Mathias Hoffmann, Egor Maslov, Bent Sørensen, Iryna Stewen, (2019), “Banking integration in the EMU: Let’s get real!”, VoxEU, 10 January We argue that the situation in the euro area today is reminiscent of banking in the US pre-1980, where there was a common interbank market but little deep interstate banking integration due to restrictive banking laws. The removal of barriers to entry for out-of-state banks considerably improved access to finance, …Read More

Barry Eichengreen, (2019), “The euro at 20: An enduring success but a fundamental failure”, The Conversation, 4 January So the euro will stumble forward. No one will be happy with its operation. Equally, no one will leave. Progress will be minimal, since there is no appetite for the political union needed to support fundamental reforms. As a result, the euro remains vulnerable to another crisis. The next crisis could heighten the perceived …Read More

McDonnell, Duncan, and Annika Werner. “Differently Eurosceptic: radical right populist parties and their supporters.” Journal of European Public Policy (2018): 1-18., 23 December Since the 2008 crisis, radical right populist (RRP) party positions on European integration have hardened and/or increased in salience. But do their supporters align with them on this? And what role does Euroscepticism play in driving support for these parties? Using data from the ‘euandi’ voting advice …Read More

Bill Emmott, (2019), “Hard Brexit Truths”, Project Syndicate, 3 January An honest Brexiteer should therefore admit that leaving the EU on their terms may well lead to the dissolution of the UK. Irish reunification would almost certainly make another independence referendum in Scotland irresistible, though it is impossible to know which way it would go. Last June, when asked about business leaders’ fears over Brexit, Johnson infamously declared, “Fuck business.” If he …Read More

David Comerford, Sevi Rodriguez Mora, (2019), “The gains from economic integration: The EU has still a long way to go”, VoxEU.org, 4 January The EU aims to create an integrated economic community where national borders do not impede trade in any way. Recently, Brexit and the populist governments in Italy, Poland and Hungary have challenged this. Brexit and the rise of populism reflect a wave of anti-globalisation. These challengers are …Read More

Jurgen Stark, (2018), “The Eurozone’s Solidarity Fallacy”, Project Syndicate, 17 December In the name of “solidarity,” eurozone reformers have continued to introduce new instruments for sharing risk across member states in the event of another crisis. But what the monetary union needs is not joint liability – and the unacceptable degree of moral hazard that would come with it – but rather risk reduction. Since 2010, many measures have been adopted …Read More

Bonikowski, B., Halikiopoulou, D., Kaufmann, E., & Rooduijn, M. (2018). Populism and nationalism in a comparative perspective: a scholarly exchange. Nations and Nationalism. The purpose of the Exchange feature is to publish discussions that engage, advance and initiate new debates in the study of nations and nationalism. This Exchange article is on the subject of ‘Populism and Nationalism’. Each contributor addresses the following four questions on the subject: (1) What …Read More

Marco Buti, Nicolas Carnot, (2018), “The case for a central fiscal capacity in EMU”, VoxEU.org, 7 December Following the last crisis important governance steps have been taken to bolster the resilience of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The changes include putting in motion a banking union, establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and strengthening the surveillance framework. However, there is broad acceptance that current set up remains prone to shocks …Read More

Hanno Degner and Dirk Leuffen, (2018), “Franco-German cooperation and the rescuing of the Eurozone”, European Union Politics, 6 December 2018 This article analyzes the effect of Franco-German cooperation on Economic and Monetary Union reforms, negotiated between 2010 and 2015. We identify three causal mechanisms theorizing how Franco-German cooperation affected the outcomes of EMU negotiations, namely through (a) the elimination of issues from the negotiation agenda; (b) the identification of compromise solutions or …Read More

Diego Garzia, (2018), “The Italian election of 2018 and the first populist government of Western Europe”, West European Politics, Published online, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2018.1535381, 6 December The 2013 election had heralded an unprecedented tripolar era for Italian politics, with the two traditional forces of the Second Italian Republic (Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right and variously assorted centre-left alliances) eventually matched, in terms of size, by the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) – to date, the most successful rookie of Italian politics …Read More