Transatlantic Trade and Investment negotiations are resuming. Popular support varies across Europe, we identify four distinct groups. Removing trade protectionism will generally benefit ordinary people. However, some protectionism may increase, especially in investment chapters. If governments rather give in to corporations than risk being sued by them frivolously, corporatism will strengthen, not weaken.
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New rules about deficits run by Member State governments have been announced by the European Commission. They are phrased as “guidance” so no Parliamentary approval is needed. They are said to “encourage structural reforms and investment”, but IREF shows that they discourage structural reforms and encourage only “investment”.
9 EU countries have not adopted the Euro, 19 have. Both groups include similar proportions of countries with high, medium and low levels of economic freedom. However, IREF’s investigation of what has been happening to economic freedom in the two groups reveals significant differences. While non-Euro countres moved towards more fiscally related freedom, in Eurozone it stagnated or declined.
The Greeks have voted and the left-wing Syriza emerged as the clear winner. There will now follow intensive discussions about Greek reforms and the relationship between Greece and the rest of the world. The labour market is one of the core battlegrounds in Greece. It is very difficult for the country’s unemployed to re-enter the labor market. This is borne out not only by the high unemployment rates but also by data on duration of holding current job. In no Eurozone country has the average employed worker held his or her job as long as in Greece. It is not clear whether the new government has either the incentive and/or the means to adjust the privileges of labour market insiders for the benefit of current outsiders.
For several weeks Greece has been, once again, at the centre of European economic policy. Grexit, Greece’s withdrawal from the Eurozone, is being debated again, in light of the forthcoming Greek election of 25 January. Proponents point to the opportunity after such withdrawal for a massive devaluation of Greek currency which would lower the price of Greek goods and services and make them competitive again.
However, a quick look at different measures of economic freedom in the Eurozone countries suggests, that strong devaluation alone would not shuffle Greek problems off this mortal coil.
This article is from our mini-series looking at modern fiscal issues surrounding items listed in the famous 18th century English carol “Twelve Days of Christmas”. We believe that if the…
To replace the original sacrifice of two turtle doves, the biggest European authority in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church, dictated what people should eat. EU governments continue doing the same, by fiscal means. However, this fiscal policy is full of paradoxes. Governments tax consumption of “bad” food, while also subsidising its production at the same time.
A partridge in a pear tree, the famous gift of the first day of Christmas, is at the centre of an EU fiscal paradox: European taxpayers are paying for extensive programmes to protect the habitat of the dwindling species. At the same time, they are fiscally forced to help to destroy partridge’s habitat through subsidised conversions into farmland and suburban development.
New ECJ ruling confirms that member states can currently deprive non-residents of welfare payments. Yet, it has been popularly portrayed as a new tool to protect the spiralling costs of EU welfare states. We show that on the contrary, costs may rise, both in the short and long run, and the ruling makes welfare states even more entrenched. Meanwhile, the dominant part of “international welfare tourism” continues since the largest claimants are those with jobs, and the ruling only reinforces this trend.
Free movement of people, capital, goods and services across national borders. Those are, allegedly, the pillars of European integration. One of them, the free movement of capital, crossed swords twice…