Capital Markets Union: A Work in Progress: Quick and high impact measures for the Capital Markets Union. European Policy Brief No. 37, September 2015

Capital Markets Union has three objectives. The first objective is to improve access to finance for all businesses but especially SMEs; the second is to increase the share of capital markets in the funding mix of the real economy; and the third is to make capital markets more effective and integrate them more closely across borders. This paper examines the best impact measures for the Capital Markets Union to proceed successfully.

Early Parliamentary Elections in Macedonia: More of the same or new beginnings? CEPS Commentaries, 21 March 2014

There is no doubt that the prospect of EU accession has had a major impact in promoting much-needed reforms and building stable institutions in the countries of former Yugoslavia. Yet, as reflected in all the internationally recognised indicators, the goal of achieving effective democracy throughout the region remains very much a 'work in progress', especially in Macedonia. In this Commentary, Erwan Fouéré considers whether the main governing party in Macedonia will change its behaviour to enable the country to move forward.

Mutual Recognition: economic and regulatory logic in goods and services. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 24/June 2012

Mutual recognition is one of the most appreciated innovations of the EU. The idea is that one can pursue market integration, indeed "deep' market integration, while respecting 'diversity' amongst the participating countries. Put differently, in pursuing 'free movement' for goods, mutual recognition facilitates free movement by disciplining the nature and scope of 'regulatory barriers', whilst allowing some degree of regulatory discretion for EU Member States. This BEER paper attempts to explain the rationale and logic of mutual recognition in the EU internal goods market, its working in actual practice for about three decades now, culminating in a qualitative cost/benefit analysis and its recent improvement in terms of 'governance' in the so-called New Legislative Framework (first denoted as the 2008 Goods package) thereby ameliorating the benefits/costs ratio. For new (in contrast to existing) national regulation, the intrusive EU procedure to impose mutual recognition is presented as well, with basic data so as to show its critical importance to keep the internal goods market free. All this is complemented by a short summary of the scant economic literature on mutual recognition. Subsequently, the analysis is extended to the internal market for services. This is done in two steps, first by reminding the debate on the origin principle (which goes further than mutual recognition EU-style) and how mutual recognition works under the horizontal services directive. This is followed by a short section on how mutual recognition works in vertical (i.e. sectoral) services markets.