EMU and the Italian debt problem: destabilising periphery or destabilising the periphery?

Notermans, Ton; Piattoni, Simona

doi:10.1080/07036337.2020.1730353

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Massive government debt, a historic debt to GDP ratio, fear of systemic risk, and a cloudy political situation limits the ability of the government to focus on energy policy. Under European Union rules, Italy's debt problems and financial situation prevent government deficit spending to help grow the economy [60]. Notice that in the case of Italy, the 2017 CO 2 elasticity is negative and the GDP elasticity is negative, which is consistent with a slowdown in carbon dioxide emissions associated with a slowdown in economic activity.…”

Section: Decoupling Analysismentioning

confidence: 82%

Energy Related CO2 Emissions before and after the Financial Crisis

Sadorsky

2020

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The 2008–2009 financial crisis, often referred to as the Great Recession, presented one of the greatest challenges to economies since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Before the financial crisis, and in response to the Kyoto Protocol, many countries were making great strides in increasing energy efficiency, reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emission intensity and reducing their emissions of CO2. During the financial crisis, CO2 emissions declined in response to a decrease in economic activity. The focus of this research is to study how energy related CO2 emissions and their driving factors after the financial crisis compare to the period before the financial crisis. The logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method is used to decompose changes in country level CO2 emissions into contributing factors representing carbon intensity, energy intensity, economic activity, and population. The analysis is conducted for a group of 19 major countries (G19) which form the core of the G20. For the G19, as a group, the increase in CO2 emissions post-financial crisis was less than the increase in CO2 emissions pre-financial crisis. China is the only BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) country to record changes in CO2 emissions, carbon intensity and energy intensity in the post-financial crisis period that were lower than their respective values in the pre-financial crisis period. Compared to the pre-financial crisis period, Germany, France, and Italy also recorded lower CO2 emissions, carbon intensity and energy intensity in the post-financial crisis period. Germany and Great Britain are the only two countries to record negative changes in CO2 emissions over both periods. Continued improvements in reducing CO2 emissions, carbon intensity and energy intensity are hard to come by, as only four out of nineteen countries were able to achieve this. Most countries are experiencing weak decoupling between CO2 emissions and GDP. Germany and France are the two countries that stand out as leaders among the G19.

show abstract

Section: Decoupling Analysismentioning

confidence: 82%

Energy Related CO2 Emissions before and after the Financial Crisis

Sadorsky

2020

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Indeed, countries in the periphery were pressured into reducing public spending and enacting strict austerity measures and enact structural reform aimed at Europeanising their economies toward growth, limiting national sovereignty over public finances and worsening the democratic deficit of the EU, the trust of citizens and the support for integration and democracy (e.g. Della Porta, 2015; Notermans and Piattoni, 2020;Pagoulatos, 2020;Papadopoulous, 2020;Crespy, 2020). Within this context, the periphery had to liberalise the labour market (Burlone and Tassinari, 2020) and external pressure gave way to substantial public sector reforms (Mascio et al, 2020), at a high social cost (Guillénn et al, 2016).…”

Section: The Health Legacy Of the Great Recession And Austeritymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within this context, the periphery had to liberalise the labour market (Burlone and Tassinari, 2020) and external pressure gave way to substantial public sector reforms (Mascio et al, 2020), at a high social cost (Guillénn et al, 2016). As a result, the EU economic governance has been shown to contribute to destabilising the periphery both in its economic reality and in the perception of citizens, favouring the rise of Euroscepticism (Armingeon et al, 2016;Ruiz-Rufino and Alonso, 2017;Matthijs, 2017;Papadopoulos and Roumpakis, 2018;Notermans and Piattoni, 2020).…”

Section: The Health Legacy Of the Great Recession And Austeritymentioning

confidence: 99%

The State of the Health (Dis)-Union in the EU: the legacy of austerity under the trial of Covid-19

Ceron

Palermo²

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Covid-19 highlights the inadequacy of EU governance cross-border challenges, especially transnational health challenges, supporting the call for a Health Union. Health policy remains a near-exclusive national competence whose budget was heavily impacted by EU-driven austerity, especially in Southern Europe. The work provides a comprehensive empirical assessment of the pandemic case evidencing the limits of the current governance framework and tabled reform proposals. The analysis contributes an extended understanding of the implications of the lack of an effective EU public health competence. We assess comparatively (austerity-induced) geographic heterogeneities in health-care preparedness, outbreak, crisis management and outcomes, delineating the extent to which inequalities remain in the absence of a Health Union. Findings evidence an empirically grounded case for sovereignty pooling in the core transnational domain of public health while providing a preliminary policy evaluation of the proposal for a Health Union.

show abstract

“…However, finance ministers sitting in the Board of Governors of the ESM are not accountable as a collective (Howarth and Spendzharova 2019) for the decisions they take on the funding and content of specific programmes. By extension, one wonders on what democratic authority the Commission (and the ECB and IMF) acts in these negotiations and to what extent the specific positions and priorities that it adopts can be said to 'represent' the collective interests of the peoples of the creditor countries, let alone that they take full account of the interests of the debtor countries (Notermans and Piattoni 2020;Pagoulatos 2020). In fact, the way the finance ministers delegate this responsibility and the way the task is phrased in purely functional terms ignores the political implications and appears as a way for the ministers to distance themselves from any political responsibility for the outcome of the negotiations.…”

Section: Financial Stabilization Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratic legitimacy in the post-crisis EMU

Crum

Merlo

2020

Journal of European Integration

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines the democratic legitimacy of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) since the international financial crisis hit the euro area. From its inception, EMU has been marked by an asymmetry as its monetary pillar relied on output legitimacy while its economic pillar relied essentially on input legitimacy at the national level. The crisis severely challenged EMU's output legitimacy, which led to the establishment of new European-level institutions. We analyse the European Stability Mechanism, the European Semester, and Banking Union to take stock of their powers and the ways that these are balanced by mechanisms of legitimacy. Our main finding is that the intergovernmental and output-oriented approach that originally informed the legitimacy of EMU has remained prevalent after the crisis. However, as the three domainsin varying degreesaddress questions that are essentially political, we argue that the channels for input legitimacy at the European level remain deficient.

show abstract

EMU and the Italian debt problem: destabilising periphery or destabilising the periphery?

Cited by 8 publications

References 25 publications

Energy Related CO2 Emissions before and after the Financial Crisis

Energy Related CO2 Emissions before and after the Financial Crisis

The State of the Health (Dis)-Union in the EU: the legacy of austerity under the trial of Covid-19

Democratic legitimacy in the post-crisis EMU

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About