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Although European integration has become an increasingly salient and controversial topic in domestic politics, the consequences of this politicisation of the European Union for the integration process have not received adequate scholarly attention. To fill this lacuna, this article devises five hypotheses on the effects of politicisation for the integration process, which are subsequently tested against the evidence of the Euro and Schengen crises. Both crises had comparable origins, but the Euro crisis caused substantial deepening of integration, while the Schengen crisis has not engendered any meaningful reforming steps. The empirical analysis finds that politicisation assumed different forms across the two crises, which is shown to be one causal factor that explains the variation in crises outcomes. The article thereby contributes to a multifaceted understanding of the politicisation of international institutions, EU integration theory and the dynamics of the Euro and Refugee crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The European Central Bank (ECB) is one of the most independent central banks in the world, but this independence is also highly constrained: the Maastricht Treaty established a primary mandate to pursue price stability and prohibited it from engaging in monetary financing. Using an historical institutional framework, this article analyses the ECB's unconventional monetary policy during the Euro crisis. The Maastricht Treaty's constraints forced the ECB to act incrementally during the crisis and rely primarily on the layering of institutional changes. Nevertheless, the self-reinforcing effect identified by historical institutionalism meant that these gradual changes had important consequences over time. The unconventional monetary policies are contrasted with the more drastic institutional change instigated by the Member States, the ECB's designation as the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). The self-reinforcing effects and path dependence set by the ECB's high degree of independence in the Maastricht Treaty, however, also constrained the EU in ensuring the accountability of the ECB, as the accountability structure is another instance of layering despite the very different nature and consequences of financial policy supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the causality between refinancing operations of the ECB and the stability of the European banking sector during the recent crisis. We hypothesize that causality may run both ways. The ECB’s role in safeguarding the stability of the financial system suggests that refinancing operations may contribute to greater stability. Alternatively, instability in the banking sector may stimulate banks to tap liquidity at the ECB. Using country-level data on refinancing operations and bank CDS rates, we find a positive relationship between bank instability and liquidity uptake. High bank CDS rates are significantly related to the decision to tap liquidity, yet the liquidity uptake itself does little to bring these rates down quickly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ankara Review of European Studies (ARES) / Ankara Avrupa Çalışmaları Dergisi (AAÇD) is the property of Ankara University European Union Research Centre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The object of the analysis presented in the article is the crisis that has been taking place in the euro area member states. The author specifies the factors that have enabled particular countries to overcome the crisis and concludes that the country which has managed to cope with the crisis to the largest extent is Ireland. However, maintenance of the changes introduced in response to the crisis and continuance of reforms of the euro area are necessary to ascertain a further success of the actions taken so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the reaction of the Euro's value against major currencies to sovereign rating announcements from Moody's, S&P and Fitch CRAs during the Eurozone debt crisis in 2010–2012 based on event study methodology combined with GARCH models. We also analyze how the yields of French, Italian, German and Spanish government long-term bonds were affected by CRA announcements. Our results reveal that CRA downgrades, watchlist and outlook announcements had no impact on the value of the Euro currency but increased exchange rate volatility. At the same time, downgrades as well as negative outlook announcements increased the yields of French, Italian, and Spanish bonds and even affected the German bond's yields. This shows that the monetary union has led to a breakdown of the consequences of the rating shocks between currency value and sovereign bond yields. The reason is that part of the rating shock is absorbed by an internal repricing of sovereign bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With his concept of governmentality, Michel Foucault delivered one of the most innovative approaches to analyze neoliberalism, which is predominant on the international stage since "Thatcherism" (1979-90) and "Reagonomics" (1981-88). Even an own discipline developed around this concept (governmentality studies), bringing fruitful theoretical merits. However, there is a huge gap. Benchmark for most researches in the governmentality studies is always the geographical and jurisdictional confined state. Thus, inter-, trans-, and supranational organizations such as the UN, IMF, EU, World Bank or INGOs are completely neglected. I try to fill that gap and to deliver starting points for further analysis of (neoliberal) governmentality on a supranational level by asking: How do neoliberal socio-economic programs of the IMF and European Commission (EC) for Greece work in a Foucauldian perspective? While conducting a theoretical discussion of the governing principles of Troika programs for Greece and using the concept of governmentality, I find that social security is reconcilable with neoliberalism, but an organization of it on a public basis is not. Public welfare is not excluded in neoliberalism; the neoliberal governmentality even insists on private, personal provision, which is based on individual responsibility of a rational acting subject. The objective is to transform social security to a private good. And the same principles are used by the Troika through their adjustment programs during the Greek crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comparative analysis of the news coverage on the euro crisis in Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium) and the Netherlands. The aim of the research was to identify how newspapers in the Low Countries have portrayed the roots of the crisis, the main victims, and those held responsible to solve the crisis, and ways to do so. This study also analyzed the differences across geographical contexts and types of newspapers. Furthermore, it examined how the coverage changed as the crisis continued. Research findings include that Flemish newspapers more often reported about the causes of the crisis, whereas the Dutch newspapers published more articles discussing the responses to it. Furthermore, financial newspapers provided more news stories searching for a solution, while popular newspapers usually published short, factual descriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fundamental idea we discuss in this paper is that the failure of Europe to deal with the international crisis is due, first and foremost, to the deepening of a more specific crisis that affected the very process of European integration and developed through two main channels: one, broader, linked to the erosion of the original driving forces underpinning integration in Europe; another, more circumscribed, linked to the malfunctioning of the euro as an internal adjustment mechanism of the currency zone. To deal with these structural dimensions of the crisis, we put forward a model of a Global Europe against the model of Continental Europe that has dominated the integration process until now and in this alternative framework we discuss the potential role of Portugal and of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Management / Vadyba (16487974) is the property of Lithuania Business University of Applied Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The euro crisis points towards the limits of the post-war pro-European integration consensus in Germany, a trend that has manifested itself in both the legal and political realms. In the legal arena, the powerful German Constitutional Court (GCC) has heard complaints on several key rescue measures, including the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European Central Bank's (ECB) bond buying programme. The Court's ruminations on these initiatives both reflect and feed German eurosceptics' concerns. They also have implications for the Eurozone as a whole, insofar as they limit the German government's room to manoeuvre. In the political arena, a new eurosceptic party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), contested the September 2013 federal election and the May 2014 European parliamentary election, winning a handful of seats in the latter. AfD's emergence potentially marks a shift towards a more overtly eurosceptical political discourse in Germany. Thus, both legal and political developments have the potential to constrain the choices for the EU as a whole by reconfiguring the political and policy landscape of Germany, the Union's reluctant hegemon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze official speeches delivered by three of EU's high rank officials, namely the President of the European Commission, the President of the European Parliament and the President of the European Council, and by the two political leaders of the Union, the French President and the German Chancellor. All the examined speeches focused on the 2014-2020 budget and were delivered before the European Council held on February 7-8, 2013, excepting Angela Merkel's speech, which was delivered at the end of February, in the German Parliament. We used textual analysis to investigate the themes and the meaning categories that appear in the text and how these themes and categories are discursively constructed in order to convey a particular view on the budget and on EU's future prospects as a viable and trustful project. In our analysis, we started from the premise that there is a gap between discourse and action within the EU, and that this credibility gap can easily add to the already acknowledged economic, financial and political causes of the EU's decline. Unfortunately, a credibility gap might produce more damage more rapidly as it usually generates popular frustration and exhaustion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of Asian monetary integration have always looked to Europe for inspiration. This paper reconsiders the cas in light of the eurozone crisis. I ask what aspects of the earlier consensus remain intact in the wake of the crisis and what aspects must now be rethought. Is there a danger of "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" - a danger, in other words, that Europe's negative experience since 2009 will cause Asia to turn away too quickly and completely from monetary integration? Or is it in fact appropriate to "throw out the baby" - to conclude in light of Europe's example that Asian monetary integration is not an appropriate and desirable goal? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the major events in the unfolding of what is conveniently and somehow mistakenly labeled as the Euro Crisis. The main idea underpinning the interpretation of these events is that while there is absolute agreement that the Euro Crisis is an existential test for the European Union, no similar agreement can be found regarding the roots of the crisis. Two largely divergent, even clashing views on these roots are the catalyst for the countless discussions in this regard: "Europe is to blame" vs. "markets are to blame." The stakes of this clash have to do with the fact that the prevailing interpretation influences the policy responses for crisis resolution and, even more importantly, will influence the future direction of the EU. The topic of the EU public sphere as the battleground where the battle over interpretations takes place is brought in, together with the role of the most important actors in the public sphere--mass media and the elites. The conclusion is that the prevailing interpretation regarding the roots of the crisis, the solutions and the model for the EU springing from this prevailing interpretation will be the historical legacy that the EU media and EU elites will leave to future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The euro zone crisis has become the most serious test-case for European integration. Since the beginning of the euro zone crisis, its leaders have played the "blame game" against each other. This paper argues that the crisis in the euro zone has arisen not only because of individual member states' irresponsible policy choices, but also due to the design faults within the euro zone project. This study scrutinizes "complex interdependence within the nation-state framework" as the primary cause of the euro zone problem. On the one hand, the single currency regime came into existence under the "complex interdependence" system mainly driven by financialization and cross-country financial transactions, including skyrocketed government and private debt ratios. On the other hand, the euro zone regime, due to its overwhelming reliance on a "nation-state framework", was not armoured against the side-effects of complex interdependence. The paper concludes that unless the European leaders demonstrate the required policy entrepreneurship to take necessary steps and reform the design faults in the euro zone, there does not seem to be any future for the single currency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The euro zone crisis has become the most serious test-case for European integration. Since the beginning of the euro zone crisis, its leaders have played the "blame game" against each other. This paper argues that the crisis in the euro zone has arisen not only because of individual member states' irresponsible policy choices, but more than that, due to the design faults within the euro zone project. This study scrutinizes "complex interdependence within the nation-state framework" as the primary cause of the euro zone problem. On the one hand, the single currency regime came into existence under the "complex interdependence" system mainly driven by financialization and cross-country financial transactions, including sky-rocketed government and private debt ratios. On the other hand, the euro zone regime, due to its overwhelming reliance on a "nation-state framework", was not armoured against the side-effects of complex interdependence. The paper concludes that unless the European leaders demonstrate required policy entrepreneurship to take necessary steps and reform the design faults in the euro zone, there does not seem to be any future for the single currency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]