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(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2021 6(2), 1015-1025 | Article | (Table of Contents) I. The phenomenon of complementary currencies. - II. The bigger picture: the eurozone. - III. Legal status of complementary currencies in Germany. - IV. Societal challenges. - V. Collective design of money. - VI. Oligarchical and democratic ways of creating money. - VII. Conclusion. | (Abstract) For several decades, the phenomenon of complementary currencies has been emerging without the law having taken much notice. Only with the emergence of the first virtual currencies have there been serious discussions on this topic. The motives of the initiators and groups are very different. Is it about maximising profits or about ecological, social and cultural goals? The author advocates the integration of complementary currencies that have actively contributed to societal problems into the legal framework of the European Union.

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As an answer to the “Great Recession” and Zero Lower Bound problem, main central banks had to use unconventional monetary policy (UMP). This research focuses on the distributive effects of these measures on household income and household wealth in the United States of America (USA) and the Eurozone. For this purpose, this paper presents four models that were constructed using the Structural Vector Autoregressive methodology (SVAR). The results suggest that the UMPs applied by the Federal Reserve (FED) in the USA could increase wealth and income inequality through the portfolio channel. However, the same results were not observed in the Eurozone.

The institutional and policy features of Eurozone represent a field of special interest to analyse the process of integration. The aim of this study is to investigate on the existence of a trade-off between the compliance to fiscal rules and trust as a proxy of institutional legitimacy in Eurozone. At this scope, the relation between trust in the European Central Bank (ECB) and structural adjustment, together with unemployment and inflation in 11 Eurozone countries from 1999 to 2013, is tested. The empirical results showed that: (i) discretionary policy measures have an opposite sign impact on trust; (ii) in peripheral countries, the structural adjustment is the main variable affecting trust in ECB; (iii) unemployment plays a key role; and (iv) deviation from the objective of 2% of inflation is not significant. These outcomes prove the existence of a trade-off between the fiscal rules commitments and the European institutional consolidation process.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2018 3(1), 121-125 | Overview | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. An Assembly fitted with the multifunctional nature of legislatures. - III. An insurance against free-riding. - IV. A fair share for the European Parliament. - V. The devil is in the details. - VI. Conclusions. | (Abstract) A new assembly proposed for the Eurozone can be qualified as realistic utopia. Indeed, the Overview supports the view that the draft Treaty on the Democratization of the Governance of the Euro area (T-Dem) offers a coherent proposal given past lessons from legislative and EU studies. This is particularly the case regarding: a) the multidimensional functions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Euro area proposed; b) the fact that this assembly would have important and open decisions to make; c) the provision of 80 percent of national Members of the Parliaments within it; d) the high level of detail regarding the membership of the assembly. Yet, the provisions of the treaty call for some changes or precisions regarding basic features of the parliamentary matrix, notably: pluralism, transparency and permanency.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2018 3(1), 7-17 | Overview | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. Democratising the Eurozone, a creative thinking exercise. - II.1. De lege ferenda. - II.2. Working on concepts - II.3. Beyond national constitutional models - III. Democratising the Eurozone, a constrained exercise. - III.1. Democratisation by politicisation? - III.2. Democratising without disintegrating? | (Abstract) The Overview starts by explaining why European Papers has invited scholars from different disciplines to comment the T-Dem draft written by Hennette, Piketty, Sacriste and Vauchez. It then focuses on the main reactions triggered by the Treaty draft. Although the four authors have provided a very innovative and stimulating Treaty draft, their project is fiercely criticised by scholars coming from very different fields and origins. Two main flaws of T-Dem are underlined in the Overview. First of all, the T-Dem draft, in its current version, fails to properly articulate democratisation and politicisation. Second of all, the four authors have not fully taken into account the possible negative impact of their democratisation endeavour on European integration.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2018 3(1), 103-119 | Overview | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. The T-Dem's Parliamentary Assembly of the Euro Area. - III. The choice for an external institutionalization. - IV. Conclusion. | (Abstract) The Draft Treaty on the Democratization of the Governance of the Euro Area (dubbed "T-Dem") is an academic project aimed at reducing the democratic deficit in the euro area by creating a Parliamentary Assembly of the Euro Area, outside of the EU institutional framework, which would exercise political control, exercise a legislative function and adopt a budget for the Member States of the Euro Area. Democratizing the governance of the Euro Area is certainly a priority; however, like any serious institutional endeavour, it is not without risks and challenges. The present Overview aims at providing a summary legal analysis of the project, focusing on its two main features. First, I will comment the project of the Assembly itself, analysing its powers and composition. Then, I will analyse the choice the authors of the draft made for an external institutionalisation, i.e. the creation of institutions outside of the European Union to deal with EU-related issues. I will contend that this choice raises questions of legality and constitutionality and generates legal complexities I call "legal costs".

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2018 3(1), 83-91 | Overview | (Table of Contents) I. A crucial European debate. - II. The nature of the democratic problems of the European Union and the Eurozone. - III. Five limits of the proposed new Parliamentary Assembly. | (Abstract) The Overview aims to analyze merits and limits of the book Pour un traité de démocratisation de l'Europe (Seuil, Paris, 2017). In the first section, the author argues, in agreement with the theses presented in the first part of the book, that the facile formula of the "democratic deficit" is a misrepresentation of the real democratic problems of the EU institutional system. In the second part, the author takes issue with the proposal to establish a new parliamentary assembly for the Eurozone, composed of four fifth of national MPs delegated by national parliaments from the Eurozone and of one fifth of MEPs, formulated in a new "Draft treaty on the democratization of the governance of the Euro area" (T-Dem), and expounded in the second part of the book.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2018 3(1), 67-73 | Overview | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. Genuine EMU. - III. Wrong Method. - IV. Right Direction. | (Abstract) The main problem of Economic Monetary Union (EMU) is not a weakness of parliamentary control but the lack of a strong executive. A fiscal union needs a treasury, housed within the Commission. No new parliamentary assembly is required outside the European Parliament. And no new treaty should be agreed outside the EU framework.

The aim of this paper is to verify the impact of the euro adoption on the complexity of goods in Slovenian exports. To the best knowledge of the authors, it is the first study on the consequences that the elimination of a national currency may have for that feature of trade. According to the Ricardian and Hechscher-Ohlin models of trade, such a policy decision (seen as an example of trade liberalization) may lead to specialization in the production of either more or less sophisticated goods – the outcome depends on the country’s technology and factor endowment. At the same time, increased FDI flows may make a particular economy more engaged in international production chains, with an ambiguous influence on export complexity. Given the fact that it is impossible to (a priori) theoretically predict the impact of monetary integration on export complexity, it is reasonable to search for the effects of the integration empirically. The authors used the Synthetic Control Method to compare the actual levels of export complexity in Slovenia after the adoption of the euro with the counterfactual scenario with Slovenia not entering the Eurozone. The results indicate that membership in the European Monetary Union (EMU) led to a temporary increase in the complexity of exported goods.

Although a key condition for the creation of a monetary union is the existence of similar structural characteristics that reduce the existence and incidence of asymmetric shocks, in the case of the Eurozone, most, if not all, studies have emphasized the existence of sizeable divergences both in the macroeconomic performances and in the structural elements of the Eurozone countries. The objective of the paper is to analyse whether the economic and financial crisis that is affecting the Eurozone since the year 2008 has had any impact of the coherence of the Eurozone, that is, whether after 2008 the differences in the macroeconomic performance of the euro counties are declining (convergence) or increasing (divergence).

The main aim of this paper is to empirically test the endogenous money hypothesis for the Eurozone. Based on data on loans to private sector, deposits, monetary aggregates, prices and GDP we use three empirical approaches to test the hypothesis: (i) moving correlation; (ii) Granger causality tests and (iii) original framework for the analysis based on the structural VAR model. The empirical results confirm our main hypothesis on the endogeneity of money in the Eurozone as they show that the commonly accepted neoclassical relations between monetary variables, inflation and economic activity are reversed in case of Eurozone and that the direction of influence goes from loans to deposits and from real sector of the economy towards the monetary sector. The basic conclusion from carried out research is that ECB should implement measures directly aimed at stimulation of domestic demand (monetary-supported tax cut).

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2016 1(1), 7-12 | Overview | (Table of Contents) I. "More Europe"; - a better Europe? The state of the Union after the Gauweiler Judgment. - II. The road to the crisis and the ambivalences of unconventional rescue operations. - III. Necessity knows no laws: entrapment in a state of emergency? | (Abstract) The European integration project is in troubled waters. All branches of European studies document its difficulties, explore the reasons and discuss the potential to cure its failings. Diagnoses, of course, differ widely both across and beyond the Eurozone and the European Union, and, unsurprisingly, these debates are not immune to distorted perceptions and wrongful ascriptions. The title of this comment points to a schism which is not new, but which seems to be deepening. The schism mirrors the discrepancies in the various disciplines concerned with the integration process. Thanks to the re-opening of the OMT-litigation in Karlsruhe, we know at least that the CJEU did not have the last word. But the Luxembourg Court may well have had the final say; it is as unlikely as ever that Karlsruhe will shoulder the responsibility for the destruction of the common currency. What we can observe is a strengthening of European powers. We have learned to understand any move towards more Europe as a signal of progress. But the kind of transformation to which we are now exposed has been generated by a crisis of enormous dimensions whose end is not in sight. As a lawyer, I would substantiate: this crisis attests to nothing less and nothing better than the inability of European politics to remain faithful to the commitment to the project of a democratic mode of European governance, to the respect of human and social rights, and to a law-mediated legitimacy of the integration project. This is a discomforting reading of the state of the Union. Judicial self-restraint could become a cure only if the judiciary both intended to and were able to help to initiate responsible political deliberation about a re-construction of Europe's legitimacy. For the time being, we have to conclude, sadly, that Europe is without a guardian of its constitutionalism.

The recent global financial crisis represents a serious threat to the growth of economies. This crisis deeply affects the real economy through a phenomenon known as the wealth effect, which assumes that a fall in wealth leads to a reduction of private consumption. Thus, this paper analyzes the wealth effect on consumption using quarterly macro-data for 10 Eurozone countries in the period 2000-2010. The results suggest the existence of a positive and significant wealth effect on consumption with the predominance of a financial effect on housing, showing larger consumption sensitivity to changes in the value of financial assets.

This paper examines the symmetry of correlation of sovereign bond yield dynamics between eight Eurozone countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) in the period from January 3, 2000 to August 31, 2011. Asymmetry of correlation is investigated pair-wise by applying the test of Yongmiao Hong, Jun Tu, and Guofu Zhou (2007). Whereas the test of Hong, Tu, and Zhou (2007) is static, the present paper provides also a dynamic version of the test and identifies time periods when the correlation of Eurozone sovereign bond yield dynamics became asymmetric. We identified seven pairs of sovereign bond markets for which the null hypothesis of symmetry in correlation of sovereign bond yield dynamics can be rejected. Calculating rolling-window exceedance correlation, we found that the time-varying upper- (i.e. for positive yield changes) and lower-tail correlations (i.e. for negative yield changes) for pair-wise observed sovereign bond markets normally follow each other closely, yet during some time periods (for most pair-wise observed countries, these periods are around the September 11 attack on the New York City WTC and around the start of the Greek debt crisis) the difference in correlation does increase. The results show that the upper- and lower-tail correlation was symmetric before the Eurozone debt crisis for most of the pair-wise observed sovereign bond markets but has become much less symmetric since then.

This paper provides a critical assessment of the austerity measures that are being implemented in the crisis-stricken countries of the Eurozone, and in particular, the implications of internal devaluation for the Greek economy. The theoretical underpinnings and phases of internal devaluation are explored. A detailed statistical analysis of key macroeconomic indicators pertaining to the Greek economy is carried out. Alternatives to internal devaluation are proposed in this paper, laying the foundations for a reassessment of the policy of austerity and the implications for recovery and sustainability of economic activity in Greece and other countries of the Eurozone.

In this paper I analyze the second phase of the current financial crisis or the events that rocked the European economies in 2009-2010. These events were set off by Greece’s declaration in October 2009 that its deficit would be much higher than what had previously been announced; and it culminated in the May 2010 crisis, when EU put together a fund of a trillion dollar in order to calm the markets. The crisis is currently ongoing (and my paper takes it up till November 2010). The European sovereign debt crisis is primarily analyzed with the help of a sociological theory of confidence. The argument is (drawing on Bagehot) that financial crises may be unleashed by the sudden disclosure of hidden losses - in this case (as I document) the disclosure of Greece.

It is argued the current eurozone crisis is neither new nor surprising. Fiscal discipline in the eurozone was weak from its creation in 1999, but ongoing economic prosperity limited the damage. Economic recession deepened the impact of crisis on public finance and pushed some eurozone countries to the edge of bankruptcy. Options available now are costly and painful: foreign bailouts, cuts to expenditures, higher revenues and some combination of the three. They may be conducted both inside and outside the eurozone. If eurozone problems are not solved, financial markets may turn down the euro as a currency, possibly marking the beginning of Euro-disintegration.

The essay aims at highlighting some fundamental paradoxes affecting the very structure of the European Union in its current organization. The currency union is not only insufficient, but ultimately impairing the economic efficiency of the Eurozone. The economic issues that the European Union project was designed to respond to do not correspond to the present circumstances. The European institutions and the European left-wing parties have lost sight of the proper parameters of social justice. Left-wing parties endorsing pro-capital policies and supranationalism deployed to overcome nationalism are the two main paradoxes that have a damaging impact on the present development of European institutions.

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In this work, we will study the economic situation in four countries of the euro zone, namely: France, Germany, Italy and Spain, during the period: [2002, 2014], that is to say, twelve years after the first introduction of the euro, our study focuses on the evolution of three variables: inflation, the growth rate of gross domestic product and unemployment. We will determine the consequences of the introduction of the single currency on economies mentioned above. On the other hand, the question will arise whether to abandon the euro or not. It will lead to the conclusion that: despite its disastrous consequences, deconstruct the euro makes no sense. The real challenge is to encourage countries of the eurozone to reform their policies to find prospects for better jobs and activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article deals with the cultural policies that are developed in the context of euroregions and analyses the governance that results from such policies. The processes and modalities of euroregional cultural governance present a certain innovative dimension, as well as implementation limits, which raises broader questions about euroregional governance. The analysis is based on case studies from Western Europe: euroregion Pyrénées-Méditerranée and Grande Région. After a general presentation of euroregional cultural policies, and of the main criticism that these policies can be addressed, the hypothesis of a certain renewal of euroregional cultural governance is questioned following two lines: the policy discourse and means one the one hand, the appropriation of these policies by stakeholders and actors on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Futuribles is the property of Futuribles SARL 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.)

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