Search

Após a crise financeira de 2008, as instituições financeiras entraram em falência causando a crise das dívidas soberanas na zona euro. Desde o início da crise das dívidas soberanas, que afectou principalmente os países do sul da Europa, foi proposta a execução de um programa de austeridade como forma de solução da crise. O discurso dominante da Comissão Europeia de 2010 a 2014 baseou a sua abordagem na ideia de que os países afetados “estavam a viver acima das suas possibilidades”, argumento que justificou a adoção de medidas como a flexibilização laboral, liberalização dos serviços, privatizações, redução de pensões e salários. A solução apresentada pela CE foi apelidada por vários autores de neoliberal ou ordoliberal. Todo este discurso tornou se cada vez mais questionado desde o início da crise, por economistas que alertavam para os maus resultados do processo de liberalização e das políticas aplicadas durante a crise do euro. Partindo deste contexto, a dissertação traça uma genealogia crítica do discurso neoliberal a nível internacional e ordoliberal a nível regional para compreender o discurso da CE 2010 2014. Pretende se identificar os principais agentes, contextos e conceitos que estruturaram o discurso neoliberal e ordoliberal. A investigação parte de uma abordagem genealógica baseada na análise crítica de discurso foucaulniana, para entender como o discurso se tornou dominante ao longo da história recente. Nesse processo, analisa se as comunidades epistémicas que formaram o discurso neoliberal e a sua institucionalização internacional bem como do ordoliberalismo a nível europeu, de forma a compreender a influência sistémica que esses dois discursos tiveram nas principais propostas da CE 2010 2014. No final desta investigação, concluir se á que existe uma influência da ideologia neoliberal a nível internacional e do ordoliberalismo europeu no discurso da CE 2010 2014. After the financial crisis of 2008, financial institutions "too big to fail" went bankrupt causing the eurozone crisis. Since the beginning of the sovereign debt crisis, which mainly affected the countries of southern Europe, the application of "structural adjustment programs" has been proposed as a solution. The European Commission's dominant discourse from 2010 to 2014 based its approach on the idea that the affected countries "were living beyond their means", an argument that justified the adoption of measures such as labor flexibility, liberalization of services, privatization, reduction pensions and salaries. The solution presented by the EC was dubbed by various neoliberal or ordoliberal authors. This whole speech has been increasingly questioned since the beginning of the crisis by economists who warned of the poor results of the liberalization process and the policies implemented during the euro. Based on this context, the dissertation traces a critical genealogy of neoliberal discourse at the international level and ordoliberal level at a regional level to understand the dominant discourse of the EC 2010 2014. It intends to identify the main agents, contexts and concepts that structured neoliberal and ordoliberal discourse. The research starts from a genealogical approach based on the critical analysis of foucauldian discourse, to understand how discourse has become dominant throughout recent history. In this process, we analyze the epistemic communities that formed the neoliberal discourse and its international institutionalization as well as the ordoliberalism at European level, in order to understand the systemic influence that these two discourses had on the main EC proposals 2010 2014. At the end of this investigation, it will be concluded that there is an influence of international neoliberal discourse and regional European ordoliberalism in the discourse of EC 2010 2014.

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.

Which European Union actors are most powerful in the governance of the euro crisis? The euro crisis has reignited the classic debate between intergovernmentalists, who tend to stress the coercive power of dominant member states in the European Council, and supranationalists, who maintain that through the use of institutional power, the Commission, and the European Central Bank turned out the “winners” of the crisis. This article argues that euro crisis governance is best understood not just in terms of one form of power but instead as evolving through different constellations of coercive, institutional, and ideational power that favored different EU actors over the course of the crisis, from the initial fast-burning phase (2010–2012), where the coercive and ideational power of Northern European member states in the European Council was strongest, to the slow-burning phase (2012–2016), when greater influence was afforded supranational actors through the use of ideational and institutional power.

Which European Union actors are most powerful in the governance of the euro crisis? The euro crisis has reignited the classic debate between intergovernmentalists, who tend to stress the coercive power of dominant member states in the European Council, and supranationalists, who maintain that through the use of institutional power, the Commission, and the European Central Bank turned out the “winners” of the crisis. This article argues that euro crisis governance is best understood not just in terms of one form of power but instead as evolving through different constellations of coercive, institutional, and ideational power that favored different EU actors over the course of the crisis, from the initial fast-burning phase (2010–2012), where the coercive and ideational power of Northern European member states in the European Council was strongest, to the slow-burning phase (2012–2016), when greater influence was afforded supranational actors through the use of ideational and institutional power.

We study the impact of the interaction between fiscal and monetary policy on the low-frequency relationship between the fiscal stance and inflation using cross-country data from 1965 to 1999. In a first step, we contrast the monetary-fiscal narrative for Germany, the U.S. and Italy with evidence obtained from simple regression models and a time-varying VAR. We find that the low-frequency relationship between the fiscal stance and inflation is low during periods of an independent central bank and responsible fiscal policy and more pronounced in times of high fiscal budget deficits and accommodative monetary authorities. In a second step, we use an estimated DSGE model to interpret the low-frequency measure structurally and to illustrate the mechanisms through which fiscal actions affect inflation in the long run. The findings from the DSGE model suggest that switches in the monetary-fiscal policy interaction and accompanying variations in the propagation of structural shocks can well account for changes in the low-frequency relationship between the fiscal stance and inflation.