David Rinaldi

In her 16th of July 2019 Opening Statement to the European Parliament, Ursula von der Leyen identified Social Europe as one of her main objectives as new President of the European Commission. In her opening statement, Ms. Von der Leyen not only projected an ambitious EU climate change agenda but also pointed to the need to “creating a fairer and more equal Union”, “leaving nobody behind”. More specificaly, she stressed the importance of “bringing our Pillar of Social Rights to life”, called for the European Semester to be better aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and highlighted the key contribution that tools such as a Child Guarantee, a European Unemployment Benefit Reinsurance Scheme, or “flexibility in the rules of the Stability & Growth Pact” could play in achieving these objectives.

The present report sheds light on how the objective of “bringing the Pillar of Social Rights to life” may be pursued through the adoption of an EU social investment strategy in the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).

The use of  financial  instruments  within  the  EU  budget  is  becoming  more  and  more  common.  The  present  study  first  revises  key  concepts  in  determining  the  use  of  those  instruments,  before providing  an  analysis  of  the  functioning  and  consistency  of  the  ex-ante assessments,  which  are  required by  regulation  to  help  identify  the  rationale  and scope  for  financial  instruments.  It  offers  recommendations  to  improve  the  ex-ante assessment process and on the use of these instruments across the EU.

This briefing introduces the challenges that have been faced in delivering a discharge of the Council’s budget over the last decade, with particular regard to the Council’s executive activities. The authors analyse the institutional and legal constraints and put forward a number of recommendations aimed at achieving more accountability regarding the Council’s budget and executive expenditure without resorting to treaty reform.

The paper provides a mapping of the instruments available at EU and EMU level to support MS in financial distress. The Balance of Payment facility and the EFSM are managed by the Commission and rely on the EU budget as a guarantee. The Greek Loan Facility, the EFSF and the ESM, are instead based on intergovernmental agreements. Some of the instruments, created urgently to respond to the sovereign debt crisis are phasing out but is still unclear what the new architecture will be. We outline two potential developments for the ESM.

This business case analyses why and how E.ON reacted to the EU climate regulations and to the changing environment of the European energy market. In December 2008 the European Parliament adopted the EU Climate and Energy Package to significantly decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and to promote renewables. The overcapacity on the market and the drop of wholesale price of electricity hit traditional oil, gas and coal energy utilities such as E.ON. The fast development of renewables also impacted the market structure. Faced with a disrupted market, E.ON carried massive losses. This business case analyses the corporate answers to this profoundly changing environment, from 2008 more common responses to E.ON’s drastic decision to split in two firms in 2014.

The Bruges Series on European Business Cases collects business-oriented case studies which analyse the two-way interaction between the European Union and the business world in Europe. It is meant to promote business education with a European dimension and inform the discussion on key strategy and business issues which are affected by EU regulation, liberalisations and common policies of the European Union.

This report analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the Juncker Plan. Based on the Plan’s preliminary results, experts’ opinions, experiences with similar instruments and two case studies, this report identifies various short-term implementation risks that can threaten the success of the Plan within its initial three-year period and formulates policy recommendations to address such risks.
The main conclusion is that the Plan will not be sufficient to close the current EU investment gap – and therefore should be complemented by other actions to boost investment. The success of the Juncker Plan might be also threatened in the absence of certain conditions. The budget of the European Investment Advisory Hub (EIAH) should be commensurate to the needs, and reinforced advisory support has to be provided to countries with less sophisticated financial markets and weaker public administrations. The additionality of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) should be guaranteed by clarifying the conditions of eligibility for investment platforms and the conditions for granting the EU guarantee to National Promotional Banks. There should be effective progress in the third pillar of the Plan (devoted to render EU and national regulations more investment-friendly).  Further guidance for combining EFSI and ESI funds should be provided. The establishment of the European Investment Project Portal (EIPP) must be complemented with mechanisms for standardization and actions to promote the establishment of transparent and well-designed infrastructure pipelines at the national and regional level.
The report also analyses possible long-term scenarios; in particular, the possibility that EFSI leads to the establishment of a system of public investment banks in Europe and the possibility that it becomes the seed of a future euro area macro-economic stabilization capacity.
Finally, the report provides a more on-the-ground analysis of the possible contributions of the Juncker Plan in two major areas: digital infrastructure and energy efficiency. The two case studies stress the need to deliver on the third pillar of the Plan by improving EU and national regulatory frameworks in order to remove non-financial barriers to investment. In both areas there is a concrete risk of geographical concentration but evidence also point out that EFSI can serve to help structure and finance small-sized and high-risk investment projects.

This Policy Paper edited in the framework of the Vision Europe initiative, deals with the challenge of convergence and cohesion facing inequalities in Europe.

The founding fathers of the European project assumed that, thanks to supranational economic cooperation, growing cohesion could be reached both between and within countries.

Europe is instead becoming more unequal, both between and within countries. The EU has stopped being a ‘convergence machine’, but there is no one-size-fits-all explanation for this.

The authors highlight some ongoing trends:

1. More people are living in work-poor households, whist at the same time, these households are experiencing increasingly higher poverty risks.

2. The EU is deeply affected by a human capital divide, both between and within the member states. Divides in skills and education spending are likely to exacerbate divergence further.

3. The EU has already had a considerable impact on the member states’ social policies, but its role is not clearly defined.

According to the authors, the European Union deserves a Social Triple A, if it actively supports both convergence towards higher aggregate levels of well-being across the member states and convergence towards more equality of individual well-being within the member states.
To this end, the European Union needs to put forward ‘dual-use’ policy packages that create a virtuous circle whereby both pan-European cohesion and national cohesion are enhanced.

This synthesis by David Rinaldi, Eulalia Rubio and Emmet Strickland summarizes the debates which took place at the occasion of a conference organised by the Jacques Delors Institute and the MACIF on the subject of what improvements to bring to the Economic and monetary union in which Pierre Moscovici delivered a keynote speech, before debating the subject with Xavier Ragot, President of the OFCE.

The debate was introduced by Alain Montarant, President of the MACIF, and moderated by Yves Bertoncini, Director of the Jacques Delors Institute. This synthesis is structured on the following three issues:
1. Resolving conflicts of legitimacy
(Eurogroup’s inherent dif-ficulty in making decisions &  conflict of national legitimacies)
2. Democratizing the eurozone
(lack of political accountability & important asymmetries in the influence of national parliaments on EMU decisions)
3. Tackling EMU divergences
(National Competitiveness Authorities & oordination Method for National Budgetary Committees)

In the early 21st century, poverty, impoverishment and inequalities are increasing across the European continent. These phenomena not only weaken the social cohesion of European societies, they also violate human rights, including social and civil and political rights, and question the functioning of democracy. How can people living in poverty make their voices heard in polarised societies, where more than 40% of assets and 25% of revenues are held by 10% of the population? This guide is the result of two years of collective discussion held within the framework of the project "The human rights of people experiencing poverty ". It was prepared with the assistance of many individuals and organisations, including people living in poverty, researchers, associations and representatives of public authorities. As well as off ering a critique of the current situation, analysing inequality and poverty through the prism of human rights, democracy and redistributive policies, the guide also invites the reader to explore the possibilities of a renewed strategy to fi ght poverty in order to restore a sense of social justice. It makes proposals that aim to overcome the stigmatisation and categorisation of people, opening pathways of learning to build well-being through sharing, avoiding waste and by enhancing public awareness around the principle of human dignity as a human right for all.