No volatility, no forecasting power for the term spread

Government securities ; Treasury bills

Is the term spread still speaking to policymakers? some international evidence

Interest rates

Participatory Democracy: Mechanism of Better Regulation in Europe

This paper aims to analyze the concept of participatory democracy in the European context. In the era of globalization, tools such as Internet filled the gap between civil society and political institutions. The new information and communication technologies contribute to the involvement of citizens in decision-making process. The democratic deficit is bridged through increasingly active participation of civil society at various levels of policy. Through e-democracy tools is realized a direct action of citizens, or even certain categories, which for various reasons do not have the possibility to be informed or have voice on political decisions. In addition, the European institutions, through mechanisms of “better regulation”, promote processes of simplification rules to find a remedy for an excessive law-making

Legal aspects of accession of EU at ECHR

The European Union EU became the guardian of the rights of Europeans From a treaty-based entity the European Union became a supranational system based on democracy and where the treaties and the EU human rights principle operates as constitutional law Moreover the law of the European Union it is without doubt a form of European Public Law based on a system of administrative and increasingly constitutional law including its own Charter of Human Rights Into the European constitutional framework from the second half of the last century the political and judicial institutions of Europe have committed in creating a European constitutional order in which prevails the protection of human rights The fundamental values belong to the European constitutional heritage to Europe without borders and without double standards of protection The rights declared in the constitutions must found concrete tools to render them effective To ensure the effectiveness of the protection of human rights on our continent the European Union s adherence to the European Convention of Human Rights ECHR is considered to be the ideal tool in the absence of a legal and formal link between the systems of Strasbourg and Luxembourg With the Treaty of Lisbon the expected adherence of the EU to the ECHR was in fact hailed as a courageous political cultural and legal decisio

THE FINANCIAL STABILITY OF THE ROMANIAN BANKING SYSTEM IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT

Reforms to the European banking system aim to increase commercial banks’ ability to withstand various shocks and volatility of the current economic and social environment. Changes to European and international legislative framework aimed among other things, the level of capital adequacy and quality of loan portfolios, which are most affected by the turmoil arising in financial markets. Thus, it was considered appropriate to studying these two groups of prudential ratios, over a period of 9 financial years (2007-2015) at 8 banking systems in Europe: Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Hungary and Romania. The results obtained showed that the Romanian banking system has an adequate level of capital, although the quality of loan portfolios has significantly decreased, especially in the last period of the research. National Bank of Romania’s involvement in the significant reduction of risk and sovereign debt crisis contributed to the increase of comparability of the Romanian banking market with the European market. Major problems have been reported in the Greek and Italian banking systems, largely affected by the sovereign debt crisis

La resa dei conti: il primo triennio dell\u2019European bottom-up right

L'iniziativa dei cittadini europei (ICE) \ue8 stata introdotta dal Trattato di Lisbona come uno strumento innovativo di democrazia partecipativa transnazionale, con lo scopo di coinvolgere i cittadini nell\u2019adozione dell\u2019agenda-setting europea, fornendo loro una forma indiretta del diritto di iniziativa legislativa. Nei primi tre anni di vita il dinamismo di tale strumento non \ue8 da sottovalutare; tuttavia, nonostante le moltissime iniziative avanzate, solo una minima parte ha avuto successo rispettando le condizioni e i requisiti stabiliti nel Reg. (UE) n. 211/2011 e soltanto tre hanno completato l\u2019intero iter procedimentale e ottenuto una risposta da parte della Commissione

Upper Houses and Constitutional Amendment Rules. In search of (supra)national paradigm(s)

Notwithstanding recent interest in the study of constitutional amendment rules, there is very limited scholarship investigating the structure of formal amendment framework and little doctrinal debate on the role of upper houses, as subnational units\u2019 representatives, played in amendment processes and their capacity to strengthen the rigidity of constitutions. From an institutional framework perspective, this analysis emphasizes the rules according to which the upper houses take part in constitutional revision processes, critically assessing the advantages and disadvantaged as well as the reasons of inclusion in these procedures. In this regard, firstly, it presents the theoretical rationales for their inclusion in the constitutional amendment process; secondly, it examines the amendment rules and identifies those mechanisms which gradually structure the constitutional rigidity

“We, the People” entitlement within constitutional change

In recent years, scholars have produced literature on constitutional amendments, in particular on the analysis of the unamendability phenomenon and its relationship with democracy, abusive and populist constitutionalism. The study of constitutional design is of interest, in large part, because a constitution can be amended and such processes make room for the fundamental questions about constitutional order legitimacy, the holder and the locus of sovereignty, especially in those legal orders where a popular legitimated process of altering the constitution is entrenched. Indeed, in some legal orders “We, the People” are called to initiate and/or approve any constitutional change. In this view, the paper brings the reader alongside the “We, the People” claim, stressing, though in restrictive manner, who “the people” are, how they act and react, and when their actions unveil a(n) (un)constitutional change, in order to draw citizen-led constitutional changes grounded on three keywords – populism, (un)constitutional amendments and constitutionalism. The paper is an invitation to the development of “the people” approaches in a constitutional framework that struck populism as democracy’s sentinel.Nos últimos anos, floresceu literatura sobre a revisão constitucional, em especial no que respeita aos limites materiais à revisão constitucional e à sua relação com a democracia e com os fenómenos do constitucionalismo abusivo e populista. O estudo do «desenho constitucional» de um Estado é de grande relevância, uma vez que a possibilidade de revisão constitucional levanta questões fundamentais sobre a legitimidade da ordem constitucional, sobre o titular e o lugar da soberania, muito particularmente naqueles ordenamentos jurídicos onde se permite a participação popular direta no processo de alteração da Constituição. Com efeito, em alguns ordenamentos jurídicos, o «Nós, o Povo» afirma-se na iniciativa e/ou aprovação de revisões constitucionais. Segundo esta perspetiva, o artigo explora a ideia de «Nós, o Povo», explanando quem integra «o povo», a forma como age e reage, e as situações em que a sua ação desvela uma alteração constitucional. Este artigo é um convite ao desenvolvimento das abordagens do «Povo», num contexto constitucional que arremessou o populismo da sentinela da democracia

PARLAMENTI NAZIONALI E LE FASI DELLA NORMAZIONE EUROPEA: CASO ITALIANO

The Lisbon Treaty has brought significant changes to the European system of democracy. The political dialogue between national parliaments and European institutions has been strengthened through various mechanisms of participation in ascending and descending phase of European decision-making process. The national legislatives exert political control over the work of European institutions but also ensure the application of European law

L\u2019iniziativa legislativa popolare e l\u2019asimmetrica regolamentazione nell\u2019ambito regionale

Il riconoscimento dell\u2019autonomia degli enti territoriali caratterizza sempre di pi\uf9 l\u2019evoluzione degli Stati democratici e la partecipazione popolare alle decisioni politiche delle comunit\ue0 territoriali desta sempre maggiore interesse. Per di pi\uf9, con la riforma costituzionale in cantiere e le sue minime mutazioni sul versante degli strumenti di partecipazione popolare si \ue8 tentato, in qualche modo, di compiere un passo avanti nella reviviscenza di uno strumento considerato a volte obsoleto. Tale tentativo ci porta a riflettere sull\u2019effettivit\ue0 di uno dei meccanismi, espressione della sovranit\ue0 popolare, su cui si fonda la democrazia, ossia l\u2019iniziativa dei cittadini nei processi decisionali