debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
The European Council is meeting in Brussels and crucial decisions are expected regarding both crisis resolution and medium-term reform of the euro area. A grand bargain is likely to emerge in which the ECB will do more to backstop euro area governments and reduce their borrowing costs. In return member states, at least in the [...]
It seems that, at last, the penny, or rather the euro cent, has dropped. The ECB appears to be willing to intervene in a more substantial way to contain the crisis. It may have decided not to commit suicide after all. Member States, individually and collectively, are, in return, apparently prepared to contemplate the previously [...]
In yesterday’s column on the Merkel-Sarkozy economic governance proposals I briefly criticised the idea of writing a debt brake/balanced budget rule into the constitutions of euro area member states. It is a crucial point and the arguments deserve to be set out more clearly. At least four arguments need to be made: consistency with sectoral [...]
Recent proposals to reform European economic governance – discussed in more detail here and here – have been ambiguous. Simplifying heroically, they can be summed up as being largely positive in terms of process, but mixed or downright negative in terms of content. Clearly the European semester, the proposed surveillance of macroeconomic imbalances involved a [...]
One of the main purposes of the current drive for European economic governance is to transform wages into the main or even single instrument of adjustment under monetary union. Strangely, this idea appears to enjoy a high degree of consensus among both conservative and progressive economists. For the former, extreme wage flexibility including wage cuts [...]
During its first year, the G20 leaders forum elicited considerable praise as a new institution of global economic governance. From the first Washington G20 leaders summit in November 2008 through to the third Pittsburgh summit in September 2009, many observers argued that it helped policy-makers manage the global financial crisis in a much more cooperative [...]
2010 has been an annus horriblis for the euro area. In the spring, just when it appeared that it was emerging from the worst of the financial and economic crisis, panic returned in the form of a sovereign debt crisis. Despite frantic activity by European policymakers – the involvement of the IMF on European soil [...]
I have developed an earlier SEJ column on economic governance into a 12-page pamphlet which you can find on the website of European Alternatives (here).
French strikes and demonstrations are petering out in the face of government intransigence. Sarkozy has won the short-term political battle over the pensions reform, which he managed to push through Parliament in spite of determined and widespread opposition, but he has lost the battle of ideas. Public opinion is still convinced of the deep unfairness [...]
Previous posts have criticised economic governance reforms in the EU for, among other things, paying too little attention to the problem of tax competition within the EU and the leakage of tax revenue to non-EU states. Clear evidence of the validity of this concern comes today with reports that both the UK and Germany are [...]
In the midst of the crisis, when banks were saved with public money and fiscal policies were expansive, many of us thought the pendulum was swinging. Market fundamentalism had failed and the state was back. Monetarists had become neo-Keynesians and re-regulation was on the agenda. A paradigm change was in the making. Or so it [...]
The European Commission has presented draft legislation that, if adopted by the European Parliament and the European Council, would mark the biggest reform of economic governance in Europe since the start of monetary union. Europe urgently needs to reform its system of economic governance. But it does not need these proposed changes. While marking progress [...]
All Content