Answering the Call of the European Court of Justice in Eurofoods a Proposed Package of Due Process Rights with a View Toward the 2012 Revision of the European Insolvency Regulation. IES WORKING PAPER 3/2011

This paper anticipates the 2012 revision of the European Insolvency Regulation, which is the sole Union legislation on the subject of cross border insolvency proceedings. The paper first describes the historical background of the Regulation. The salient point of the historical discussion is that the Regulation is the product of forty years of negotiation and arises from a historical context that is no longer applicable to current economic realities, i.e. it provides for liquidation, not reorganization, it doesn’t deal with cross border groups of companies, and it lacks an effective mechanism for transparency and creditor participation. The paper then reviews the unique hybrid jurisdictional system of concurrent universal and territorial proceedings that the Regulation imposes. It looks at this scheme from a practical viewpoint, i.e. what issues arise with concurrent proceedings in two states, involving the same assets, the same creditors, and the same company. The paper then focuses on a significant issue raised by the European Court of Justice in the Eurofoods case, i.e. the need to comply with fundamental due process principles that, while not articulated in the Regulation, lie at the core of Union law. Specifically, the paper considers the ramifications of the Court’s holding that “a Member State may refuse to recognize insolvency proceedings opened in another Member State where the decision to open the proceedings was taken in flagrant breach of the fundamental right to be heard.” In response to the Court’s direction, this paper proposes a package of due process rights, consisting principally of an accessible, efficient and useful insolvency database, the infrastructure of which already exists, but the content and use of which has not yet been developed. As part of a cohesive three part due process package, the paper also proposes the formation of cross border creditors' committees and the establishment of a European Insolvency Administrator. Finally, on the institutional level, this paper proposes that the revision of the Regulation and the development of the insolvency database not only need to be coordinated, but need to be conceptualized, managed and undertaken, not as the separate efforts of diverse institutions, but as a single, unified endeavor.

The 2015 Greek Referendum. EPIN Commentary No. 24, 3 July 2015

The Greek government called a snap referendum on the proposals advanced by the EU partners and creditor, i.e. the draft Agreement submitted by the EU/IMF to the Eurogroup of 25 June 2015. There has been a major controversy among Greek constitutional lawyers about whether this referendum meets constitutional requirements. No doubt, the constitutional validity of this referendum could be challenged on pure normative terms (nature of the question, time limit); yet this shock call for a referendum appeared as the only political solution for the Greek government facing the dilemma of whether to take the plunge of having five-months of negotiations transformed into a negative-sum game.

Eurozone Crisis and Social Models: What We Can Learn from Italy and Spain. CES Papers - Open Forum #20, 2013-2014

This paper considers the role of social model features in the economic performance of Italy and Spain during the run-up to the Eurozone crisis, as well as the consequences of that crisis, in turn, for the two countries social models. It takes issue with the prevailing view - what I refer to as the “competitiveness thesis” - which attributes the debtor status of the two countries to a lack of competitive capacity rooted in social model features. This competitiveness thesis has been key in justifying the “liberalization plus austerity” measures that European institutions have demanded in return for financial support for Italy and Spain at critical points during the crisis. The paper challenges this prevailing wisdom. First, it reviews the characteristics of the Italian and Spanish social models and their evolution in the period prior to the crisis, revealing a far more complex, dynamic and differentiated picture than is given in the political economy literature. Second, the paper considers various ways in which social model characteristics are said to have contributed to the Eurozone crisis, finding such explanations wanting. Italy and Spain ́s debtor status was primarily the result of much broader dynamics in the Euro- zone, including capital flows from richer to poorer countries that affected economic demand, with social model features playing, at most, an ancillary role. More aggressive reforms responding to EU demands in Spain may have increased the long term social and economic costs of the crisis, whereas the political stalemate that slowed such reforms in Italy may have paradoxically mitigated these costs. The comparison of the two countries thus suggests that, in the absence of broader macro-institutional reform of the Eurozone, compliance with EU dictates may have had perverse effects.

What do Eurozone academics think about EMU reform? On broad support and German exceptionalism. Bruges Political Research Papers 41/2015.

This paper is an empirical contribution to the literature on the formation of policy preferences on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) reform within its Member States. In the aftermath of the euro crisis, many proposals to ‘complete’ EMU have been tabled. However, discord among Member States has led to a piecemeal restructuring of EMU. For this paper, a survey has been conducted among euro area academic experts, gauging preferences on EMU reform. We find that general consensus masks significant discord among academics from different Member States. Our data indicates the existence of conflicting national epistemic communities, bound by shared causal beliefs on macro-economic policy. Academics within the key creditor Member State, Germany, assume an outlier position. Within the sample of German academics, economists are particularly strongly opposed to all moves in the direction of fiscal or social union. As economists are those academic experts most likely to influence the economic policy beliefs dominant among the German policy elite, these results are highly politically salient. We confront these findings with the literature on the exceptionalism of German economics. We contend that our results substantiate the claim that inadequate EMU reform and, more generally, the EU approach to the Eurozone crisis, can be partially explained by the firm grip these economic doctrines hold over the economics profession and policy-making circles in Germany.