Palmer, J. (2014) “After The European Elections – How Will The EU Leadership Respond?“, Social Europe Journal, 27 Μαΐου.   Following the dramatic results of the elections to the European Parliament, the focus now shifts to whether the European Institutions and governments are capable of effective response. They will need to react radically and rapidly even if the election post-mortem EU leaders’ summit in Brussels produces little except hand wringing. …Read More

Booth, S. (2014) “The European Parliament is a failed experiment in pan-European democracy – national parliaments are the key to solving the democratic deficit“, LSE EUROPP, 21 May.   Strengthening the European Parliament has often been viewed as the best method of addressing the EU’s alleged ‘democratic deficit’. Stephen Booth writes that while this perspective has led to the Parliament’s powers being increased successively over recent decades, the effect of …Read More

James, H. (2014) “The Reconstruction of European Politics“, Project Syndicate, 15 May.   PRINCETON – Many Europeans tremble at the likely outcome of the upcoming European Parliament election: a strong showing for anti-European protest parties, which will almost certainly try to present themselves as the real winners. But hand-wringing will not resolve the European Union’s political crisis. And the crisis runs deep. Nowadays, anti-EU parties – Marine Le Pen’s National …Read More

Buruma, I. (2014) “The Trouble with Europe“, Project Syndicate, 15 May.   NEW YORK – According to the latest opinion polls, the big winners in the European Parliament election later this month will be right-wing populist parties that share a common loathing of the European Union, most notably the National Front in France, the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom’s Independence Party. Though the Euroskeptic right may …Read More

Eichengreen, B. (2014) “Europe’s Crisis Treadmill“, Project Syndicate, 12 May.   BERKELEY – This month marks the fourth anniversary of the May 2010 financial rescue of Greece. Previously, the idea that a eurozone member would seek emergency assistance from the International Monetary Fund, along with the European Commission and the European Central Bank, was unthinkable. The rescue thus marked Europe’s descent into full-blown crisis. Four years later, European officials are …Read More

Kowalsky, W. (2014) “Social Europe – In Europe Or In The Member States?”, Social Europe Journal, 12 May.   A solution to save Social Europe by going back to the Member States is the key message of a recent contribution by Paul de Beer. Reading the “Roadmap to a Social Europe”, which shows a maze on its cover, he gets the impression that not so much is clear in the …Read More

Onaran, O. & Stockhammer, E. (2014) “Raising wages should be a key component of economic growth strategies across the world“, LSE EUROPP, 07 May.     What impact do wages have on economic growth? Ozlem Onaran and Engelbert Stockhammer write that the size of wages as a percentage of state GDP has been falling across the world. They argue that this poses a problem because the negative impact on aggregate …Read More

Wren-Lewis, S. (2014) “Central bank advice on austerity“, Mainly Macro Blog, 05 May.   As I wrote recently, the economic debate on the impact on austerity is over bar the details. Fiscal contraction when interest rates are at their zero lower bound is likely to have a significant negative impact on output. Of course the popular debate goes on, because of absurd claims that recovering from austerity somehow validates it. …Read More