debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
The various economic and budgetary policy governance instruments at the European level have achieved a regulatory density that a few years ago seemed barely imaginable. At the same time, the question also arises about the democratic legitimation of the new coordination mechanisms in which parliaments have only participated sporadically to date. Every parliamentary level thus [...]
In February, after months of negotiations, the European Council agreed to a new multiannual budget for the EU for 2014 to 2020. Ahead of the European Parliament’s vote on the budget, Giacomo Benedetto takes an in-depth look at how spending has changed across policy areas, finding that the largest cuts have been made to policies aimed at [...]
Something fundamental seems to have changed in Europe in recent days. After the European Union introduced a cap on bonuses, the Swiss people voted in favour of an even harder clampdown on telephone number extra payments. Taken together with a move by many European countries towards a financial transaction tax, it for the first time [...]
The scandal of horsemeat being declared as beef and smuggled across borders and then into processed food is sweeping Europe. According to the Financial Times a few days ago, the process involved “horse meat from a Romanian abattoir being sold to a French supplier by way of a Cypriot trader, and then passed on to [...]
Could you have imagined it? This is the kind of Europe we now have built for our children. We have seen the grotesquely overgrown financial sector destroy our economy, caused millions of Europeans to lose their jobs, handed our children billions of euro in bad debts, and yet its leaders evade sanction and even walk [...]
The European Union is planning a major overhaul of its institutional structure and the way it is supposed to function in the future. The envisaged reform includes the further strengthening of the EU’s diplomatic service, the creation of a pan-European foreign ministry and even plans to create a European army. While these foreign policy proposals [...]
I am currently giving a lot of talks in Europe and the US about the Eurozone crisis, how to understand it and what kind of reforms are needed to set the currency area onto a more sustainable course. Some of these thoughts are summarised in an article recently published on this website. There is, however, [...]
Beyond the banking and fiscal union – what kind of political and social union is envisaged? Will the crisis shape the future architecture of Europe and who will be the main actors? Listening to the debate on the future of Europe, one could get the impression that the most important challenge is to save the [...]
Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recently argued forcefully that the European Parliament suffered from an ineradicable ‘democratic deficit’ and should be abolished, to be replaced by an assembly of national parliaments. Simon Hix argues that the evidence shows that the European Parliament successfully handles a massive policy agenda, and in most countries engages strongly with European [...]
We still have the choice whether we want to waste the current European crisis – or to use it to change the EU. While last week’s European Council was expected to agree on the finer details of the fiscal compact and its implementation we should remember that the new treaty is a necessary – but not a [...]
The financial crisis is threatening to destroy half a century of European integration. By nature, it is blind, brutal, literally inhumane. But in reality, it is primarily a test of the political will of the people in Europe and of those that they chose to govern them. In their great irresponsibility, the speculators have hit [...]
The financial crisis risks destroying half a century of European integration. It is primarily a political and not an economic crisis and only a different political solution can solve it. The problem is the intergovernmental system of governance: Member states’ governments take decisions jointly, but each government pursues its own partial interests. Hence, political integration [...]
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