10 July 2008

This Commentary by CEPS Director Daniel Gros asks what is behind the ever-increasing price of crude oil? He argues that the supply of oil today will increase only if tomorrow’s price is low relative to the price today.

03 July 2008

CEPS Research Fellow Jorge Nùñez Ferrer expresses concern in this commentary over the implications of the recent price hikes in food commodities worldwide for the decisions that will be taken in the course of the ‘health check’ currently underway of the CAP and for the potential longer-term consequences for the EU budget review.

27 June 2008

In this commentary, CEPS Chief Executive Karel Lannoo calls for a consolidation of the EU Financial Markets’ supervisory framework.

16 June 2008

CEPS Director Daniel Gros argues in this Commentary that the solution to the ‘Irish crisis’ could be simple if the other countries are really determined to go ahead. At the forthcoming European Council meeting in Brussels, he suggests that member countries could simply sign the consolidated text of the Treaties which results from the incorporation of the amendments of the Lisbon Treaty into the old Treaty.

05 June 2008

Industrialised countries are currently facing a triple shock: an increase in the risk premium because of financial market stress, a fall in house prices and a deterioration in terms of trade due to higher commodity prices. The last two occasions oil prices spiked, house prices tanked and the world economy experienced a severe recession. This Commentary looks at the likelihood of extreme deviations of GDP from potential and whether the current bust in housing coupled with a spike in the oil prices will also have a strong negative impact on growth in the US and Europe.

22 May 2008

Senem Aydın Düzgit, CEPS Associate Research Fellow, finds in this Commentary that the current political tensions in Turkey date back further than the recent attempt by the Turkish judiciary to close down the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), but are also linked to the broader issues of secularism versus Islamism in the country and may also have implications for Turkey’s uniquely complex status as EU accession candidate.

16 May 2008

In this CEPS Commentary, H.Onno Ruding, Director of the CEPS Board of Directors, explores whether the European Union was plunged into a state of real crisis following the negative referenda in France and the Netherlands in mid-2005 (and in which it is still mired) or is it simply experiencing one of the many hiccups or temporary impasses that have characterised the European integration process since the beginning. He finds the latter description more to the point.

29 April 2008

Last year the European Union began negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with South Korea, India and ASEAN. These negotiations are important because they are among the EU’s first round of new generation FTAs as called for in the Global Europe: Competing in the World communiqué. They are also important because if and when the agreements are signed, they will be the EU’s first bilateral FTAs in the region.

09 April 2008

Last September the European Commission’s unveiled new proposals for energy-market liberalisation, which focused on ‘ownership unbundling’. Under such a regime, the business of operating gas pipelines or an electricity network is separated from the business of providing gas or generating power. The initiative immediately drew opposition from the highly vertically integrated energy incumbents.

28 March 2008

In this Commentary, CEPS Research Fellow Natalie Tocci finds reason for cautious optimism for the future of the conflict-ridden island of Cyprus as a result of the presidential elections in February in the Greek Cypriot south. At the same time, however, she voices concern over the narrow margin of victory enjoyed by Demetrios Christofias as well as the disillusionment and scepticism that has set in among the Turkish Cypriots.

21 March 2008

By slowing the spiral that is driven by the practice of ‘marking to market’, Paul De Grauwe, CEPS Associate Senior Research Fellow and Professor at KU Leuven, argues that innocent bystanders will stop being caught in the whirlwind of today’s financial markets.

17 March 2008

A project initiated by Turkey’s official religious authority, the Diyanet, has attracted considerable attention from international media and been and “a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion”. Known as the ‘hadith project’, it calls, inter alia, for rendering the Prophet’s message in a comprehensible language and amending interpretations that no longer have any value. This Commentary elaborates the project in order to understand where it stands with respect to attempts to combat radical strands of Islam.

20 February 2008

In this CEPS Commentary, CEPS Research Fellow Arno Behrens argues that the EU’s target of increasing the share of biofuels in transport to 10% by the year 2020 is unjustified, and that the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions could be achieved more efficiently with other technologies and policies.

12 February 2008

In this commentary, CEPS Director Daniel Gros compares housing markets’ dynamics in the EU and the US, arguing that the downturn in house prices is likely to undermine consumer spending on both sides of the Atlantic.

04 February 2008

As European financial markets continue to feel the aftershocks of the US subprime crisis, CEPS CEO Karel Lannoo argues in this commentary that European authorities should agree on a set of easily understandable standards to measure the quality of a bank's finances.