EU integration and party politics in the Balkans. EPC Issue Paper No.77, September 2014

Throughout the Balkan region, popularly elected leaders consistently fail to meet the democratic standards set by the EU and, more importantly, they fall short of their voters’ expectations. Distrust in representative institutions and disengagement from political life runs dramatically high among the people of the Balkan countries, and this generalised sense of dissatisfaction is starting to breed cynicism also towards the idea of a better future inside the Union. This study highlights the interplay between EU integration and national politics in the region, and that both are consequential for the quality of Balkan democracies, as well as reminiscent of the Western and Central and Eastern European experience.

Germany and the Eurocrisis: The timing of politics and the politics of timing. ACES Cases No. 2014.3

This paper speculates on the future of the euro. It uses Germany as a prism for the discussion about what might be done next to bolster the Euro. Researching the future—always a challenging task—is made harder when multiple state actors contend for prominence on the basis of shifting coalitions at home, all while interacting at an international level. That said, almost everyone accepts that German choices will play the central role in the path ultimately chosen. This paper thus foregrounds Germany’s role in shaping the way ahead, and it does so through an explicitly political framework focused primarily on the electoral implausibility of an alternative German policy course.

The Racial Equality Directive – from law to practice. IES Policy Brief Issue 2013/07/September 2013

The transposition of the Racial Equality Directive (2000/43/EC) has immensely enhanced legal protection against discrimination on the grounds of racial and ethnic origin throughout the EU. More than 10 years after its adoption, the main challenge identified in many Member States is the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in practice, in particular with regard to access to justice. Ultimately it is up to the domestic courts to ensure effective implementation of anti-discrimination law. Polls regularly show that the discrepancy between the levels of discrimination experienced and discrimination reported by victims must be seriously addressed. Awareness is low not only among the public but also among the members of the legal professions, leading to under-reporting of discrimination cases. In addition, data that reflect the ethnic or racial composition of the population are scarce which makes it difficult to prove discrimination before the competent authorities. Moreover, certain procedural difficulties that affect access to justice and effective enforcement also stem from the short limitation periods foreseen in legislation, lengthy procedures, evidence, high costs and failures in the provision of legal aid, ineffective sanctions, as well as barriers in the form of language and issues relating to legal standing or legitimate interest. The law remains complex and remedies often inadequate.

The Goldkrieg: Revaluing the Bundesbank's Reserves and the Politics of EMU. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 08.6, 1998

In May and June 1997, Germany's commitment to Economic and Monetaty Union (EMU) underwent its most serious test ever when the Bundesbank and the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl dashed openly over the government's plans to revalue the country's gold reserves. Faced with a budget short-fall and strong political opposition to either tax increases or spending cuts, Finance Minister Waigel attempted to introduce a modest change in the Bundesbank's bookkeeping procedures to bring them in line with the standard practices at other European central banks. The Bundesbank resisted, arguing that the changes would infringe upon its closely guarded independence. This paper analyzes how the politics of coalition interacted with Germany's political institutions to cause this conflict.

The Drivers of Current Account Surplus in Germany and the Politics of Rebalancing in the Eurozone. EU Centre, Singapore Working Paper No. 24, April 2015

Current account deficits have caught the public’s attention as they have contributed to the European debt crisis. However, surpluses also constitute an issue as a deficit in any country must be financed through a surplus in another country. In 2013, Germany, now the world’s largest surplus economy, registered a record high US$273 billion surplus. This paper looks at what accounts for Germany’s surplus, revealing that the major driving factors include strong global demand for quality German exports, domestic wage restraint, an undervalued single currency, high domestic savings rate and interest rate convergence in the euro area. This paper echoes the US Treasury’s view that a persistent German surplus makes it harder for the eurozone as a whole and the southern peripheral economies in particular to recover from the current financial crisis by imposing a Europe-wide “deflationary bias” through pushing up the exchange rate of the euro, exporting feeble German inflation and projecting its ultra-tight macroeconomic policies onto crisis economies. This paper contends that Germany’s trade surplus is likely to endure as Germany and other eurozone countries uphold diverging views on the nature of the surplus engage in a blame-game amidst a sluggish rebalancing process. Prizing the surplus as a reflection of hard work and economic competitiveness, German authorities urge their southern eurozone colleagues to undertake bold structural reforms to correct the imbalance, while the hand-tied governments in crisis-stricken economies call on Germany to do its “homework” by boosting German demands for European goods and services.

Selbstbestimmung und Parteien in Südtirol: Territoriale und europäische Parteistrategien zwischen Autonomie und Sezession = Self-determination and parties in South Tyrol: Territorial and European party strategies between autonomy and secession. EDAP Paper 03/2016 03/2016

Since the final conflict settlement between Italy and Austria in 1992, ethnic politics in South Tyrol experienced insightful transformations. The consociational political system, which was implemented to tame centrifugal tendencies, has been losing its balance over the last decade, with proautonomy stances ceding ground to secessionist pressure in the Germanspeaking intra-ethnic arena. Adopting a contextual and strategic perspective on self-determination, this article traces the evolution of ethno-regionalist party strategies on the territorial and European dimension of party competition through a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of their electoral manifestos in the period between 1993 and 2013. In line with newest research on party strategies, the article empirically shows the strategic capacity of ethnic minority parties to challenge each other not only by shifting their positions on the different issue dimensions but also by the reframing of issues. While the increasing competition on the center-periphery axis leads to a new territorial frame, the rise of secessionism is accompagned by an end to the pro-European elite consensus.

Developing an Analytical Framework on Social Cohesion in Singapore. Reflections from the framing of social cohesion debates in the OECD and Europe. EU Centre Singapore Working Paper No. 17, November 2013

Official discourse in Singapore on social cohesion is often framed along the broad parameters of achieving racial and religious harmony. Many policies – formal and informal – and several laws evolved to manage these two aspects of society. Yet, as Singapore developed and with a much more complex socioeconomic environment both domestically and externally, there is perhaps a need to re-look the discourse and framework for discussing social cohesion. This paper takes a critical look at how the issue of social cohesion is framed in academic literature and policy discussions in Europe and the OECD, and tries to develop a broader analytical framework that could be useful in the Singapore context as it struggles with the multiple fault lines in society (beyond race and religion) that have emerged in the last decade or so.

Integrating Europeans: The Political Economy and Social Aspects of Europeanization. ACES Working Papers (Curriculum Development), 2012

This course, then, investigates the effects of integration on European citizens as well as the duality of the EU as a competitive and social model. It is sensitive to the involvement of social groups, protest, and domestic politics in the study of market integration. Some of the questions we explore are: What are the effects of regulatory policy-making on social actors, how do such actors’ strategies and behaviors change as a consequence, and how to they overcome their collective action problems? Why is it that the logic of integration has at times followed a logic of “permissive consensus” while at other times it has been described as a “constraining dissensus”? What is the importance of discourse in domestic politics in order to articulate and legitimate Europeanization? How do European identities change as a consequence of policymaking as well as of protest? To what extent do ordinary Europeans matter in terms of accepting and opposing the project of European integration, how do European citizens in core and peripheral EU states experience Europeanization, and how is their involvement in the integration project to be conceptualized?

North Rhine-Westphalia and the European Union. ZEI Discussion Paper C232, 2015

Keynote speech at the Final Ceremony of the ZEI Class of 2015. On the occasion of the Final Ceremony of the ZEI Master of European Studies “Class of 2015”, Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft congratulated the this year’s graduates and at the same time the ZEI and its staff for its past twenty years of innovative and successful academic work. Twenty years in which the European Union has succeeded in making progress in many areas, like Economic and Monetary Union, EU enlargement, introduction of the Euro and the changing role of the regions in the EU. North Rhine-Westphalia, the 8th largest region in the EU, is conducting proactive policy both in Berlin and in Brussels and combines European and regional politics in many areas. The European Union has to face new challenges, which can be only solved successful and confidence building as a common and even closer Union.

Greece as an example of “post-politics” in the eurozone. EPIN Commentary No. 28/9 November 2015

The negotiations between Greece and the EU and IMF tested the unity, limits, stamina and financial interdependence of eurozone member states. Greece emerged wounded from the fray, but Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has established beyond doubt his dominance in Greek politics, in defiance of partisan competitors at home and his counterparts’ wishes in the rest of Europe. In this EPIN Commentary the authors argue that – beyond the political significance of SYRIZA’s third electoral victory in seven months – this vote of confidence brings certain characteristics of both Greek and EU politics into sharper relief. The high-risk political activism undertaken by Syriza’s leadership in the first half of 2015 has (re)opened the debate about what kind of EU we live in, and contributed to the creation of another type of discourse in Europe – one that has so far been the preserve of established elites.