Discipline, not punish

After the economic and financial crisis, the Commission was given strong powers to intervene in the national budgets of eurozone members. In this first of two chapters on budgetary surveillance, I explain how partisan politics came to neutralize the Commission, which never applied the sanctions written in the treaties. With their “smart reading of the rules,” Juncker and Moscovici succeeded in imposing a politically contextualized reinterpretation of the Stability and Growth Pact, without however challenging the institutions. Their political work, however, would have been impossible without the complicity of conservative and social-democrat actors in the Council and in the Commission.

A Comprehensive Analysis of Public and Private Funding for Photovoltaics Research and Development in the European Union, Norway, and Turkey

This study aimed to examine the financing of photovoltaics research and development by analyzing funding from public (European Union and national budgets) and private sources (enterprises), Strategic Energy Technology Plan participating countries being the main focus (European Union Member States plus Norway and Turkey). In the coming years, photovoltaics are expected to heavily contribute towards the achievement of audacious climate and energy objectives. Continuous monitoring of the effects is of great importance to assess a course of action taken at such a large scale. It will be revealed that the distribution of funding provided by national budgets highly concentrates on a few Member States, which is part of a general trend in Research and Development within Europe. Approximately 85% of the current European investment provided by the EU budget is administered in the framework of the Horizon 2020 (2014–2020) program; private investment behaves differently. The European photovoltaics manufacturing market has been obliterated by low-budget imported goods. A major characteristic is that the remaining companies are almost exclusively privately held. Gathering data has consequently been a challenge, as opposed to the readily available public datasets.

The State Budget in the Digital Age: Opportunities and Threats

The article is devoted to the changes in national budgets under the influence of digitization. The aim of the study is to determine the opportunities and threats posed by the development of the digital economy in the field of formation and implementation of national budgets, and to outline possible ways to effectively balance the potential benefits against the risks and limitations. This article argues that digitalization reshapes public finance. The main benefits of digital transformations such as increase of the tax base, optimization and transparency of government revenues and spending, fiscal savings, better tax administration, delivery of public services, administration of social programs, cutting of bureaucratic inefficiencies are considered. The most important risks and challenges, including privacy concerns, new avenues for fraud and evasion and institutional constraints are outlined. The article describes what governments should do to make benefits outweigh the risks. Taking full advantage of the opportunities of digitalization can require government to develop new skills. The article also stresses that each country needs to chart its own path to national budget digitalization that must depend on its own circumstances. It is concluded that developing countries may be able to leapfrog directly to the latest digital technologies and more sophisticated policies bypassing the intermediate stages.

THE PROGRESSIVE RIFT OF THE EUROZONE: RISKS AND REMEDIES

Due to rigid rules, incomplete institutions and concentration on short-run fiscal discipline, economic and institutional diversity and insufficient reforms caused the progressive segmentation of the Eurozone. Insufficient integration process is due to lack of trust among member countries and the need to keep a hard budget constraint of national budgets to avoid uncontrolled inflationary pressure and moral hazard. Although understandable in the short run, this situation is causing serious economic and social costs and damages to the development of vulnerable countries. The paper enquires possible solutions to this dangerous stalemate, that could also provide useful suggestions for other countries.