Demand for Take-Over of the Whole Acquis by the Accession Countries – an Impediment for Membership?

According to Copenhagen criteria from 1993, EU defined the take-over of the complete body of common EU legislation (so called acquis communautaire) as one of the requirements for EU membership – together with democracy, protection of human rights, market economy and external security. While the accession countries have mostly achieved other prerequisites of becoming an EU member, the implementation of the acquis remains a difficult and contested issue and is hence an impediment for membership. The author investigates the corresponding position of interests for both the old EU members and the candidates concerning the acquis. The author concludes that the EU enlargement will not fail due to the opposition of the old members, since the potential enlargement losers will be compensated for. In the accession countries, however, the fulfilment of membership requirements must be democratically legitimised: therefore it needs support both from EU and candidate country governments

Irland, der "keltische Tiger": Vorbild oder Warnung für ein wachsendes Europa?

Irland ist das Land der europäischen Peripherie, dem der spektakulärste Aufholprozess gelungen ist. Allerdings hat es, laut Dr. Michael Dauderstädt, Leiter des Referats Internationale Politikanalyse der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Bonn, diesen Erfolg auf Kosten seiner europäischen Partner und der eigenen Arbeitskräfte erreicht. Die EU sollte daher, seiner Meinung nach, weniger die irische Inflation und Fiskalpolitik kritisieren, als auf eine Änderung der Unternehmens- und Gewinnbesteuerung sowie eine bessere Verteilung des neuen Wohlstandes drängen und die EU-Hilfen für Irland beenden.Irland; Wirtschaftslage; Konjunktur; Wirtschaftspolitik; Mitgliedschaft

Wachstum und schulden in Europa

In the current debate on the Euro crisis, the received wisdom considers too much debt as the main cause. Profligate debtors, primarily governments, are supposed to be the culprits. Resolving the crisis requires therefore a massive deleveraging. Germany, in particular, abhors debt and sees it as the original sin. The German word for debt (“Schulden”) connotes already “guilt” (in German: “Schuld”). Actually, debt is a necessary core element of any capitalist economy. Without debt there can hardly be growth. It is debtors, not savers who are the drivers of growth. Growth is also the best way to get out of a debt crisis. Capital and asset markets are supposed to finance growth, identify investment opportunities ant to reduce risks. But often they fail, and are driven by manias and panics rather than prudent assessment. Growth in Europe has been strongly unbalanced during the last 10–15 years. While countries in the European periphery enjoyed high growth, fueled by increasing private debt, Germany’s economy stagnated and saved. Subsequently the debtor countries showed high current account deficits while Germany had large export surpluses. The financial crisis stopped suddenly the access to new credits and thus growth. This hard landing triggered a recession which required government spending to stimulate the economy and to bail out banks which in turn increased public debt dramatically. In spite of a fast recovery a panic in the government bond markets followed in the Euro zone. This panic resulted less from unacceptably high debt levels but from a flawed design of the Euro zone’s institutions (lack of a lender of last resort) and wrong policies. The austerity policies which were enforced by Germany and the European Union (EU) exacerbated the crisis and slowed or reversed the recovery. Debt and wealth are just two sides of the same medal and can only be changed together as the global net monetary investment position is always zero. Deleveraging is easiest in a context of growth, when creditors spend and reduce their savings. All the other options are worse: Spending cuts which lead to deflation and depression, bankruptcies or – though somewhat less disruptive – the real devaluation of debt by inflation. Growth with deleveraging requires the spending of debtors which generate and increase debtors’ revenues. Given the distribution of assets and debts, such a process implies that rich households (the net creditors) have to spend more in a way which either directly or indirectly leads to higher revenues of the indebted governments. Besides a levy on wealth and higher taxes for the rich the market solution would require massive real economy investment by the creditors which would trigger new growth, increase profits and wages which in turn would provide more tax revenues. Growth will resume when credits flow again and therefore, paradoxically, new debt is created. This will only happen when potential investors meet potential debtors with higher and more sustainable income. This requires a redistribution of income in favor of poorer households, enterprises ready to invest and governments which up to now took over the risks. A leaner and better regulated financial sector should focus on financing these adjustments in the real economy. The European Central Bank (ECB) should support such a process of growth and deleveraging by a permissive monetary policy, which aim at a target of nominal GDP growth of 4–6% rather than at an inflation target of 2%. A slightly higher rate of inflation would lower the government debt ratio (debt/GDP) in the long run. The countries of the Euro zone need a lender of last resort, possibly by creating a European Monetary Fund which should have unlimited access to ECB liquidity

'Divided they stand, divided they fail': opposition politics in Morocco

The literature on democratization emphasises how authoritarian constraints usually lead genuine opposition parties and movements to form alliances in order to make demands for reform to the authoritarian regime. There is significant empirical evidence to support this theoretical point. While this trend is partly visible in the Middle East and North Africa, such coalitions are usually short-lived and limited to a single issue, never reaching the stage of formal and organic alliances. This article, using the case of Morocco, seeks to explain this puzzle by focusing on ideological and strategic differences that exist between the Islamist and the secular/liberal sectors of civil society, where significant opposition politics occurs. In addition, this article also aims to explain how pro-democracy strategies of the European Union further widen this divide, functioning as a key obstacle to democratic reforms

Party competition and European integration in east and west: Different structure, same causality

How does the ideological profile of a political party affect its support or opposition to European integration? The authors investigate this question with a new expert data set on party positioning on European integration covering 171 political parties in 23 countries. The authors' findings are (a) that basic structures of party competition in the East and West are fundamentally and explicably different and (b) that although the positions that parties in the East and West take on European integration are substantively different, they share a single underlying causality. © 2006 SAGE Publications

Germany's socio-economic model and the Euro crisis

Germany's socio-economic model, the "social market economy", was established in West Germany after World War II and extended to the unified Germany in 1990. During a prolonged recession after the adoption of the Euro in 1998, major reforms (Agenda 2010) were introduced which many consider as the key of Germany's recent success. The reforms had mixed results: employment increased but has consisted to a large extent of precarious low-wage jobs. Growth depended on export surpluses based on an internal real devaluation (low unit labour costs) which make Germany vulnerable to global recessions as in 2009. Overall inequality increased substantially