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In response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Group of Seven (G7) countries and the European Union (EU) adopted a variety of financial sanctions, including the freezing of foreign reserve assets of the Central Bank of Russia held by other central banks. Drawing on a Principal-Agent framework and on speeches, newspaper articles and interviews with policy-makers, this study examines what it means for the ECB and the central banks of the Eurosystem to be involved in these sanctions. As a consequence of these actions, these central banks have been enlisted in monetary and financial warfare. Moreover, the three-fold objective of the ECB has de facto effectively been reweighted somewhat, as the focus on 'price stability' (primary objective) has become seemingly temporarily less prominent. Instead, the secondary and tertiary objectives have moved centre-stage, favouring geopolitical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges to the European Union (EU) and its member states. In the EU, health policy competence has been and remains largely with member states. However, faced with a major external crisis, which more or less affected all member states at the same time, the EU developed a framework within which the member states (and their subnational units) could respond together to the crisis. This introductory article to the Special Issue 'The COVID-19 Pandemic and the European Union,' briefly examines how EU institutions, policies and politics were affected by the crisis. Contrary to earlier crises, the EU responded speedily and effectively this time around. The EU has become increasingly important in crisis management, in part due to the nature of transboundary crises. The EU proved itself to be a good crisis manager on some dimensions, but certainly not on all. The crisis created momentum for collective action and for fast decision-making, even though the legitimacy of some these actions has been subject to limited public scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have placed a renewed strain on the economic governance of the European Union (EU). The European Central Bank (ECB) was a key player in the EU's response to the crisis induced by the pandemic. This paper adopts a theoretical approach focused on policy learning to explain how and why the ECB responded to the crisis in 2020–2021. By drawing on speeches, newspaper articles and interviews with policy-makers, the paper finds that the ECB was able to rely on earlier crisis experiences in the euro area in forming its response to the pandemic crisis. Although the sovereign debt crisis and the pandemic crisis had both similarities and differences from one another, the ECB was able to engage in inter-crisis and intra-crisis learning. Its learning concerned objectives, instruments as well as an awareness that timely and forceful response was crucial, so that the member states and other EU institutions had time to act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a major economic crisis worldwide. The monetary policy response of the European Central Bank (ECB) was fast and massive. The ECB also intervened on the supervisory side because, after the establishment of Banking Union, the ECB was given responsibility for banking supervision in the euro area through the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). This paper explains the response of the ECB-SSM to the COVID-19 related economic crisis during 2020 and 2021, up until February 2022. These ECB actions include the reduction of bank capital buffers, the redefinition of non-performing loans, and the limitations on dividends and bonuses paid by banks. We adopt a neofunctionalist approach, which suggests that policies are developed at the EU level in response to need, whereby supranational actors and spillovers are particularly important. We offer some concluding insights into whether the ECB-SSM's responses have led to a further deepening of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has the Netherlands sought to influence the redesign of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) since the financial crisis? Based on the case studies of the 'New Hanseatic League' and the 'Frugal Four' this study finds, firstly, that the Netherlands chooses strategies of foot-dragging when initiatives are brought up to deepen integration when the Dutch prefer the status quo. Secondly, its strategy is more bargaining-based but at times also persuasion-based; the bargaining occurs in part because the Netherlands builds occasional alliances with like-minded member states to counterbalance the asymmetry of power between it and Germany. Finally, the Netherlands oscillates between trying to influence Germany directly and bypassing it by reaching out to like-minded member states on various dossiers and tempting them to declare their positions in advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers the Introduction to the Special Issue "Economic and Financial Governance in the European Union after a decade of Economic and Political Crises." We introduce the five papers. We distill three important lessons they offer for EU integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second decade of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), starting with the financial crisis morphing into the sovereign debt crisis, had diverging effects on member states. The Baltic States were hit particularly hard. Faced with an immediate collapse of their economies, the Baltic States were advised by international organisations to float their currencies; instead, these countries chose to speed up their commitment to join the euro including the choice to keep the exchange rate fixed. Why? In this paper, we argue that the main reason for this decision needs to be found in the domestic politics of these three Baltic States. The domestic actors we look at include, among others, monetary authorities, government and opposition. Even when faced with strong international criticism, the three Baltic State governments chose their own path, which in this case included continuing their planned euro adoption policies even in the face of costly domestic adjustments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution discusses the two main asymmetries of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as they developed over the past two decades since the launch of the Single Currency. From the outset, EMU involved asymmetric degrees of integration in the area of 'economic' union (less centralised governance) versus 'monetary' union (more supranational governance). With the outbreak of the Sovereign Debt Crisis in 2010, the regime-shaping relevance of a second asymmetry emerged: one roughly between the member states of the Euro Area 'core' and those in the 'periphery'. Each of the two asymmetries have created a range of challenges — institutional, policy and political — that undermine the stability and sustainability of the EMU project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) – and its Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in particular – is often criticized as a predominantly market-oriented project. We analyse to what extent such claims can be substantiated by focusing on one key aspect of the EU's post-crisis framework for economic governance: the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) that the EU has been issuing annually since 2011. Based on an original dataset, we analyse more than 1300 CSRs, which show that the EU does not push uniformly for less state intervention. Rather, the CSRs tend to suggest fiscal restraint and less protection for labour market insiders, while simultaneously promoting measures that benefit vulnerable groups in society. During the second decade of EMU, CSRs have gradually become more permissive of higher public spending and more in favour of worker protection, while the share of recommendations advocating more social protection has stagnated at a high level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'European Semester', a new framework for policy co-ordination across European Union (EU) member states, represents a major step in EU governance. Created in 2010 in the wake of the financial and sovereign debt crises and revamped in 2015, it was intended to provide a new socioeconomic governance architecture to co-ordinate national policies without transferring full sovereignty to the EU level. This introduction offers a brief overview and assessment of the European Semester, examining its implications along three critical axes, running respectively between the economic and the social, the supranational and the intergovernmental, and the technocratic and democratic poles of EU governance. We introduce and briefly summarize the seven other contributions that make up this collection. Our conclusions are that the European Semester challenges established theoretical understandings of EU governance, as it is a prime example of the complexity that supersedes simple polar oppositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role did the European Central Bank (ECB) play in EU governance, regarding the financial, the economic and sovereign debt crises? How should we understand ECB leadership from a theoretical perspective? Based on speeches, literature review and interviews, this contribution concludes that by using policies such as the Securities Market Programme and by promising to do whatever it takes (e.g. Outright Monetary Transactions the ECB supported the euro-area faced with an unprecedented crisis. Its two presidents during the crisis periods were leaders in that they managed to get the ECB followers (its Governing Council; EU member states) willing to take part in a common enterprise solving the sovereign debt crisis with the bank using exceptional monetary policy tools. This contribution argues that both Presidents Jean-Claude Trichet and Mario Draghi exercised transformative leadership and were willing to take action when no other leaders were willing or able to lead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In light of recent crises in the European Union (EU) there is a need for more systematic analysis of political leadership in the EU, which is what we seek to do in this collection. This introduction offers a theoretical and conceptual background for the volume. Drawing on Burns, Blondel, Elgie, Young, and others, this contribution identifies how political leadership can be analysed in various institutions and institutional settings of the EU. The questions we ask are: what kind of leadership is there in different domains; how and with what tools does political leadership occur and operate in various case studies and how effective have those been? Although difficult to synthesise the results into one overarching leadership concept, or indeed locus, we argue that the individual studies demonstrate that the EU is by no means leaderless. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Has the executive role of the European Commission changed since the euro area crisis? Intergovernmentalists point to the increased role of the member states and the Council at the expense of the Commission and other supranational institutions. This article examines how the Commission has responded to the expansion of fiscal and economic rules such as the regulations that strengthen the EU's statistical competence and the Six-Pack and Two-Pack. Based on interviews conducted with key staff, we find that these rules have created significant co-ordination, information and analytical demands on the Commission. The latter has enhanced its horizontal and vertical co-ordination efforts, prioritized staff for the Directorate-Generals conducting surveillance activities, added DGs to these efforts, and reorganized their organizational structures to promote a deeper understanding of the member states’ fiscal and economic policies. Using a principal–agent, approach this article explains how the Commission has increased its role in European integration process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we understand the European Union's responses to the euro area financial crisis? This contribution examines this question through a historical institutionalist (HI) lens. First it reviews the design of existing institutions. With the help of HI it examines what challenges the institutional design posed on the European Union (EU) when the crisis hit. Next, the responses to the crisis by member state leaders and by EU-level actors are reviewed. An analysis is made of selected new EU institutions created to address the crisis: the European Financial Stability Facility; the European Stability Mechanism; the Six-Pack and Two-Pack; the European Semester; and the Fiscal Compact. Four ideal types – ‘displacement’, ‘layering’, ‘drift’ and ‘conversion’ – are examined and found not to fit well. In some cases institutions were ‘layered’ on top of existing institutions. Perhaps an amendment could be made by offering the ideal type ‘copying’ in those cases where new institutions that borrow from earlier institutions. Although no complex problem can be truly understood by looking at it through one single theoretical lens, this contribution argues that a large of part of the problems that emerged, and the solutions adopted, can be understood by examining it through an HI lens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the institutional rules and the decision-making process in the European Union before and after the Lisbon Treaty. What challenges did the EU respond to that ultimately led to the Lisbon Treaty? What institutional changes were made? What has been the outcome of these changes? If we look at these results through various European integration theory lenses, what can we learn? To address these questions the paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces the issues. The second examines the challenges to which Lisbon was supposed to be the answer. Section three examines the institutional and decision-making changes that were made by means of the Lisbon Treaty. Section four offers an assessment as to what effects the Lisbon changes have had to date. The fifth offers an analysis that draws on European integration theories to make sense of the findings. The final section concludes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented which discusses the articles within the issue on topics including decision-making within the European Union (EU), European Council presidency and the voting behaviour of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

We review the initial predictions and claims regarding economic and monetary union (EMU) in Europe against the evidence of its first ten years of existence. We argue that pessimistic views on the creation of EMU have proved to be wrong. Yet EMU's success is rather puzzling, since it is based on a peculiar institutional structure not thought to lead to success. EMU has generated redistributive effects and may have increased business-cycle synchronization. Those effects have not translated into the expected decrease of legitimacy or a widespread democratic deficit of EMU. At the institutional level, EMU has coped well with an asymmetric framework, largely decoupling EMU from political union. There have been neither major spill-over effects pushing for further political integration nor conflict and disintegration. The main question for the future is whether this institutional structure will stay the same in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces reports published within the publication, including one by Alison Burrell on reform to the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union, another by Carsten Daugbjerg and Alan Swinbank on change in the World Trade Organization, and one on the impact of European Union policies on domestic agricultural policies.

Moldova is complying with the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the new framework of partnership with neighbouring countries that was created by the European Union (EU) in 2005. The ENP prompted in the partner countries a process of convergence with EU rules. The ENP-promoted legislation convergence in the Eastern partner countries can therefore be a first step to the enlargement of the EU to Former Soviet Union Republics (FSURs) such as Moldova, even if it is generally understood that such enlargement is not yet on the cards. In this article we analyse whether the ENP-prompted process of convergence of the Moldovan legislation with the EU rules (law, institutions, and practices) increases this country's chances of EU membership. We argue that this process of convergence is in many ways similar to compliance with the Copenhagen convergence criteria. Moldova might be able to achieve EU candidate status sooner than is currently expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposed and actual reforms to the European Union (EU) Stability and Growth Pact commonly retain the Pact's deficit and debt targets. The American experience with similar macrobudgetary rules suggests that deficit targets may actually act as an incentive for political leaders to engage in noncompliant behavior. If targets were revised to budgetary objectives that politicians could achieve more easily and claim credit for accomplishing, compliance with the new macrobudgetary rules might be increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eight years after the launch of its third stage, and on the brink of its expansion, the European Union's (EU) Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has proven to be successful. However, EMU has also highlighted the diversity of its members economic performance, and their need to run larger public deficits than they initially committed to. This special issue attempts to find out what can be done to relieve the tensions in EMU. The source of EMU's difficulty seems to lie in its weak legitimacy, ambiguous gevernance, and asymmetric institutional design. The EU needs to improve its fiscal rules and streamline decision making in the European Central Bank without eroding legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the creation of the Stability and Growth Pact. It examines the economic and political factors behind it, including the role of economic ideas, experts, politicians, institutional arrangements in the Maastricht Treaty, domestic politics, and the exceptional position of Germany in the realm of monetary integration. It concludes that a set of commonly held beliefs together with a corresponding power-political constellation explain the creation of the SGP. As these parameters change, they inform our understanding of the current crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There appears to be a divide in the literature between American and European approaches to European integration studies. This article discusses the differences between the two types of approaches, and what problems occur from having this divide. It is argued that IPE offers a venue for dialogue between those who focus exclusively on the EU (labelled here as 'European approaches') and those who see the EU case to be part of more general phenomena and who seek to produce general theories ('American approaches'). The article suggests that IPE offers a useful body of literature to narrow the gap between 'American' and 'European' studies of European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agreement on economic and monetary union (EMU) in the European Union (EU) is a significant move in the integration process. In explanations as to why EMU was accepted and incorporated in the Maastricht Treaty, little attention has been given to the role of monetary experts in this process. This article examines their role in the creation of EMU by focusing on the Delors Committee that wrote the blueprint for EMU which was inserted in the Maastricht Treaty with few amendments. The article discusses whether it was necessary for the EMU momentum that these monetary experts held similar ideas about how European monetary integration had to proceed. Furthermore, it investigates whether the Delors Committee fits the definition of an 'epistemic community' (Haas 1992) and concludes that this is indeed the case. The article closes by suggesting that this conceptual tool could enlarge our understanding of the role of expert committees in the process of European public policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on the collection of papers 'Political Economy and European Integration,' on the economic basis for European integration. Topics discussed in the paper; Focus of the article; Analysis of European integration issues in the paper.

This article introduces the journal with a discussion of the significance of the 10th anniversary of the third stage of the European Economic and Monetary Union.