How effective and legitimate is the European semester? Increasing role of the European parliament

The European Semester is a new institutional process that provides EU member states with ex-ante guidance on fiscal and structural objectives. The Semesterâ??s goals are ambitious and it is still uncertain how it will fit into the new EU economic governance framework. We find that member states are only slowly internalising the new procedure. Furthermore, the Semester has so far lacked legitimacy due to the minor role assigned to the European Parliament, the marginal involvement of national parliaments and the lack of transparency of the process at some stages. Finally, there remains room to clarify the implications from a unified legal text. In fact, diluting the legal separation of recommendations on National Reform Programmes and Council opinions on Stability and Convergence Programmes may compromise effective surveillance and governance. The European Parliament has an important role to play. It needs hold the Commission and the Council accountable. This and the overall objective of enhancing the new procedureâ??s effectiveness and legitimacy can be done by means of a regular Economic Dialogue on the Semester.

An action plan for the European leaders

At the extraordinary EU Council of 21 July European leaders have to accomplish a triple-mission. First, they should pave the way to restoring solvency in Greece by initiating debt reduction. Softening the Greek debt burden implies i) reducing the interest rate on official lending, ii) requesting from the EFSF support for an immediate bond buy-back programme, and iii) asking the ESRB for an immediate evaluation of the risks to financial stability involved in a future restructuring of the sovereign debts in the euro area. Second, they should promote immediate growth-enhancing measures to be financed through unused EU structural funds and EIB loans (â?¬16bn). The available funds shall be used to i) raise the quality of higher education, ii) finance wage subsidies in manufacturing and tourism so as to generate an internal devaluation at contained domestic-demand costs; and ii) create research laboratories (i.e. lighthouse innovation projects) that would support an upgrading of the Greek value chain. Third, they should address risks to financial stability in the euro zone by breaking the vicious circle between sovereign debt and banking risk. The EFSF should be able to guarantee national deposit insurance schemes; at the same time, the European Banking Authority should assume stronger supervisory powers. This is an immediate action plans but of course more ambitious reforms are necessary down the road.

How effective and legitimate is the European semester? Increasing the role of the European parliament. Bruegel Working Paper 2011/09, September 2011

The European Semester is a new institutional process that provides EU member states with ex-ante guidance on fiscal and structural objectives. The Semester’s goals are ambitious and it is still uncertain how it will fit into the new EU economic governance framework. We find that member states are only slowly internalising the new procedure. Furthermore, the Semester has so far lacked legitimacy due to the minor role assigned to the European Parliament, the marginal involvement of national parliaments and the lack of transparency of the process at some stages. Finally, there remains room to clarify the implications from a unified legal text. In fact, diluting the legal separation of recommendations on National Reform Programmes and Council opinions on Stability and Convergence Programmes may compromise effective surveillance and governance. The European Parliament has an important role to play. It needs hold the Commission and the Council accountable. This and the overall objective of enhancing the new procedure’s effectiveness and legitimacy can be done by means of a regular Economic Dialogue on the Semester

Competitive selection, trade, and employment:The strategic use of subsidies

We thank Holger Görg, Philipp Schröder, Fredrik Sjöholm, participants at the Danish International Economics Workshop, seminar participants at Aberdeen, Sheffield and Loughborough, three anonymous referees and the Editor of the journal, for helpful comments and suggestions. Funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 290647 is gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewedPostprin

Glioma-associated stem cells: A novel class of tumor-supporting cells able to predict prognosis of human low-grade gliomas.

Background: Translational medicine aims at transferring advances in basic science research into new approaches for diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Low-grade gliomas (LGG) have a heterogeneous clinical behavior that can be only partially predicted employing current state-of-the-art markers, hindering the decision-making process. To deepen our comprehension on tumor heterogeneity, we dissected the mechanism of interaction between tumor cells and relevant components of the neoplastic environment, isolating, from LGG and high-grade gliomas (HGG), proliferating stem cell lines from both the glioma stroma and, where possible, the neoplasm. Methods and Findings: We isolated glioma-associated stem cells (GASC) from LGG (n=40) and HGG (n=73). GASC showed stem cell features, anchorage-independent growth, and supported the malignant properties of both A172 cells and human glioma-stem cells, mainly through the release of exosomes. Finally, starting from GASC obtained from HGG (n=13) and LGG (n=12) we defined a score, based on the expression of 9 GASC surface markers, whose prognostic value was assayed on 40 subsequent LGG-patients. At the multivariate Cox analysis, the GASC-based score was the only independent predictor of overall survival and malignant progression free-survival. Conclusions: The microenvironment of both LGG and HGG hosts non-tumorigenic multipotent stem cells that can increase in vitro the biological aggressiveness of glioma-initiating cells through the release of exosomes. The clinical importance of this finding is supported by the strong prognostic value associated with the characteristics of GASC. This patient-based approach can provide a groundbreaking method to predict prognosis and to exploit novel strategies that target the tumor stroma