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

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

Ringe, G. & Gordon, N. J. (2015) “Bank resolution in Europe: The unfinished agenda of structural reform“, VoxEU Organisation, 28 January.   Bank resolution is a key pillar of the European Banking Union. This column argues that the current structure of large EU banks is not conducive to an effective and unbiased resolution procedure. The authors would require systemically important banks to reorganise into a ‘holding company’ structure, where the …Read More