Europe's failure to specialise in new ICT sectors and firms is likely to hold back Europeâ??s post-crisis recovery. Europe lacks in particular leading platform providers, who are capturing most of the value in the new ICT ecosystem. â?¢ In-depth analysis of some specific new emerging ICT...

The European Central Bankâ??s monetary policy targets the euro-area average inflation rate. By setting conditions for the area as a whole it should ensure symmetric price adjustment. Indeed, consumer price inflation rates provide little evidence of asymmetricadjustment during 2009-11. Only...

This paper discusses the creation of a European Banking Union. First, we discuss questions of design. We highlight seven fundamental choices that decision makers will need to make: Which EU countries should participate in the banking union? To which categories of banks should it apply? Which...

Problems in the banking system are at the core of the current crisis. The establishment of a banking union is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for eventual crisis resolution that respects the integrity of the euro. The European Commissionâ??s proposal for the establishment of a...

Five years after the first tremors in Europeâ??s banking system, what makes the crisis unique is the absence of a democratically accountable decision-making framework; there is an 'executive deficit' that compounds Europeâ??s democratic deficit. The author argues that the only way to resolve...

The single currency was expected to make balance of payments irrelevant between the euro-area member states. This benign view has been challenged by recent developments, especially as imbalances between euro-area central banks have widened within the TARGET2 settlement system. Current-account...

This policy contribution provides up-to-date evidence of the strong heterogeneity in the relationships between the five biggest EU economies with the Southern Mediterranean Countries (SMCs). Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia are still strongly tied to France, Italy and Spain, in terms of investments,...

The economic and financial crisis in Europe is affecting the financing of long-term infrastructure investment. There are multiple clearly identifiable channels: reduced demand for long-term investment, a tightening prudential framework for lending, upward adjustment of risk perception, complex...

The crisis has underlined the strong interdependence between the euro-area banking and sovereign crises. To understand the role domestic banks have played in holding sovereign debt, a breakdown of government debt by holding sectors is required. The data shows that at the start of the crisis,...

A drastic change in the way we produce and consume energy is necessary to contain the risk of global environmental catastrophe. For its part, the EU has set agreed to a greenhouse gas reduction target of 80-95 percent by 2050, compared to 1990. However, with the current fuel mix, even the most...