Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article exploits the sequences of the European Union (EU) enlargements to investigate their impact on the incoming countries' agricultural policy. We use a quasi‐experimental approach—the Synthetic Control method—to identify changes in the level of agricultural protection of the new members, in comparison with a counterfactual scenario. Our results suggest that earlier 1973 and 1985 EU enlargements show a significant increase in the rate of assistance to agriculture of incoming countries. The opposite holds, however, for the 1995 and 2004 enlargements, where the incomers significantly reduced their level of assistance to agriculture, in comparison with a counterfactual scenario.

From a difficult accession process to the full integration into the Schengen area and the Eurozone, ten years into its EU membership Croatia has been a "good EU pupil" and an example for EU candidates to follow. However, challenges remain in reaching European standards, particularly regarding administrative reforms and standards of living.

This contribution to the panel on the future to EMU discusses the tensions that arise from the fact that banks are, on the one hand, an essential element of the monetary transmission mechanism and, on the other hand, an integral part of local, regional or national polities. Banking union can eliminate or at least reduce some of the procrastination that has allowed maintained bank weaknesses to persist and harmed the transmission of monetary policy but, whereas the SSM has been fairly successful, resolution is still not working properly and needs further reforms. At the same time, banking union suffers from the problem that interventions from Brussels or Frankfurt are seen as infringements of national sovereignty that lack political legitimacy. The conflict between supranational and national interests is ultimately irresolvable but, if EMU is to survive, measures must be taken to limit its impact.

This article, based on studies of nationalism, discusses identity formation in the European Union and compares it to the nation-state. The starting point is that for all its economic benefits and political innovation, the EU is failing to provide people with the sense of belonging and extract political loyalty. By exploring what function identity serves -- for the nation-state in the past and for the EU in the present -- it is argued that while there are limits to the EU's ability to project a meaningful European identity, there are also limits to the nation-state's ability to meet the political challenges of contemporary societies. One way, and possibly the only way out of this "battle for identity" is to acknowledge the real impact of the EU on the nation-state and open an honest debate by both European and national elites about which challenges of our time can be met by the EU and which are better kept at the national level. A better understanding of how people's national aspirations, concerns and political demands are mediated between different levels of governance may lead to adapting their identities accordingly -- loyalty and passion for the EU may follow too. Adapted from the source document.

The European Commission presented a strategy that would allow EU companies to compute their EU tax base under a single set of tax rules at the EU level and use a common formula to distribute this tax base across the individual Member States. "Company Tax Reform and Formulary Apportionment in the European Union" provides broad guidance for the EU in shaping a system of consolidated base taxation with formulary apportionment. It evaluates how the U.S. states and Canadian provinces have resolved the economic, political, and technical aspects of the formulary apportionment method. The book discuss

In this paper we seek to explain variations in levels of deprivation between EU countries. The starting-point of our analysis is the finding that the relationship between income and life-style deprivation varies across countries. Given our understanding of the manner in which the income-deprivation mismatch may arise from the limitations of current income as a measure of command over resources, the pattern of variation seems to be consistent with our expectations of the variable degree to which welfare-state regimes achieve decommodification and smooth income flows. This line of reasoning suggests that cross-national differences in deprivation might, in significant part, be due not only to variation in household and individual characteristics that are associated with disadvantage but also to the differential impact of such variables across countries and indeed welfare regimes. To test this hypothesis, we have taken advantage of the ECHP (European Community Household Panel) comparative data set in order to pursue a strategy of substituting variable names for country/welfare regime names. We operated with two broad categories of variables, tapping, respectively, needs and resources. Although both sets of factors contribute independently to our ability to predict deprivation, it is the resource factors that are crucial in reducing country effects. The extent of cross-national heterogeneity depends on specifying the social class and situation in relation to long-term unemployment of the household reference person. The impact of the structural socio-economic variables that we label 'resource factors' varies across countries in a manner that is broadly consistent with welfare regime theory and is the key factor in explaining cross-country differences in deprivation. As a consequence, European homogeneity is a great deal more evident among the advantaged than the disadvantaged.

The article stresses the ideological and political dominance of productive capital fractions within the power bloc of the European Union (EU), by exemplifying their strategic influence in transnational struggles over the management of the current crises in Europe. Theoretically, it is shown, that the leadership of a fraction within the ruling class does neither result from its economic dominance in accumulation nor its hegemony in society alone, but rather depends on concrete struggles over power and meaning within the power bloc itself. In this regard, the economic and financial crisis management approach of the EU reveals that especially transnational actors from the European industry are able to use the crisis between 2008 and 2013 to further lock-in their global competitiveness strateg y into EU political structures. While the lobby groups of finance capital, although still economically important, are rather losing political ground and get lost in technocratic disputes among each, productive capital associations are holding the ruling class in Brussels together by using their privileged access to EU institutions and subordinating the interests of others capital fractions under the dominant discourse of a global and export-oriented growth regime of the EU.

The United States and the European Union (EU) share an extensive, dynamic, and for many a mutually beneficial political and economic partnership. A growing element of that relationship is the role that the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament (EP) have begun to play, including in areas ranging from foreign and economic policy to regulatory reform. Consequently, some officials and experts on both sides of the Atlantic have asked whether it would be beneficial for Congress and the EP to strengthen institutional ties further and to explore the possibility of co-ordinating efforts to develop more complementary policies in some areas. This book discusses the transatlantic legislative co-operation between the United States Congress and the European Parliament