Suchergebnisse

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record ; Over the last decade, the EU's fundamental values have been under threat at the national level, in particular among several Central and Eastern European states that joined the EU since 2004. During this time, the European People's Party (EPP) has been criticised for its unwillingness to vote for measures that would sanction the Hungarian Fidesz government, one of its members, in breach of key democratic principles since 2010. In this paper, we seek to understand how cohesive the EPP group has been on fundamental values related votes, how the position of EPP MEPs on these issues has evolved over time, and what explains intra-EPP disagreement on whether to accommodate rule of law offenders within the EU. To address these questions, we analyse the votes of EPP MEPs across 24 resolutions on the protection of EU fundamental values between 2011-2019. Our findings reveal below-average EPP cohesion on these votes, and a sharp increase in the tendency of EPP MEPs to support these resolutions over time. A number of factors explain the disagreements we find. While the EPP's desire to maintain Fidesz within its ranks is central, this explanation does not offer a comprehensive account of the group's accommodative behaviour. In particular, we find that ideological factors as well as the strategic interests of national governments at the EU level are central to understanding the positions of EPP MEPs, as well as the evolution of these positions over time. These results further our understanding of the nature of the obstacles to EU sanctions in rule of law abuse cases, and the role of partisanship in fuelling EU inaction especially.

This article examines how an integrated least‐cost implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in the United States would affect U.S. competitiveness and jobs. Drawing on previous work, the authors analyze integrated emission reduction strategies based on a $50/ton carbon tax (including border tax adjustments), a payroll tax cut, energy‐productivity–oriented market reforms, and international flexibility mechanisms. This policy portfolios is compared to conventional approaches that omit market and fiscal reforms.Input‐output data are used to estimate the impact on export prices of goods and services produced in the United States. Similar data are used to translate changes in GDP and energy production into employment impacts in energy and nonenergy sectors. The costs of providing transitional assistance for workers in the coal industry are compared to the GDP benefits of a profitable Kyoto strategy.The analysis shows that relative to purchasing international emission rights, productivity‐raising domestic market, institutional, and fiscal reforms offer much broader advantages for tradE‐exposed U.S. industries. Though allowance purchases alone increase export prices of U.S. manufactured goods and services, an integrated no‐regrets strategy reduces export prices for the large majority of U.S. industries and limits the impact of climate protection policies on the few most energy‐intensive basic materials industries to very small levels. Relative to the baseline, an integrated least‐cost implementation of the Kyoto target increases economy‐wide employment levels by several hundred thousand jobs in 2010.

This article identifies and corrects shortcomings in recent modeling studies on the economics of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The major assessments of the Kyoto Protocol—by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Clinton White House Council of Economic Advisers, the U.S. Department of Energy Interlaboratory Working Group, and the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum—are found to be seriously incomplete. Each study omits one or several of four major cost‐reducing policy options, resulting in cost estimates that are far too pessimistic.In the present study, these shortcomings are overcome through the integrated evaluation of all major cost‐cutting policy options within a coherent least‐cost framework. Three domestic policies—a national carbon cap and permit trading program, productivity‐enhancing market reforms and technology programs, and recycling of permit auction revenues into economically advantageous tax cuts—are combined with international emissions allowance trading.This analysis shows that an integrated least‐cost strategy for mitigating U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would produce an annual net output gain of roughly 0.4% of GDP in 2010 and about 0.9% of GDP in 2020. On a cumulative net present value basis, the United States would gain $250 billion by 2010 and $600 billion by 2020. International flexibility mechanisms (including emissions trading) are of only secondary significance in realizing these productivity, output, and welfare gains.