Solidarity and Competition in the European Union During the Financial and Debt Crisis

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Eger
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Nicoletta Layher ◽  
Eyden Samunderu

This paper conducts an empirical study on the inclusion of uniform European Collective Action Clauses (CACs) in sovereign bond contracts issued from member states of the European Union, introduced as a regulatory result of the European sovereign debt crisis. The study focuses on the reaction of sovereign bond yields from European Union member states with the inclusion of the new regulation in the European Union. A two-stage least squares regression analysis is adopted in order to determine the extent of impact effects of CACs on member states sovereign bond yields. Evidence is found that CACs in the European Union are priced on financial markets and that sovereign bond yields do respond to the inclusion of uniform CACs in the European Union.


Author(s):  
Andreas Fisahn

The crisis of the European Union cannot be solved by austerity programs. Therefore a closer look at the reasons of the crisis seems to be reasonable, which includes a description of the development of the EU from 1951 to present times. The Union started as a tariff union and evolved through different steps to an order of competitive states. The main fields of competition between the states are taxes and social costs, which leads to tax dumping and a race to the bottom in social benefits. Starting in 1990 the EU achieved the status of an open financial market, with the duty of deregulation of capital movements being stipulated in Treaties. In the end the problem is not a debt crisis but a crisis of the structure of the European Union. The solution – which especially the German government prefers – may be the first step on the way to an authoritarian state.


2019 ◽  
pp. 89-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quinn Slobodian ◽  
Dieter Plehwe

Since the advent of the European debt crisis in 2009, it has become common to hear descriptions of the European Union as a neoliberal machine hardwired to enforce austerity and to block projects of redistribution or solidarity. Yet by adopting an explanatory framework associating neoliberalism with supranational organizations like the EU, NAFTA, and the WTO against the so-called populism of its right-wing opponents, many observers have painted themselves into a corner. The problems with a straightforward compound of “neoliberal Europe” became starkly evident with the success of the “leave” vote in the Brexit referendum in 2016. If the EU was neoliberal, were those who called to abandon it the opponents of neoliberalism? If the EU is indeed the “neoliberalism express,” then to disembark was by definition a gesture of refusal against neoliberalism. To make sense of the resurgent phenomenon of the far right in European politics, then, our chapter tracks such continuities over time and avoids misleading dichotomies that pit neoliberal globalism—and neoliberal Europeanism—against an atavistic national populism. The closed-borders libertarianism of nationalist neoliberals like the German AfD is not a rejection of globalism but is a variety of it.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicos Souliotis ◽  
Georgia Alexandri

This article traces the transfer of competitiveness and cohesion policies from the European Union (EU) institutions to the national and subnational authorities in Greece, both before and after the sovereign debt crisis. We argue that prior to the crisis, the flexibilities of the EU governance system allowed the Greek central government to use the competitiveness and cohesion agenda, as well as the associated funds, to build a domestic socio-political consensus focused on the idea of ‘convergence’ with Europe. The crisis-induced bailout programme deepened neoliberal policies and reorganised vertical and horizontal power relations: policy-making powers have been upscaled towards the supranational level, while the national authorities have been socially disembedded.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merike Kukk ◽  
Karsten Staehr

AbstractSeveral reforms aiming to strengthen budgetary discipline in the European Union have been implemented since the outbreak of the European debt crisis. Arguably the most important one is the Fiscal Compact, which stipulates that each signatory country must enshrine in domestic legislation an upper limit on the structural budget deficit, that is, the deficit after cyclical and other temporary factors have been excluded. This paper analyses the contents of the Fiscal Compact and discusses challenges for its implementation and efficacy. The conclusion is that the Fiscal Compact may be challenging to implement and enforce because the rules are very complex and require complicated calculations that are subject to very large forecasting uncertainty. The Fiscal Compact could, however, lead to a stronger national commitment to fiscal prudence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 362
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Gehringer ◽  
Jörg König

This paper studies the process of business cycle synchronization in the European Union and the euro area. As our baseline methodology we adopt rolling window correlation coefficients of various economic indicators, observed since 2000. Among the indicators, we distinguish between real economic indicators, like the real GDP growth and unemployment, and nominal indicators, like inflation and government budget. Given the direct implication of this kind of analysis for the common monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB), special attention is paid to the pattern of business cycle synchronization in the core and peripheral members of the euro area. Our analysis of quarterly data covering the first two decades of the euro area shows that there was a certain synchronization tendency in the first years of the common currency. However, the European debt crisis halted the economic integration within the European Union and—even more so—within the euro area. Since the ECB can to a large extent intervene only with “one-size-fits-all” monetary policy instruments, this renders increasingly cumbersome the conduct of stabilisation policies within the euro area.


Author(s):  
Veronika Dvořáková

The increasing globalization and integration of markets are one of the causes of tax competition. Even though tax competition may be beneficial for some countries, on the other hand for others states it may mean an erosion of their public budgets. The Member States are therefore forced to compete for a capital by a reducing of the tax burden (especially a cutting of the corporate effective tax rates) to don’t lose their tax bases. At present time of the debt crisis, when most of the Member States look for a solution to a balance of their deficit budgets, there a question arises whether a tendency towards a cutting of corporate effective tax rates does not lead to a race to the bottom and the erosion of their public budgets. In this context, the aim of this paper is to answer whether the race to the bottom is real in the European Union. This paper empirically evaluates the level of the race to the bottom in the European Union and using panel analysis it verifies on a sample of 27 Member States over the period 1998 to 2010 whether the tendencies of the race to the bottom are real. According to the panel analysis this paper concludes that the tendencies of the race to the bottom are particularly evident in the new Member States, i.e. in the EU-12 countries, while for the old Member States, i.e. for the EU-15 countries, the race to the bottom cannot be statistically confirmed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-216
Author(s):  
Matteo De Poli ◽  
Pierre de Gioia Carabellese

With the birth of the Single Supervisory Mechanism came the emergence of a new regime of supervision of the banking industry in the Eurozone. The allocation of enforcement powers between the European Central Bank and the National Competent Authorities is the corollary of the unified supervision, which reverberates from the Single Supervisory Mechanism, and it is ultimately the main theme of this contribution. More specifically, the architecture of the enforcement, principally shaped by the SSM and its principles and rules, is assessed and analysed in this paper against the background of the general theory of enforcement, as developed in the legal literature. The enforcement discourse in the European Union banking sector is debated alongside its interaction with the related aspects of the regulation and supervision and the way these three notions have been integrated and codified in the European Union after the 2011 sovereign debt crisis.


2019 ◽  
Vol 682 (1) ◽  
pp. 222-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Diamantopoulou ◽  
Kyriakos Pierrakakis

The European debt crisis has had significant political and economic implications throughout the Eurozone, particularly for its peripheral South. These were especially obvious for Greece, which had to face elevated levels of austerity and sign three different bailout programs within eight years to remain economically solvent and retain its position in the context of European institutions. Here, we track how the perception of the work values of Greeks by other member states—such as Germany, Slovakia or Finland—along with ensuing public debates adversely affected the bailout program design and implementation in Greece, and had significant political consequences throughout the Eurozone.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document