CEPS Working Documents


61 - 90 of 247
05 November 2009

This study attempts to assess the extent to which the financial crisis has damaged citizens’ trust in public institutions, especially the confidence that European citizens invest in the European institutions. The results of major public opinion surveys show a severe decrease in citizens’ trust in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis with a slight recovery nine month later. In particular, citizens’ net trust in the European Central Bank hit an historical low point in the aftermath of the financial crisis with a majority of people distrusting that institution.

23 October 2009

This paper looks at the dynamics affecting the external dimensions of the EU’s labour immigration policy. It assesses the role and functions of mobility partnerships as a mechanism for governing circular migration schemes that allow the temporary movement of individuals for employment purposes between EU member states and non-EU countries.

03 September 2009

The European Commission presented the ‘EU Passenger Name Record (PNR) system’ in 2007 as a tool in the fight against terrorism and organised crime. One of the proposed instruments of this system is the Framework Decision on the use of PNR, which provides for the storage and exchange of passenger data between EU member states and between member states and non-EU countries. Current Council proposals make clear that the passenger data may also be used to investigate other (serious) crimes or to prevent illegal immigration, which raises both practical and legal concerns.

21 August 2009

A series of incidents including the Polish agricultural row, the Estonian monument crisis, the Lufthansa Cargo dispute and the Litvinenko affair, have suggested that bilateral disputes between EU member states and Russia have begun to dominate overall EU–Russian relations. This paper employs a case-study approach to provide an in-depth analysis of selected disputes and reviews several questions of importance for EU coherence: What kinds of issues are at the heart of bilateral disputes? What strategies do member states adopt to resolve them?

27 July 2009

Consumer insolvency is a topic that has gained much prominence in the context of the financial crisis on both sides of the Atlantic. The number of bankruptcy filings has soared in recent years, and is not expected to go down in the near future.

24 July 2009

Since the mid-1990s, a declining trend of electoral participation in Western countries has triggered numerous discussions about civic education, awareness-raising and new voting techniques. Some have argued that turnout fluctuations are valuable per se, as they indicate the changing degrees of voter satisfaction or criticism against the government.

17 July 2009

The financial crisis had a significant impact on the levels of trust that citizens place in the system and its institutions. Recent data from Eurobarometer show a significant fall in confidence on the part of European citizens in the EU’s institutions. For the first time since its creation, a majority of European citizens no longer trust the European Central Bank. However, confidence levels in national governments have actually risen, supporting a contrasting trend between confidence levels in European and national institutions.

06 July 2009

This paper presents a simple, basic model to compute the welfare consequences of the introduction of a tariff on the CO2 content of imported goods in a country that already imposes a domestic carbon tax. The main finding is that the introduction of a carbon import tariff increases global welfare (and not just the welfare of the importing country) if there is no (or insufficient) pricing of carbon abroad. A higher domestic price of carbon justifies a higher import tariff.

25 May 2009

At the end of the 6th legislature, fears that enlargement would hamper the workings of the European Parliament have largely proved unfounded. Despite the influx of many new members to Parliament, parties have remained cohesive, and legislative output has remained steady. Moreover, after an initial phase of adaptation, MEPs from new member states have been increasingly socialised into the EP structure. Challenges have arisen in a rather different field, however.

07 May 2009

This paper explores three areas in which the experience of the Great Depression might be relevant today: monetary policy, fiscal policy and the systemic stability of the banking system.

16 April 2009

The upcoming Swedish presidency of the EU will be in charge of adopting the next multi-annual programme on an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), during its tenure in the second half of 2009. As the successor of the 2004 Hague Programme, it has already been informally baptised as the Stockholm Programme and will present the EU’s policy roadmap and legislative timetable over these policies for the next five years.

24 February 2009

The war in the South Caucasus sent shockwaves throughout the post-Soviet world, European capitals and across the Atlantic, making more urgent the demand for a re-evaluation of policies towards Russia. The projection of hard power in Georgia generated a number of unintended consequences for the Russian state. The crisis and war unveiled many of Russia’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities across four crucial dimensions: the military, the ‘power vertical’ and federalism, the economy and Russia’s international position.

05 February 2009

One of the most important effects of Russia’s war against Georgia in August 2008 was a new set of approaches to the future of European security being actively promoted by Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. According to their interpretation, the Georgian war was not a particular incident (an exception) but a structural event, a landmark comparable to Russia’s own ‘September 11’ to be symbolised as a ‘moment of truth’.

29 January 2009

The aim of the paper is to identify and evaluate existing and potential EU energy supply risks on the basis of a sector-specific approach. Moving away from common generalisations on security of energy supply as well as from those studies that focus only on one sector, it brings together all types of fuel and analyses the risks related to each of them. The result is a comprehensive picture of the energy security challenges faced by the EU in the long-term.

18 December 2008

This paper points out that education should be the central objective of the post-2010 Lisbon Process. Compared to other OECD countries, the member states of the European Union perform poorly when it comes to key indicators of innovative potential, such as the percentage of students enrolled in tertiary education and the educational quality of Europe’s students. Education makes a three-fold contribution to a country’s economic health.

30 October 2008

Europe’s two crises – the Georgia-Russia war of August and the ongoing global financial and economic crisis – point to huge challenges for the organisation and policies of the European Union. The present paper concentrates on the risks that the crises represent for one of the EU’s prime objective, to achieve a civilized wider European order. At least the current episodes show that with leadership the EU can act fast in both diplomacy and finance. But the next question is how to follow through, beyond a passing moment of an effective six-month presidency of the EU.

17 October 2008

The recent surge in commodity prices and the European Central Bank’s decision in June to raise interest rates to combat inflation have ignited a debate about the appropriateness of raising interest rates during a phase of weakening activity. In addition, it is relevant to examine the approaches to measuring the rate of inflation, to consider the advantages and drawbacks of these methods, and finally to throw new light on the possible influence of monetary policy on the fundamental trends in prices.

30 September 2008

This paper analyses the variety of different external aid initiatives and financing mechanisms of the European Commission addressing climate change and development objectives, such as those stemming from the 2004 EU Action Plan on Climate Change and Development, from the Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA) and those under the Thematic Programme for Environment and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources (ENRTP). The paper also outlines related Commission commitments with the European Investment Bank (EIB), the World Bank and the United Nations.

25 September 2008

EU climate policy is based on GHG emissions reduction (mitigation) coupled with measures aimed at responding efficiently to the unavoidable consequences of climate change (adaptation). However, as the European Commission recently stated in its Green Paper on adaptation in Europe, there is still a need to develop an overall EU adaptation strategy. Moreover, such a strategy should take into consideration both efficiency and equity concerns. In this article we propose a framework for EU adaptation policy that addresses both concerns and which enables a transparent decision-making process.

23 September 2008

The question of whether central banks should target stock prices so as to prevent bubbles and crashes from occurring has been hotly debated. This paper analyses this question using a behavioural macroeconomic model. This model generates bubbles and crashes. It analyses how ‘leaning against the wind’ strategies, which aim to reduce the volatility of stock prices, can help in reducing volatility of output and inflation. We find that such policies can be effective in reducing macroeconomic volatility, thereby improving the trade-off between output and inflation variability.

04 September 2008

With inflation increasing all over the world, central banks have to consider with some care how quickly to re-establish price stability. A key issue in this context is the short-run cost in terms of foregone output and higher unemployment. The aim of this paper is to determine the ‘sacrifice ratio’ for the Euro Area and for the United States. The main findings are: the cost of reducing inflation is in most cases higher in the US than in the EA. For example, reducing (headline) inflation by 1% point requires a decline of output of 1.4% in the EU, but 2.3% for the US.

25 August 2008

This study focuses on the financial resources needed to fight global climate change and the implications for the EU budget. The authors apply four different methodologies to estimate global financing requirements and attempt to determine the resources that will be needed at the EU level to meet the EU’s climate change objectives. The study analyses current climate change spending of the EU budget, identifies shortcomings and indicates possibilities for correcting them.

14 July 2008

This paper argues that there are significant potential economic gains to be obtained from an EU-Canada Free Trade Agreement. The evolution of trade between the US and Canada following the signing of CUSFTA in 1989 offers a good illustration of how trade might increase after an EU-Canada FTA, as the patterns and levels of protection between the EU and Canada today are very similar to the protection that existed between the US and Canada in 1989.

30 June 2008

After the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, the European Union moved quickly to fill an obvious gap in its vision of the regions to its periphery, proposing the ‘Black Sea Synergy’. The EU shows a certain degree of commonality in its approaches to the Baltic Sea region, the Mediterranean and now the Black Sea. While the political profiles of these maritime regions are very different, they naturally give rise to many common policy challenges.

30 June 2008

The Treaty of Lisbon contains several options for creating some degree of flexibility in the defence domain under the assumption that it will be difficult, and not always necessary, to do everything at 27: constructive abstention, the possibility of mandating a smaller group or for the most demanding missions ‘permanent structured cooperation in defence’ (PSCD). It is not yet clear, however, how the possession of larger military capabilities and how the will to enter into more binding commitments will be elaborated.

04 June 2008

This paper estimates the impact of the ongoing housing bust and oil price boom on the US and European economies. It finds that large house price movements (changes in construction investment) are useful to predict exceptionally bad and good times for the US economy, but not for most large European countries. In Europe housing market developments have led to extreme values of GDP, mainly in the UK, Spain and some Nordic countries.