The EU Counter-Terrorism Policy Responses to the Attacks in Paris: Towards an EU Security and Liberty Agenda. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 81/February 2015

This paper examines the main EU-level initiatives that have been put forward in the weeks following the attacks in Paris in January 2015, which will be discussed in the informal European Council meeting of 12 February 2015. It argues that a majority of these proposals predated the Paris shootings and had until that point proved contentious as regards their efficacy, legitimacy and lawfulness. The paper finds that EU counterterrorism responses raise two fundamental challenges: A first challenge is posed to the freedom of movement, Schengen and EU citizenship. Priority is being given to the expanded use of large-scale surveillance and systematic monitoring of all travellers including EU citizens, which stands in contravention of Schengen and the free movement principle. A second challenge concerns EU democratic rule of law. Current pressures calling for the adoption of measures such as the EU Passenger Name Record challenge the scrutiny roles held by the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the EU on counterterrorism measures in a post-Lisbon Treaty setting. The paper proposes that the EU adopts a new European Agenda on Security and Liberty based on an EU security (criminal justice-led) cooperation model that is firmly anchored in current EU legal principles and rule of law standards. This model would call for ‘less is more’ concerning the use, processing and retention of data by police and intelligence communities. Instead, it would pursue better and more accurate use of data meeting the quality standards of evidence in criminal judicial proceedings.

Corporate Taxation in Europe: Let's get it together! CEPS Commentary, 16 February 2015

More comprehensive cooperation in corporate taxation at European level could significantly advance the region’s socio-economic prosperity, but its potential contribution is unfortunately overlooked in the current search for growth and job creation. Lucrative tax niches established in some member states and the fear of losing fiscal autonomy prevent several countries from accepting the move towards an EU single market for taxation. If ‘Lux leaks’ and other revelations of tax avoidance and evasion can succeed in changing the dominant attitudes in the European tax debate, this commentary outlines the steps that need to be taken to allow tax policy to play a positive role in promoting economic prosperity.

Green, Pink & Silver? The Future of Labour in Europe, Vol. 2. CEPS Paperback, 3 March 2015

Work is both an essential part of our daily lives and one of the major policy concerns across Europe. In this second volume of The Future of Labour in Europe, the authors explain in accessible language the findings of the NEUJOBS project on the job prospects of key industries and groups of people. They use three colours – green, pink and silver – to pinpoint areas with the largest challenges as well as the greatest potential. The conclusions are addressed to policy-makers, the business world, journalists, fellow academics and to anyone interested in the shape, size and character of the labour markets of tomorrow.

Labour Mobility in Europe: An untapped resource? CEPS Policy Brief No. 327, March 2015

Despite public perceptions, labour mobility is low in the EU, particularly within the euro area. The authors of this Policy Brief make four main points: first, that the economic and financial crisis has affected mobility patterns by redirecting flows away from the periphery, thus showing the limits of labour mobility potential within the current eurozone - largely due to the negligible mobility of nationals from large countries hit by the crisis. Second, east-west mobility has not been fundamentally affected by the crisis, and ten years after the eastern enlargement the number of East Europeans living in EU15 should be of no overall concern. Third, the long-term economic effects of mobility are uncertain, but potential negative effects are more likely to show up in sending countries than in receiving ones. Finally, in view of the lessons learned from the economic crisis, the Commission and member states should adopt a longer-term view on labour mobility. The authors recommend a further upgrade of job-matching tools, namely the EURES system, and should foster better recognition of qualifications and the exchange of best practices among mobility networks. In order to improve mobility in the longer term, the Commission and member states should improve the mobility of third-country nationals – starting with those completing tertiary education at an EU institution and able to find employment. The aim of improving mobility gives new impetus to the ‘mother tongue + two foreign languages’ objective and the European Benchmark of Language Competences Initiative, in particular competence in the first foreign language taught at school.

Evidence on migrants' integration in Europe

From the Introduction. This report summarizes the main outcomes of a multidisciplinary study carried out from September 2013 to March 2015 by a group of forty researchers from different disciplines (7) and countries (10). The project Knowledge for Integration Governance (KING) was co-funded by the European Commission DG Home Affairs and its activities have been steered by the Ismu Foundation with the aim to feed the debate on integration governance and provide knowledge on the state of play of migrant inclusion throughout the European Union. To ensure the study’s comprehensiveness seven disciplines were involved: demography, economics, political science, social science, applied social studies, public administration and European policy. This different expertise deepened the research through utilizing various perspectives. Notably, the inclusion of public administrators in the research team provided insights on the importance of the policy vision. An analytical and prescriptive combined approach was used. Therefore, moving from the Common Basic Principles on migrants’ integration KING’s frame is partly shaped on the heuristic model of R. Penninx. This model analyses integration as it occurs in three dimensions (legal-political, socio-economic, cultural-religious) taking into account migrants’ and receiving societies’ role and position at institutional, collective and individual levels. By looking at these dimensions, KING provides evidence on integration processes and policies useful to provide recommendations for a better implementation of the Common Basic Principles of migrants' integration.

Citizenship Deprivation: A Normative Analysis. Liberty and Security in Europe No. 82, 19 March 2015

Most critical analyses assess citizenship-deprivation policies against international human rights and domestic rule of law standards, such as prevention of statelessness, non-arbitrariness with regard to justifications and judicial remedies, or non-discrimination between different categories of citizens. This report considers instead from a political theory perspective how deprivation policies reflect specific conceptions of political community. We distinguish four normative conceptions of the grounds of membership in a political community that apply to decisions on acquisition and loss of citizenship status: i) a ‘State discretion’ view, according to which governments should be as free as possible in pursuing State interests when determining citizenship status; ii) an ‘individual choice’ view, according to which individuals should be as free as possible in choosing their citizenship status; iii) an ‘ascriptive community’ view, according to which both State and individual choices should be minimised through automatic determination of membership based on objective criteria such as the circumstances of birth; and iv) a ‘genuine link’ view, according to which the ties of individuals to particular States determine their claims to inclusion and against deprivation while providing at the same time objections against including individuals without genuine links. We argue that most citizenship laws combine these four normative views in different ways, but that from a democratic perspective the ‘genuine link’ view is normatively preferable to the others. The report subsequently examines five general grounds for citizenship withdrawal – threats to public security, non-compliance with citizenship duties, flawed acquisition, derivative loss and loss of genuine links – and considers how the four normative views apply to withdrawal provision motivated by these concerns. The final section of the report examines whether EU citizenship provides additional reasons for protection against Member States’ powers of citizenship deprivation. We suggest that, in addition to fundamental rights protection through EU law and protection of free movement rights, three further arguments could be invoked: toleration of dual citizenship in a political union, prevention of unequal conditions for loss among EU citizens, and the salience of genuine links to the EU itself rather than merely to one of its Member States.

Comparing fiscal multipliers across models and countries in Europe. National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 278, March 2015

This paper employs fifteen dynamic macroeconomic models maintained within the European System of Central Banks to assess the size of fiscal multipliers in European countries. Using a set of common simulations, we consider transitory and permanent shocks to government expenditures and different taxes. We investigate how the baseline multipliers change when monetary policy is transitorily constrained by the zero nominal interest rate bound, certain crisis-related structural features of the economy such as the share of liquidity-constrained households change, and the endogenous fiscal rule that ensures fiscal sustainability in the long run is specified in terms of labour income taxes instead of lump-sum taxes.

Die proto-konstitutionelle Etablierung der europäischen Innenpolitik, Rückblick und Ausblick auf Bedingungen föderaler Ordnung in Europa = The proto-constitutional establishment of European domestic policy. Review and outlook on conditions of federal order in Europe. ZEI Discussion Paper C225, 2014

ZEI Director Prof. Ludger Kühnhardt recalls the leading ideas of federalism as territorial equivalent for political pluralism. Celebrating the 80th anniversary of Bonn historian and political scientist Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Schwarz, he reflects on the emerging EU domestic policies in ZEI Discussion Paper C 225.

Discussions in Europe on Variable Compensation in the Financial Sector. EU Centre Singapore Working Paper no. 20, February 2014

Bonuses – which are often used to mitigate principal-agent problems and to encourage employees to work harder – have increased tremendously in the financial sector during the last decade, and have often been seen as a contributing factor to the financial crisis of 2008. The recent European Union (EU) action to adopt a policy that restricts bonuses paid to bankers may seem promising at first, but this does not address the real issues behind variable rewards. Compensation policies should be changed to encourage responsible risk-taking and decision-making through the implementation of broader performance metrics, forfeitable holdbacks and hybrid bonds. Furthermore, a change in organisational culture is needed to improve ethical behaviour leading to a re-balancing of stakeholders’ interests in the financial sector.