Campos, F. N. & Coricelli, F. (2015) “Why did Britain join the EU? A new insight from economic history“, VoxEU Organisation, 03 February. Britain eschewed EU membership in the late 1950s but changed its mind in the early 1960s, only to be rebuffed by Charles de Gaulle. Membership came only in the early 1970s. This column argues that, among others, Britain joined the EU as a way to avoid …Read More
Dehousse, R. & Rozenberg, O. (2015) “There has been a substantial drop in EU legislative output since 2010“, LSE EUROPP, 03 February. A common argument made against the European Union by Eurosceptic politicians is that the EU creates a burden on citizens and businesses by producing too much legislation. But how much legislation does the EU actually produce? Renaud Dehousse and Olivier Rozenberg present data on both the raw …Read More
Krugman, P. (2015) “Who’s Unreasonable Now?“, The New York Times, 02 February. OK, so as I understand the latest from the new Greek government, Yanis Varoufakis is saying that he and his colleagues don’t care what happens to the headline value of the debt — if you want to claim that there has been no write-off, OK. What they want instead is substantive but not outrageous relief from the …Read More
Stearns, J. & Deen, M. (2015) “Greece Asks ECB to Keep Banks Afloat, Tsipras Pitches Deal“, Bloomberg Business, 01 February. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras began the hunt for allies against German demands for austerity as his week-old government appealed to the European Central Bank not to shut off the money tap. Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said his country won’t take any more aid under its existing bailout agreement …Read More
Mitchell, B. (2015) “Germany has a convenient but flawed collective memory“, Bill Mitchell Blog, 02 February. There is a lot of discussion at present about the historical inconsistency of the German position with regard any debt relief to the Greek government. Angela Merkel has reiterated over the weekend that there would be no further debt relief. Why she is now a spokesperson for the Troika that does not include …Read More
Moring, A. (2015) “Lessons from the crisis – We Europeans face a historic choice: either we further develop Europe as a single political entity, or we recede from the limelight, The European Magazine, 30 January. In her latest op-ed, The European columnist Juliane Mendelsohn rails against the “dysfunctional euro” and the flawed European project that “the market inevitably pushed us into.” She links her arguments to the call for …Read More
Merler, S. (2015) “Who’s (still) exposed to Greece? – a first trace of normalisation and resume in confidence since 2013, which the present political turmoil risks to revert“, Bruegel Institute, 29 January. Since the start of the crisis, the structure of Greek debt has changed considerably (almost 80 percent of government financial liabilities are now accounted for by loans, against slightly less than 20 percent back in 2008). At the same …Read More
Angier, T. (2015) “European social democracy is in danger of terminal decline unless it can reengage with its core values“, LSE EUROPP, 30 January. With the rise of parties on the far-right and radical left of European party systems, social democratic parties now face a challenge to retain their support base in several European countries. Tom Angier writes that the primary problem facing social democrats is that they have …Read More
Feldman, N. (2015) “Greece Turns Left, Europe Goes Right“, BloombergView, 30 January. Why has Greece chosen a far-left government at a time when discontented and frustrated voters elsewhere in Europe have turned to the far right? In northern Europe, the frustrated voters’ parties of choice are right wing and anti-immigrant. So how come frustrated Greeks made a sharp turn to the left, electing the near-communist Syriza party to lead …Read More
Rooduijn, M. (2015) “Populist arguments have become more pervasive in Western European countries“, LSE EUROPP, 29 January. To what extent has populism become a feature of public debates in European countries? Matthijs Rooduijn employs content analysis to assess the frequency of populist statements in newspaper articles in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. He concludes that populism is more widespread in these countries than previously assumed, with …Read More
