Several proposals have been made on how sovereign risk premia in the euro area should be brought down, namely i) permanent pooling of funding through joint bond issuance, ii) temporary liquidity assistance through multilateral funds, iii) debt buybacks using multilateral funds, and iv) debt...

This Policy Brief by Christian Kopf examines the merits of a new proposal from France aimed at resolving the Greek debt crisis in which French commercial banks would swap €85.5 billion in Greek government bonds maturing between 2011 and 2014 into a combination of new long-term Greek bonds with...

The current “rules of the game” of the European Monetary Union, namely a fixed exchange rate, open capital accounts and the prohibition of monetary financing of government debt, have re-introduced sovereign default risk to its member states. Against this backdrop, this paper discusses...

The targeted increase of renewable energy sources in the European energy mix to 20% by 2020, and the goal of an 80-95% CO2 emissions reduction by 2050, will require changes to and extensions of the electricity grid. The integration of increasing shares of fluctuating renewable electricity,...

The background to this study is the establishment of the Single Payment Scheme (SPS), providing decoupled support to farmers, which was the central element of the 2003 CAP reform. The Member States of the EU-15 had to implement the SPS at the latest by 2007. The Member States had some...