Five years after the first tremors in Europe's banking system, what makes the crisis unique is the absence of a democratically accountable decision-making framework; there is an 'executive deficit' that compounds Europe's democratic deficit. The author argues that the only way to resolve the crisis successfully is a sustained effort to achieve a 'fourfold union' agenda: banking union, fiscal union, competitiveness union and political union. Progress must be made in parallel on each of the four components. In particular, successful progress towards banking union requires a combination of short term action, including the establishment of a temporary resolution authority to identify undercapitalised banks and to restructure them, and longer-term measures, including the creation of permanent authorities for supervision, resolution and deposit insurance.
The unionisation of professional, scientific and technical employees has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Much of the debate has concerned the issue of whether unionism and professionalism are compatible. During the 1970s, established white‐collar unions and a new breed of "professionals‐only" unions sought to recruit in this area on the assumption that they were. However, the early 1980s saw a decline in the rate of recruitment and a fall in the membership of some "professionals‐only" unions. Subsequently, a period of consolidation and reorganisation has taken place, with the established white‐collar unions leading the way in devising new organisational arrangements. These entailed absorbing some of the "professionals‐only" unions into their ranks. How far, though, is trade union membership regarded as compatible with professional status by individual engineers?
En el presente artículo se realiza un breve estudio de la Inspección de Educación en el marco de la Unión Europea. No cabe duda alguna sobre el hecho de que, en este espacio, conviven una pluralidad de sistemas y de políticas educativas, que explican, asimismo, la diversidad de modelos de Inspección. Así pues, nos encontramos con países en los que la Inspección es desarrollada por cuerpos funcionariales integrados en la propia Administración; y otros en los que la supervisión o inspección es compartida o realizada por agentes externos. A su vez, incluso en aquellos modelos o países en los que existe una Inspección de Educación, la diversidad de estructuras organizativas también se hace patente: modelos centralizados, aunque con estructuras territoriales diseminadas, como Francia e Italia; y modelos descentralizados, como el alemán o el británico, en los que se concede autonomía a entes territoriales con potestad en el ámbito educativo. Diversidad pues, con un elemento común, ya que la supervisión tiene un gran valor para la mejora de la calidad educativa. This article briefly studies the Education Inspection in the framework of the European Union. There is no doubt about the fact that, in this space, there is a plurality of systems and educational policies, which also explain the diversity of Ins-pectorate models. Thus, we may find countries where the Inspectorate is carried out by the civil servant corps integrated in the Administration itself; and others, in which su-pervision or inspection is shared or performed by external agents. In turn, even in those models or countries where there is an Education Inspectorate, the diversity of organiza-tional structures is also evident: centralized models, although with scattered territorial structures, such as France and Italy; and decentralized models, such as the German or the British, in which autonomy is granted to local entities with authority in the field of education. Diversity, then, with a common element, since supervision is of great value for the improvement of the quality of education.
