PALESTINIAN REFUGEES-HOW CAN A DURABLE SOLUTION BE ACHIEVED? CEPS Middle East Working Paper No. 6, July 2003

From the Introduction. The refugee question is at the core of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinians were first displaced as a direct consequence of the 1948 war and its aftermath. Twenty years later, another wave of Palestinian refugees was created as a consequence of the war during which Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The purpose of the present paper is to: • deliver a critical analysis of past approaches to deal with the refugee issue in the various attempts to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians; • discuss lessons to be learned from the settlement and its implementation mechanisms in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and • propose a direction for a long-term strategy for the international community that avoids past pitfalls and could ultimately lead both parties to an agreement.

An Assessment of the Penalties System for Infringements of EU Competition Law: Can Personal Sanctions be the Missing Piece of the Puzzle? IES WORKING PAPER 6/2013

Competition law seeks to protect competition on the market as a means of enhancing consumer welfare and of ensuring an efficient allocation of resources. In order to be successful, therefore, competition authorities should be adequately equipped and have at their disposal all necessary enforcement tools. However, at the EU level the current enforcement system of competition rules allows only for the imposition of administrative fines by the European Commission to liable undertakings. The main objectives, in turn, of an enforcement policy based on financial penalties are two fold: to impose sanctions on infringing undertakings which reflect the seriousness of the violation, and to ensure that the risk of penalties will deter both the infringing undertakings (often referred to as 'specific deterrence') and other undertakings that may be considering anti-competitive activities from engaging in them (often referred to as 'general deterrence'). In all circumstances, it is important to ensure that pecuniary sanctions imposed on infringing undertakings are proportionate and not excessive. Although pecuniary sanctions against infringing undertakings are a crucial part of the arsenal needed to deter competition law violations, they may not be sufficient. One alternative option in that regard is the strategic use of sanctions against the individuals involved in, or responsible for, the infringements. Sanctions against individuals are documented to focus the minds of directors and employees to comply with competition rules as they themselves, in addition to the undertakings in which they are employed, are at risk of infringements. Individual criminal penalties, including custodial sanctions, have been in fact adopted by almost half of the EU Member States. This is a powerful tool but is also limited in scope and hard to implement in practice mostly due to the high standards of proof required and the political consensus that needs first to be built. Administrative sanctions for individuals, on the other hand, promise to deliver up to a certain extent the same beneficial results as criminal sanctions whilst at the same time their adoption is not likely to meet strong opposition and their implementation in practice can be both efficient and effective. Directors’ disqualification, in particular, provides a strong individual incentive for each member, or prospective member, of the Board as well as other senior executives, to take compliance with competition law seriously. It is a flexible and promising tool that if added to the arsenal of the European Commission could bring balance to the current sanctioning system and that, in turn, would in all likelihood make the enforcement of EU competition rules more effective. Therefore, it is submitted that a competition law regime in order to be effective should be able to deliver policy objectives through a variety of tools, not simply by imposing significant pecuniary sanctions to infringing undertakings. It is also clear that individual sanctions, mostly of an administrative nature, are likely to play an increasingly important role as they focus the minds of those in business who might otherwise be inclined to regard infringing the law as a matter of corporate risk rather than of personal risk. At the EU level, in particular, the adoption of directors’ disqualification promises to deliver more effective compliance and greater overall economic impact.

Will the PRIPs' KID live up to its promise to protect investors? ECMI Commentary No. 33, 6 July 2012

Unveiled by the European Commission on July 3rd, the proposed Regulation on key information documents (KID) for packaged retail investment products (PRIPs) represents a step forward in enhancing the protection of retail investors and advancing the single market for financial services. While acknowledging in this Commentary that the KID is a commendable effort, ECMI/CEPS researcher Mirzha de Manuel Aramendía observes that pre-contractual disclosure is just one of the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of investor protection and regrets that other pieces, such as MiFID and the IMD, are not so ambitiously constructed.

Can Italy and Spain survive rates of 6-7%? CEPS Policy Brief No. 279, 27 July 2012

The sentiment that the euro is now in real danger is based in large part on the widespread conviction that interest rates of 6-7% are simply unsustainable for both Italy and Spain., After taking a closer look at the fundamentals, however, Daniel Gros concludes in this new Policy Brief that both countries should be able to live with this level of interest rates for quite some time, but only if they mobilize domestic savings, which remain strong in both countries. For Spain, some debt/equity swaps are also needed.

European deposit insurance: financing the transition. CEPS Commentary, 6 September 2012

Arguing that the planned move to put the ECB in charge of banking supervision would be incomplete without a European Deposit Insurance and Resolution Authority (EDIRA), Daniel Gros and Dirk Schoenmaker spell out in a new CEPS Commentary some underlying principles to guide a gradual transition under which only future risks would be shared while past losses would remain at the national level. They show that ultimately such a new institution would serve as a genuine source of confidence in the European banking system.

This recovery is different. CEPS Commentary 6 September 2012

The misguided belief that “this time is different” led policy-makers to permit the credit boom of the early 2000s to continue for too long, thus preparing the ground for the biggest financial crisis in living memory. But when it comes to the recovery this around, CEPS Director Daniel Gros argues in this Commentary that the belief that this time should not be different might be equally dangerous.

What distinguishes the euro crisis from a ‘normal’ financial crisis? CEPS Commentary, 6 November 2012

This Commentary attempts to discern the distinguishing features between the present euro crisis and the financial crisis brought on in the US by the subprime lending disaster and the ensuing collapse of banks and other financial institutions in 2007-08. It finds that whereas the US was able to bring its crisis to an end by socialising the dubious debt and stabilising its valuation so that it could migrate to other investors capable of bearing the risk, this pattern can be only partly repeated in the eurozone, where both debt socialisation and a return to normal risk assessment are more problematic.. It concludes, nevertheless, that the crisis should now abate somewhat given that most risk-averse institutions have by now sold their holdings of peripheral countries’ sovereign debt and especially in light of the ECB’s assurances that it will not allow the euro to disintegrate.

E3+3 coercive diplomacy towards Iran: Do the economic sanctions add up? CEPS Policy Brief No. 292, 6 June 2013

More than ten years of international negotiations have brought no resolution to the nuclear dispute with Iran. In January 2012 the EU and US autonomously adopted an unprecedented sanctions package, mainly directed at the Iranian oil industry. Eighteen months later, figures show that the Iranian economy has been hit hard. Sanctions have not changed the regime’s calculus, however. Instead of further upping the pressure on Iran, the authors argue for a return to a more balanced dual-track approach so as to reinforce the moderate narrative within the Iranian ruling elite.

Corporate social responsibility: a European perspective. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 13 No. 6, June 2013

From the Introduction. CSR grows at different rhythms. CSR varies from continent to continent, country from country, sector from sector and corporation from corporation. The Responsible Competitive Index (RCI) from the UK NGO Accountability and the Brazilian Business School, Fundaçao Dom Cabral, looks at how countries are performing in their efforts to promote responsible business practices and issues periodical indexes about such performances. The RCI’s index for 2007 analysed 108 countries (96% of global GDP). The analysis showed that more advanced economies do better in this area. The top 20 countries, by the ranking order of best performance, were the following: 1 Sweden, 2 Denmark, 3 Finland, 4 Iceland, 5 UK, 6 Norway, 7 New Zealand, 8 Ireland, 9 Australia, 10 Canada, 11 Germany, 12, Netherlands, 13 Switzerland, 14 Belgium, 15 Singapore, 16 Austria, 17 France, 18 USA, 19 Japan, and 20 Hong Kong, etc. However, it is important to bear in mind that advanced economies have often moved their more dirty industries to other parts of the world where there are less stringent environmental and social standards. As a result, other countries may be polluting on their behalf, and the indexes do not factor those in.2

The European Economic Community's Third Enlargement. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 12 No. 6, June 2012

The European Economic Community's third enlargement round brought up a series of tensions between member states, which would require a great amount of time and effort to be solved. Bigger issues, such as the British contribution, the community budget and the Common Agriculture Policy reforms, are going to be at the centre of EEC's agenda in the 1970-80's, and ultimately, British and French national interests on these matters will prevail. The basic argument of this article is that member states used the prospect of enlargement to achieve particular policy goals, such as improvements in decisionmaking procedures and budget reform, and only after those accomplishments, member states agreed on concluding the third enlargement.

From Structure to Substance: Has the Constitutional Treaty improved the Chances for a Common Foreign and Security Policy? Research Papers in Law, 6/2005

From the Introduction. A common foreign and security policy for the European Union is an issue of the day. While most academic and many political observers believe that it would be in the interest of the Union to have a common policy, there is quite some disagreement as to how this is to be achieved and whether it should be accomplished in an assured and regular manner or whether it should come about on an ad hoc basis only when it is in the clear interest of all member states at any particular time. In other words, is a common foreign policy to be a fundamental characteristic of the Union or is it to be an occasional occurrence when advantageous and convenient, the ‘C’ in CFSP – as one observer has sarcastically commented – standing not for ‘Common’ but for ‘Convenient’?2