The EU and the US are in the midst of a fundamental institutional and regulatory overhaul in response to the financial crisis. This process is primarily driven by domestic agendas, but G-20 commitments also come into play. In this new ECMI Policy Brief, CEPS Chief Executive Karel Lannoo compares reforms so far on both sides of the Atlantic, where policy frameworks differ substantially.

A new Commentary by Jacques Pelkmans advises the new Barroso Commission to maintain the ‘Better EU Regulation’ strategy that was initiated in 2005 and has proven especially effective in narrowing the scope and options for ideological approaches, or the discretion to allow or exploit regulatory ‘capture’ within the Commission.

A new CEPS report warns that a lukewarm integration of climate objectives into the new EU budget and the continuation of a rather uninspiring set of budgetary actions will only damage the image of the EU institutions and send the wrong signal to EU citizens and international partners.

Even more spectacular than the recent decline of the dollar against major world currencies has been the long-run decline of the US currency: since 1960 the dollar has lost two-thirds of its value against major world currencies. At the same time, however, at least since the early 1990s, the US has been seen to produce superior economic results, i.e. a higher productivity growth than most of Europe and Japan with more or less the same rates of inflation.

After weeks of intense speculation, it is now known that Herman Van Rompuy will be the European Council President, and Catherine Ashton will be the EU’s foreign affairs chief. The question of precisely what powers these two individuals will exercise under the new Treaty of Lisbon, however, remains largely unanswered, as it is not yet clear how they will perform as individuals and in tandem.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, CEPS Director Daniel Gros offers his views on the economic consequences of German unification for Europe’s economy. He finds that those who predicted that unification would drastically alter the balance of economic power in Europe seemed for a time vindicated, but that twenty years later it appears that the status quo ante has been re-established.

A new CEPS Policy Brief by Ineke Gubbels-van Hal (Royal Haskoning NL) and CEPS Senior Fellow Jacques Pelkmans finds that the current ‘silence’ over the EU chemicals regulation REACH is misleading and is, in fact, more the calm before the storm. Their analysis of the Regulation’s main properties and ensuing obligations reveals that its implementation suffers from considerable problems.