12 September 2024
Democratizing Draghi
The Draghi Report is now published, outlining the “existential challenge” of European competitiveness going forward. In view of the geopolitical developments of the last several years, the scale of the challenge is difficult to deny, and the need for collective action at the EU level is commensurately intense. Despite these “compelling” reasons and the hoped-for “strength to reform”, however, the Report is hesitant on one crucial point: the EU is apparently not strong enough to undertake Treaty change to fulfil the Report’s ambitious objectives. We believe this approach is legally dubious, politically unwise and, eventually, helps constructing a diffused governance architecture that will fail to tackle the very real challenges the continent indeed faces. Continue reading >>
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14 August 2023
How Cohesion Became the EU’s Vehicle for Economic Policy
In Brussels, something remarkable has happened in the last four years. Cohesion policy—which had heretofore been a policy backwater, aimed at addressing regional disparities—has emerged as the EU’s primary vehicle for reshaping economic and related fiscal policies in the Member States. As a result, any economic or fiscal policy measure that can be plausibly described as a structural reform (primarily an area of Member State competence, subject to Union coordination) can now be reframed as a measure of EU cohesion policy (a shared competence) that can be supported by EU funds to incentivize compliance. How did this happen? Continue reading >>
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11 December 2020
Rule-of-Law Conditionality and Resource Mobilization – the Foundations of a Genuinely ‘Constitutional’ EU?
The compromise negotiated by the German Presidency and agreed at the European Council’s meeting of 10-11 December has been roundly criticized for subordinating the hopes for a robust rule-of-law conditionality to the imperatives of "Next Generation Europe". From our perspective, the result may put the EU on the path toward a genuinely ‘constitutional’ transformation, one truly worthy of the name, rather than persisting as a system that is unable to mobilize resources in amounts commensurate with the challenges facing it. Continue reading >>
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05 April 2012
Target2 Imbalances and the “Demokratieprinzip”: Some Questions
By PETER LINDSETH One main effect of the Eurozone crisis […] Continue reading >>28 February 2012
Rescue Package for Fundamental Rights: Further Comments from PETER LINDSETH
It is a tribute to the thoughtfulness of the Heidelberg […] Continue reading >>
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18 February 2012
Rescue Package for Fundamental Rights: Comments by PETER LINDSETH
I’d like to thank Alexandra, Max, and Christoph for inviting […] Continue reading >>02 February 2012