CEPS Policy Briefs


31 - 60 of 287
15 December 2011

This latest contribution by Stefano Micossi, Director General Assonime, Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and member of the CEPS Board of Directors, assesses the new decisions on economic governance taken at the European Council on December 8-9 and questions whether they are truly feasible, either technically or politically.

07 December 2011

In the run-up to this week’s European Council, Karel Lannoo offers his assessment of what has been put on the table so far in response to the euro crisis – and what more needs to be done. He starts with an assessment of the measures taken in the ‘six-pack’ and the debate on the Euro-plus Pact and then addresses some operational elements of the European Stability Mechanism and the question whether the EU is, as often alleged, a transfer union.

30 November 2011

The multiple attempts to restore confidence in the eurozone over the 18 months that have passed since the first Greek rescue in May 2010, have clearly failed. Indeed, following each round of emergency measures agreed by the eurozone summits, matters have turned for the worse. This contribution by Stefano Micossi exhorts the leaders of the eurozone to go back to the drawing board and overcome their political disagreements on how to proceed.

16 November 2011

In this analytical policy brief, CEPS Director Daniel Gros explores whether there is a fundamental difference between a formal sovereign default with a haircut and debt monetisation, which reduces the purchasing power for investors by the same amount. He argues that there is indeed a difference because a formal sovereign default invariably leads to a banking crisis.

27 October 2011

Transparency means proactive action: by adding a provision for a legislative footprint that identifies which interest-representatives key actors met, received, and heard from, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have a chance to turn the EP into a role model for parliamentary transparency in a pluralistic democracy.

21 September 2011

This Policy Brief summarises the emerging regulations at the national level in the US, and offers an assessment of potential emissions reductions under the Clean Air Act. It also describes the efforts at the subnational level, and the interaction of these policies with the Clean Air Act under the particular structure of so-called ‘environmental federalism’. This structure places central responsibility for implementation of regulations at the state level, making the architecture of existing state-level policies increasingly relevant and influential.

21 September 2011

Stabilising global greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations at levels to avoid significant climate risks will require massive ‘decarbonisation’ over the next few decades. Achieving the necessary scale of emissions reductions will require well-thought out strategies and a multifaceted policy effort to support a broad array of technological and behavioural changes. This paper outlines some core principles for guiding the design of clean technology policies, with a focus on energy

19 September 2011

The recent constitutional reform agreed by the Spanish Parliament on 7 September 2011 aims to mitigate concerns over public finances by constraining the general government’s spending and borrowing capacity. In their analysis of this historic agreement, José M.

22 August 2011

‘Blue’ or Eurobonds guaranteed via joint and several liability by the eurozone member states have been proposed as an important tool to stabilise and structure the eurozone sovereign bond markets. But in this new Policy Brief, Hans-Joachim Dübel argues the case for a partial insurance of sovereign bonds by the European Stability Mechanism.
Hans-Joachim Dübel is an independent financial sector consultant based in Berlin and founder of Finpolconsult.
 

19 August 2011

As the Eurozone debt crisis reaches a turning point, this Policy Brief argues for a more organised intervention by the ECB to stop contagion through the creation of a quantitative easing programme, coupled with a political agreement among member states on a more federalist budget for the Eurozone.

04 August 2011

This paper asserts that the contagion currently afflicting sovereign bond markets in the eurozone can only be stopped if there is a central bank willing to be lender of last resort, i.e. willing to guarantee that the cash will always be available to pay out the bondholders. Until recently, the European Central Bank performed this role either directly by buying government bonds, or indirectly by accepting government bonds as collateral in its liquidity provision to the banking system, but it has made it clear that it is now unwilling to continue to do so.

02 August 2011

Given Britain’s desire to maintain its own border controls, it will not join the EU’s passport-free ‘Schengen’ area in the foreseeable future. Ireland also has to stay out because it shares a common travel area with the UK.

13 July 2011

This paper analyses the implications of a continued divergence of TARGET2 balances for monetary policy in the euro area. The accumulation of TARGET2 claims (liabilities) would make the ECB’s liquidity management asymmetric once the TARGET2 claims in core countries have crowded out central bank credit in those regions. Then while providing scarce liquidity to banks in countries with TARGET2 liabilities, the ECB will need to absorb excess liquidity in countries with TARGET2 claims.

08 July 2011

Despite the formal role laid out for the General Affairs Council (GAC) in the Treaties, it has been weakened since it was extracted from the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) and set up to function on its own. Its current uneven composition is leading to further marginalisation. The Policy Brief argues that reforming the GAC can bring it to the centre of gravity of the Council proceedings and address a number of problems in the current institutional structure.

01 July 2011

This Policy Brief by Christian Kopf examines the merits of a new proposal from France aimed at resolving the Greek debt crisis in which French commercial banks would swap €85.5 billion in Greek government bonds maturing between 2011 and 2014 into a combination of new long-term Greek bonds with principal guarantee and cash payments.

29 June 2011

Space-based observation can provide vital data about the impact of climate change, as well as serve as an essential tool for monitoring the progress of actions implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This space-based research can support EU policy on climate change, both domestically and internationally.

21 June 2011

This CEPS Policy Brief analyses the state of EU-Russian relations as seen from the vantage point of the summit held on June 9-10 in Nizhny Novgorod. The authors describe the political context in which the summit was embedded, the anticipations it evoked from the both sides, its outcomes and some perspectives for the near future.
Andrei Makarychev is professor at the Free University of Berlin and Alexander Sergunin is professor at St. Petersburg State University.
 

25 May 2011

As EU leaders muddle through the eurozone crisis, the debate about its root causes continues. CEPS Director Daniel Gros argues in this Policy Brief that the debate is important if we are to understand how to prevent future crises. In his view, external debt is the key to the turmoil in European economies and that the focus on total public debt is therefore misleading.

10 May 2011

In this new policy brief, CEPS Senior Fellow Rym Ayadi and Antonio Fenelli, of the OECD, propose a blueprint for a new framework for micro and medium-sized enterprise development in the context of the ongoing Euro-Mediterranean cooperation with a new role for the Union for the Mediterranean secretariat to reinforce ongoing regional industrial cooperation.

10 May 2011

While the European Parliament is in many ways more transparent and more accessible than many of the EU’s national parliaments, the code of conduct for lobbyists and the Parliament’s own Rules of Procedure are rather vague. As a result of the ‘cash for laws’ scandal, the EP President, Jerzy Buzek, has established a working group to draw up a new set of rules to govern the access and behaviour of lobbyists and to formulate a code of conduct for MEPs.

20 April 2011

Two years after the London G-20, CEPS Chief Executive Karel Lannoo finds that the EU is well advanced in delivering on the commitments made for the 2013 target date. Important steps have been taken on the institutional side, and regulatory changes are moving ahead. On some issues, in fact, such as remuneration, the EU has made even greater headway than the US. But certain key sensitive matters remain, such as bank resolution or structural changes.

21 March 2011

After the Greek public debt crisis and the bilateral loans to Greece from the other members of the European Monetary Union (EMU), in May 2010 the Ecofin Council launched the European Financial Stabilization Mechanism (EFSM). In June of the same year the EMU countries instituted the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). These two mechanisms, which are charged with providing support to EMU countries in “exceptional difficulty”, received their baptism of fire with Ireland in January 2011 and successfully made their first bond issue on the market.

15 March 2011

The pricing of sovereign credit risk is a necessary component of the financial architecture of the European Monetary Union. However, unnecessarily high and volatile risk premia on government bonds are currently preventing effective financial intermediation within the euro area, thereby inhibiting its economic recovery.

15 March 2011

Regime changes through taking to the streets do not always progress peacefully and produce intended results. The recent successful revolutions that have brought down two North African dictators have also inspired reform advocates in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood. The coming months are expected to see developments of major if not decisive importance especially for the future of Armenia. Given the uncertainty of the eventual outcome in Armenia, this Policy Brief contemplates four possible scenarios for the country’s future development and suggests possible responses from the EU.

09 March 2011

At its forthcoming spring meeting, on March 24th-25th, the European Council will consider a comprehensive package of measures that can open a new age of European economic governance: one that is truly collective; capable of enforcing economic policy coordination and preventing the build-up of unsustainable imbalances in government as well as private balance sheets; and backed up by credible, quasi-automatic sanctions for any member state posing a threat to collective stability.

11 February 2011

With the Commission’s consultation period on the Single Market Act nearing its end, this CEPS Policy Brief urges the EU to get its act together and give immediate priority to deepening and widening the Single Market. The author argues, however, that it is essential that the legitimacy questions surrounding ‘more Single Market’ are taken seriously at both EU and at national level.

Jacques Pelkmans is CEPS Senior Research Fellow and Jan Tinbergen Chair and Director of the Department of European Economic Studies, College of Europe.
 

03 February 2011

The new Lisbon Treaty has completely changed the role of the rotating presidency. Before Lisbon, the political responsibility of each of presidency included almost all areas of the European project with the main decisions being brokered by national diplomats. Under the new system this ‘political’ dimension has been seriously curtailed, if not done away with. The main task of rotating presidencies in the new institutional system is to manage ongoing legislation within the Council and with the European Parliament.

03 February 2011

This paper proposes a two-step, market-based approach to debt reduction:

01 February 2011

Notwithstanding the undeniable success of telecoms liberalisation in terms of price reduction, new services and technologies as well as consumer satisfaction, EU telecoms policy is at least a half failure. This might seem hard to believe, but this Policy Brief shows that there is no such thing as an EU telecoms (or eComms) single market. We provide ample empirical economic and regulatory evidence of profound and lingering fragmentation as well as a brief assessment of the flaws of the third eComms package of 2009, now in force.