The EU-EFIGE/Bruegel-unicredit dataset. Bruegel Working Paper 2012/13, October 2012

This paper describes the EU-EFIGE/Bruegel-UniCredit dataset (in short the EFIGE dataset), a database recently collected within the EFIGE project (European Firms in a Global Economy: internal policies for external competitiveness) supported by the Directorate General Research of the European Commission through its 7th Framework Programme and coordinated by Bruegel. • The database, for the first time in Europe, combines measures of firms’ international activities (eg exports, outsourcing, FDI, imports) with quantitative and qualitative information on about 150 items ranging from R&D and innovation, labour organisation, financing and organisational activities, and pricing behaviour. Data consists of a representative sample (at the country level for the manufacturing industry) of almost 15,000 surveyed firms (above 10 employees) in seven European economies (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Austria, Hungary). Data was collected in 2010, covering the years from 2007 to 2009. Special questions related to the behaviour of firms during the crisis were also included in the survey. • We illustrate the construction and usage of the dataset, capitalising on the experience of researchers who have exploited the data within the EFIGE project. Importantly, the document also reports a comprehensive set of validation measures that have been used to assess the comparability of the survey data with official statistics. A set of descriptive statistics describing the EFIGE variables within (and across) countries and industries is also provided.

Smart choices for growth. Bruegel Policy Contribution 2012/21, November 2012

Recovery in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain is held back in part by structural barriers. Overcoming these requires structural reform and public investment. Given the limited availability of political and financial capital, prioritising reform efforts and spending is important, but difficult. The different success factors for individual sectors are complementary. Using the example of the high-tech industry, we make the case that only investing in one success factor (eg broadband infrastructure) without having a sufficient endowment of others (eg education) is unlikely to make the sector successful. One consequence of the complementarity of the different success factors is that public investment and reform efforts should be fine-tuned in order to match the endowment of other factors. This might imply an increase in efforts to tackle several structural barriers at the same time, but it might also imply reducing investment in less promising fields. This in turn requires strategic thinking about whether it is worthwhile pursuing development strategies that require investment in many success factors but that do not promise much success. Such a strategic approach to public investment and reform efforts might make the allocation of scarce public financial and political capital more efficient.

Private long-term investment in uncertain times. Bruegel Policy Contribution 2012/23, December 2012

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 transition of the financial system, and increasing macroeconomic, sovereign and regulatory risk. Some of the identified channels are potentially dangerous spillovers from the crisis that entail the risk of a downward spiral (eg increasing regulatory risk), while others are efficient market responses (eg reduced investment demand, correction of pricing of risk). Consequently, public policy instruments should not address the accessibility of long-term finance per se, but should explicitly target the critical channels.

The autonomy of the EU legal order and the law-making activities of international organizations. Some examples regarding the Council most recent practice. Research Papers in Law 03/2012

[Introduction.] It is generally believed that while the principle of the autonomy of the EU legal order, in the sense of constitutional and institutional autonomy that is to say what concerns the autonomous decision-making of the EU, has been clearly strengthened by the most recent jurisprudence of the Court of Justice (eg. Moxplant3, Intertanko or the Kadi/Al Baraakat judgements or the Opinion 1/2009 of the CJEU etc.) as well as, in my opinion, in many aspects by the Treaty of Lisbon, it is still valid to add that the principle of a favourable approach, stemming from the Court jurisprudence, for the enhanced openness of the EU legal order to international law has remained equally important for the EU4. On the other hand, it should be also seen that in a globalized world, and following the increased role of the EU as an international actor, its indispensable and crucial role concerning the creation of world (legal) order in many policy fields ( for example let's think about the G20 issues, the global economic and financial crisis, the role of the EU in promoting and protecting human rights worldwide, the implementation of the multilateral or regional conventional law, developed in the framework the UN (e.g. in the field of agriculture or environment etc) or what concerns the Kyoto process on climate change or the conservation of marine biological resources at international level etc), it seems reasonable and justified to submit that the influence, for example, of the law-making activities of the main stakeholder international organizations in the mentioned policy-areas on the EU (especially on the development of its constantly evolving legal order) or vice-versa the influence of the EU law-making practice on these international organizations is significant, in many aspects mutually interdependent and more and more remarkable. This tendency of the 21st century doesn't mean, however, in my view, that the notion of the autonomy of the EU legal order would have been weakened by this increasing interaction between international law and EU law over the passed years. This contribution is going to demonstrate and prove these departuring points by giving some concrete examples from the most recent practice of the Council (all occuring either in the second half of 2009 or after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty), and which relate to two very important policy areas in the EU, namely the protection of human rights and the Common Fishery Policy.

Liberalising trade in services: creating new migration opportunities? Research Paper in Law, 1/2010

Introduction. It is quite uncommon to associate migration with the rules on services trade. Indeed, all economic definitions of services insist on their immaterial nature and on the increased possibility of trading them ‘virtually’ over networks or else, without any physical movement of the parties involved. Somehow this ‘immaterial’ nature of services reflects on their providers/recipients which seem to be ‘invisible’. Even though most services still require the physical contact of the provider with the recipient1 and, when provided over national borders, do entail migration, service providers and/or recipients are rarely thought of as ‘immigrants’. This may be due to the fact that they enter the foreign territory with a specific aim and, once this aim accomplished, move back to their state of origin; technically they only qualify as short term non-cyclical migrants and are of little interest to policy-makers. A second reason may be that both service providers and recipients are economically desirable: the former are typically highly skilled and trained professionals and the latter are well-off ‘visitors’, increasing consumption in the host state. The legal definition of services in Article 57 TFEU (ex Art. 50 EC) further nourishes this idea about service providers/recipients not being migrants: the relevant Treaty rules only apply when the provisions on free movement of workers and freedom of establishment – themselves clearly linked to migration – do not apply. This distinction has been fleshed up by the ECJ which has consistently held that the distinction between the rules on establishment, on the one hand, and the rules on services, on the other, lies on duration.2 Indeed, all EC manuals state four types of service provision falling under the EC Treaty: a) where the service provider moves to the recipient’s state, for a short period of time (longer stay would amount to establishment), b) where the service recipients themselves move to the state where the service is offered (eg for medical care, education, tourism etc), c) where both service providers and recipients move together in another member state (eg a tourist guide accompanying a group travelling abroad) and d) where the service itself is provided across the borders (typically through the use of ICTs). None of these situations would typically qualify as migration. The above ‘dissociation’ between services and migration has been gradually weakened in the recent years. Indeed, migration is increasingly connected to the transnational provision of services. This is the result of three kinds of factors: developments in the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) case law; legislative initiatives in the EU; and the GATS. Each one of these is considered in some detail below. The aim of the analysis which follows is to show the extent to which (legislative and judicial) policies aimed at the free provision of services actively affect migration conditions within the EU. The EC rules on the provision of services primarily affect the movement of EU nationals. As it will be shown below, however, third country nationals (TCNs) may also claim the benefits of the rules on services, either as recipients thereof or as employees of some EC undertaking which is providing services in another member state (posted workers).

Financial risks and opportunities in the time of climate change. Bruegel Policy Brief ISSUE 2016/02 APRIL 2016

Real economic imbalances can lead to financial crisis. The current unsustainable use of our environment is such an imbalance. Financial shocks can be triggered by either intensified environmental policies, cleantech breakthroughs (both resulting in the stranding of unsustainable assets), or the economic costs of crossing ecological boundaries (eg floods and droughts due to climate change). Financial supervisors and risk managers have so far paid little attention to this ecological dimension, allowing systemic financial imbalances resulting from ecological pressures to build up. Inattention also leads to missed economic and financial opportunities from the sustainability transition.