Globalisation has changed our worlds domestically and beyond the nation state. Our societies are facing opportunities and risks. It depends not at least on political action what will prevail. Three major factors will be decisive for social and political cohesion in our advanced democratic societies. But they can be changed and are not set in […]
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EU Banking Union: Recipe For Renewed Disaster
On 1 January 2016 the EU’s banking union – an EU-level banking supervision and resolution system – officially came into force. The move to a banking union has been the most significant regulatory outcome of the crisis – ‘a change of regime, rather than an act of institutional tinkering’, as Christos Hadjiemmanuil of the London […]
How Much Debt Is Too Much?
Is there a “safe” debt/income ratio for households or debt/GDP ratio for governments? In both cases, the answer is yes. And in both cases, it is impossible to say exactly what that ratio is. Nonetheless, this has become the most urgent macroeconomic question of the moment, owing not just to spiraling household and government debt […]
Break The Vicious Circle Of Falling Prices And Wages
The IMF has recently released its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update pointing to persistently weak growth and another downward revision of its projected growth rates for 2016 and 2017 by 0.2 percentage points in each year. Despite this, the IMF’s growth trajectory still sees the world economy recovering slightly from the weakness it experienced […]
The Unfulfilled Promise Of Social Rights In Crisis EU
The economic governance structures that have emerged in response to the Eurozone crisis have been widely and rightly critiqued for their anti-social and anti-democratic consequences. We argue in a recent SPERI paper that one pragmatic way in which we might attempt to reform such governance is by asserting the EU’s own rhetorical and constitutional commitment […]
To Avoid A 2016 Crash, The Major Powers Need To Pull In The Same Direction
It looks already as if 2016 will be a pivotal year for the world economy. RBS has advised investors to “sell everything except for high-quality bonds” as turmoil has returned to stock markets. The Dow Jones and S&Pindices have fallen by more than 6% since the start of the year, which is the worst ever yearly start. There is a […]
Caputalism: Will Capitalism Die?
The fact that western capitalism is in a severe crisis is now so commonplace that it’s become almost a cliché. In 2008 the global financial system stood on the brink of collapse and the rescue measures undertaken by panic-stricken governments will burden their economies for years to come. Economists and analysts of a neo-conservative, economically […]
Responding To Europe’s Political Polarization
In Europe, 2015 began with the far-left Syriza party’s election victory in Greece. It ended with another three elections that attested to increasing political polarization. In Portugal, the Socialist Party formed an alliance with its former archenemy, the Communists. In Poland, the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party won enough support to govern on its […]
Plenty More Boom And Bust In The UK
The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has had good mileage out of his claims that the UK has the fastest growing economy in Europe. His claim is correct, at least for the larger economies in Western Europe in 2014 and 2015, but pride may come before a fall. The Eurostat forecasts are that […]
To Be, Or Not To Be: Europe Under Siege
It has been a tough year for Europe. Greece, mass migration and terrorism are among the many factors which have unsettled Europe in a profound way. When the EU is seen to stutter and stumble from one crisis to another, what the EU stands for, and what the EU is all about, are questions that […]
How The European Far Right Uses The Dark Side Of Liberalism
The Front National secured the largest share of the vote in the first round of the French regional elections on 6 December and will aim to follow this up with success in the second round of voting on 13 December. Ben Margulies writes that while the Front National is often regarded simply as a far-right party, Marine […]
‘Welfare Tourism’ – An Unproven Case
Heated debates have been sparked in some of the EU’s key recipient countries on the alleged adverse effects of free movement of labour, including in particular “welfare tourism”. These began in the wake of the economic and financial crisis and accelerated before the restrictions on free movement of Romanian and Bulgarian citizens were lifted in […]
How Investing In A Zero Carbon Economy Could Help The EU Escape Secular Stagnation
Although Eurozone countries have returned to growth since the financial crisis, the pace of the recovery remains relatively slow and fragile, as underlined in recent economic forecasts by the IMF and OECD. Xavier Timbeau writes that in the current economic climate Europe should view the transition to a zero carbon economy as a key investment opportunity. He […]
German Wage Moderation And The Eurozone Crisis
The Eurozone (EZ) ‘consensus narrative’ argues the Crisis should not be thought of as a government debt crisis in its origin. Instead it regards large intra-EZ capital flows that emerged in the decade before the Crisis as the real culprit. This column argues that while the narrative is correct, it is also incomplete. With its […]
Brits Know Less About The EU Than Anyone Else
How does knowledge about the EU vary between citizens of EU Member States? Using data from Eurobarometer surveys, Simon Hix writes that respondents from the UK perform worse than citizens from any other state when asked factual questions about the EU. However, he notes that while there is a perception that providing more information about the EU […]
Defending Multiculturalism After The Paris Attacks
Visiting the UK, after eighteen months in Eastern Europe, I have been struck by the easy-going multiculturalism that is Britain. Whether in London, Bristol or Liverpool, the three cities on my itinerary, recent immigrants from the European Union – from France and Spain as well as Poland and Romania – mingle comfortably with Black, Asian […]
The Youth Guarantee One Year On: Lessons Learned
In 2013, youth unemployment rates in Europe reached the highest level ever recorded in the history of the EU and in the majority of the Member States (MS). More than 5.5 million young people aged 15-24 were unemployed (now more than 4.5m), with a huge sense of crisis and the fear that the youth unemployment […]
The Eurozone: Deflationary Boom Or Deflationary Bust?
Several years ago the idea that fiscal austerity could induce growth, “expansionary austerity”, had a brief flowering before withering under the heat of ridicule. Recently it resurfaced under a different name, “deflationary boom”. If expansionary austerity was oxymoronic, deflationary boom is simply moronic. To deconstruct and disinfect deflationary boom we need an operational definition of […]
Europe’s Last Straw?
The European Union is facing a truly terrifying array of crises. After prolonged euro and sovereign-debt crises polarized and radicalized the continent, creating a deep north-south rift, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees has pitted east (plus the United Kingdom) against west. Add to that numerous other divides and contradictions, and the EU’s […]
New Countdown For Greece: A Bank Bail-in Is Looming
The debt crisis may no longer be in the spotlight but the financial situation in Greece remains complex. Greek banks continue to survive at the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat only by Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) from the ECB and by still-enforced capital controls. After the August “agreement”, the Troika has promised the Greek government €25 […]
Europe’s Politics Of Dystopia
The recent victory of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party in Poland confirms a recent trend in Europe: the rise of illiberal state capitalism, led by populist right-wing authoritarians. Call it Putinomics in Russia, Órbanomics in Hungary, Erdoğanomics in Turkey, or a decade of Berlusconomics from which Italy is still recovering. Soon we will no doubt be seeing Kaczyńskinomics […]
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