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Weiterentwicklung der WWU
(2015)
In 2010 the European Semester was created to better coordinate fiscal and economic policies within Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union. The Semester aims to tackle economic imbalances by giving European Union (EU) member states country-specific recommendations (CSRs) regarding their public budgets as well as their wider economic and social policies with a view to enabling better policy coordination among Euro Area member states. In this article we develop a method to assess the way in which the CSRs have been addressing coordination and offer a systematic analysis of the way they have been formulated. We offer a way to code CSRs as well as one to analyse progress evaluations. Furthermore, we seek to use our results to address one of the reoccurring questions in the literature: whether the EU is pursuing a ‘one size fits all’ approach to economic policy making in the Euro Area? The findings indicate that different types of market economies and welfare states – different ‘varieties of capitalism’ – among the Euro Area members obtain different recommendations regarding different policy areas.
Exports vs. investment: How political discourse shapes popular support for external imbalances
(2021)
The economic imbalances that characterize the world economy have unequally distributed costs and benefits. That raises the question of how countries could run long-term external surpluses and deficits without significant opposition against the policies that generate them. We show that political discourse helps to secure public support for these policies and the resulting economic outcomes. First, a content analysis of 32 000 newspaper articles finds that the dominant interpretations of current account balances in Australia and Germany concur with very distinct perspectives: external surpluses are seen as evidence of competitiveness in Germany, while external deficits are interpreted as evidence of attractiveness for investments in Australia. Second, survey experiments in both countries suggest that exposure to these diverging interpretations has a causal effect on citizens’ support for their country’s economic strategy. Political discourse, thus, is crucial to provide the societal foundation of national growth strategies.
The European Union (EU) – and its Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in particular – is often criticized as a predominantly market-oriented project. We analyse to what extent such claims can be substantiated by focusing on one key aspect of the EU’s post-crisis framework for economic governance: the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) that the EU has been issuing annually since 2011. Based on an original dataset, we analyse more than 1300 CSRs, which show that the EU does not push uniformly for less state intervention. Rather, the CSRs tend to suggest fiscal restraint and less protection for labour market insiders, while simultaneously promoting measures that benefit vulnerable groups in society. During the second decade of EMU, CSRs have gradually become more permissive of higher public spending and more in favour of worker protection, while the share of recommendations advocating more social protection has stagnated at a high level.
This note assesses possible consequences of Brexit for the EU budget and the Common Agricultural Policy. It discusses the importance of the ‘Brexitbill’ and the loss of the British net contribution. Furthermore, it describes how the EU budget and spending on the Common Agricultural Policy can be adjusted to the new situation and estimates how the different options would affect EU Member States and their net balances.
Hohe Staatsschulden haben sich in der Eurozone zu einem veritablen Problem entwickelt. Dies betrifft nicht nur einzelne Staaten: Die europäische Schuldenkrise hat gezeigt, dass die Schwierigkeiten eines Eurolandes auf die gesamte Währungsunion übergreifen können. Welche Strategien zum Abbau von Staatsschulden werden diskutiert? Hilft eine stärkere Rolle der EU dabei, Schulden langfristig abzubauen oder sollte dies allein den Nationalstaaten überlassen werden?
Germany has been accused of transforming the EU into a “bad International Monetary Fund” by promoting conditionality and competitiveness. In a response to Hans Kundnani, Jörg Haas argues that insisting on rules and reforms is actually a constructive contribution to the debate about the EU’s future. The real issue with Germany is that it seems unwilling to comply with the laws it has shaped. This is part of a broader problem: the ever-growing influence of national governments in the EU makes it easy for powerful states to circumvent rules. We need an EU that ensures fair treatment for strong and weak members alike.