Europe’s reactive and protective muddling through: the results of a summit in fire fighting mode. EPC Post-Summit Analysis, 19 October 2015

The EU’s October summit was dominated by one issue; the migration and refugee crisis, with EU leaders intent on putting on a public display of unity after weeks of bitter arguments, and concentrating on fire-fighting and immediate measures to tackle the most pressing reasons for, and impacts of, the crisis. Longer-term measures to address some of the root causes of increased migratory flows, support for the integration of newly arrived refugees or the introduction of new channels of legal migration, were not discussed. The Summit also spent little time on two issues that had originally been expected to be a key part of the agenda: the forthcoming British referendum on EU membership, where irritation with the slow pace of talks and British vagueness about its demands were in evidence; and the governance of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), where EU leaders missed another opportunity for a thorough debate about future perspectives on the basis of the ‘Five Presidents’ Report’.

Defying the Treaty: The Influence of the Polish and Lithuanian Council Presidencies on the Development of the Eastern Partnership. EU Diplomacy Paper No. 6, October 2014

Many scholars now argue that the Treaty of Lisbon has removed the role and influence of the rotating Council Presidency in the domain of the European Union’s foreign affairs. This paper will, however, go beyond a superficial, treaty-based analysis of the influence of the post-Lisbon rotating Council Presidency and instead look at two primary, residual, informal Presidential roles, namely agenda-shaping and brokering. It will examine the extent to which these informal roles allowed the Polish and Lithuanian Council Presidencies of July to December 2011 and 2013 respectively to influence the development of the bilateral, multilateral and internal tracks of the Eastern Partnership. The paper will argue that the considerable influence of these rotating Presidencies defied the logic of the Lisbon Treaty, suggesting that the ‘golden age’ of this six-month position, whereby individual Member States pursue foreign policy issues of significant domestic interest at the European level, has not yet passed.

DG CONNECT’s Stakeholder Engagement Strategy. IES Policy Brief Issue 2013/03 • April 2013

Summary. How do we ensure that public policy represents the interests of all, rather than a select few? How will we ensure it draws upon the best insights and talents of key stakeholders? The European Commission’s DG CONNECT recently announced the results of its Stakeholder Engagement Survey, which is designed to ‘provide empirical results and feedback about existing practices and signal gaps and challenges for action in the area of stakeholder engagement.’ (Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Stakeholders Unit D4, 2013, p.4). The survey launched a new round of reflection on the Commission’s relations with its stakeholders by asking respondents to reflect on the way in which they interact with DG CONNECT. The strategic objective is to see how ICTs can be used in novel ways to enhance support for policymaking from stakeholders in the EU. The Stakeholder Engagement Survey makes a start at answering critical questions about use of ICT as a tool to build ‘smarter policy’ as part of DG CONNECT’s wider step toward defining a strategy for stakeholder engagement. This IES Policy Brief welcomes this current work-in-progress, and outlines some of the challenges that may await the European Commission as it seeks to exploit the full potential of ICT in stakeholder engagement. It provides an initial analysis of the results of this first Stakeholder Engagement Survey, and concludes that whilst many things have changed with regards to tools that policymakers can use to elicit input into policymaking, certain challenges have remained very much the same.

Banks and the political economy of the sovereign debt crisis in Italy and Spain. CES Papers - Open Forum #18, 2013-2014

This paper sets out to explain why Spain experienced a full-fledged sovereign debt crisis and had to resort to euroarea financial assistance for its banks, whereas Italy did not. It undertakes a structured comparison, dissecting the sovereign debt crisis into a banking crisis and a balance of payments crisis. It argues that the distinctive features of bank business models and of national banking systems in Italy and Spain have considerable analytical leverage in explaining the different scenarios of the crises in each country. This ‘bank-based’ analysis contributes to the flourishing literature that examines changes in banking with a view to account for the differentiated impact of the global banking crisis first and the sovereign debt crisis in the euroarea later.