EU Borders and Their Controls: Preventing unwanted movement of people in Europe? CEPS Essay No. 6, 14 November 2013

his Essay attempts to take a step back from the tragic event in the first week of October 2013, when a boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa and some 300 persons drowned seeking safe harbour. It sets out to examine the issue of EU border controls from the perspectives of the technologies, new and old, building on a variety of scholarly disciplines to understand what is happening to border controls on the movement of persons in the EU and why the results are so deadly. The Essay opens with an overview of what actually happens at the EU’s external borders. It then moves on to assess the old and new set of border control technologies that are deployed at the EU external borders, and how new technologies such as those based on automated controls and biometrics, are transforming the classical principles of European border controls. It then covers the reasons why people are refused admission at the EU’s external borders and the extent to which new border and surveillance technologies would assist in the effective controls in light of EU border law. Conclusions are finally offered on the articulation between the facts of EU border controls on persons and the claims and proposals for new technologies that are emerging from the EU institutions.

Economic and Structural Database for the MEDPRO Project. MEDPRO Report No. 5, May 2013

This report presents the economic and structural database compiled for the MEDPRO project. The database includes governance, infrastructure, finance, environment, energy, agricultural data and development indicators for the 11 southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs) studied in the MEDPRO project. The report further details the data and the methods used for the construction of social accounting, bilateral trade, consumption and investment matrices for each of the SEMCs.

Institutions and Structural Unemployment: Do Capital-Market Imperfections Matter? CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 00.8, December 2000

This paper analyzes whether differences in institutional structures on capital markets contribute to explaining why some DECO-countries, in particular the Anglo-Saxon countries, have been much more successful over the last two decades in producing employment growth and in reducing unem­ployment than most continental-European DECO-countries. It is argued that the often-blamed labor market rigidities alone, while important, do not provide a satisfactory explanation for these differ­ences across countries and over time. Financial constraints are potentially important obstacles against creating new firms and jobs and thus against coping well with structural change and against moving successfully toward the "new economy". Highly developed venture capital markets should help to alleviate such financial constraints. This view that labor-market institutions should be sup­plemented by capital market imperfections for explaining differences in employment performances is supported by our panel data analysis, in which venture capital turns out to be a significant insti­tutional variable.

Croatia and the structural funds – Doing without an Ottoman Empire bypass bridge. CEPS Commentary, 29 July 2013

In his latest commentary, Associate Senior Fellow Michael Emerson hails Croatia’s accession to the EU as a fine step forward towards the official goal of integration of the whole of the Balkans into the EU. At the same time, he warns of the folly underway of the serious attention being paid by the European Commission to the newest member state’s petition to construct a multi-million euro bridge over a 9-km stretch of Bosnian land (the ‘Neum corridor’) that inconveniently but temporarily interrupts a non-stop drive along Croatia’s Dalmatian coast.