How much does EU citizenship cost? The Maltese citizenship-for-sale affair: A breakthrough for sincere cooperation in citizenship of the union? CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 64, April/2014

How much does European citizenship cost in the EU? This was the question that has raised so much controversy over the Maltese citizenship-for-sale programme. The outright selling of Maltese nationality to rich foreigners led to unprecedented responses by the European Parliament and European Commission. This paper examines the affair and its relevance for current and future configurations of citizenship of the EU. It studies the extent to which member states are still free to lay down the grounds for the acquisition and loss of nationality without any EU supervision and accountability. It provides a comparative overview of member state schemes and the exact price for buying citizenship and a residency permit in the EU. It is argued that the EU’s intervention on the Maltese citizenship-for-sale affair constitutes a legal precedent for assessing the lawfulness of passport-for-sale or golden migration programmes in other EU member states. The affair has also revealed the increasing relevance of a set of European and international legal principles limiting member states’ discretion over citizenship matters and providing a supranational constellation of accountability venues scrutinising the impact of their decisions over citizenship of the Union. The Maltese citizenship-for-sale affair has placed at the forefront the EU general principle of sincere cooperation in nationality matters. Member states’ actions in the citizenship domain cannot negatively affect in substance the concept and freedoms of European citizenship. That notwithstanding, the European institutions’ insistence on the need for Maltese nationality law to require a ‘genuine link’ in the form of an effective residence criteria for any rich applicants to benefit from the fast-track naturalisation poses a fundamental dilemma from the angle of Union citizenship: what is this genuine link really about? And what is precisely ‘habitual’, ‘effective’ or ‘functional’ residence? It is argued that by supporting the ‘real connections’ as the most relevant standard, the European institutions may be paradoxically fuelling nationalistic misuses by member states of the ‘genuine link’ as a way to justify restrictive integration policies on the acquisition of nationality.

The Revision of the Insurance Mediation Rules at EU Level and its Impact on Consumer Protection

The European Commission has put forward a new proposal for a directive on insurance mediation which should provide for significant changes in practices of selling insurance products and guarantee enhanced level of consumer protection. This proposal accompanies other regulatory initiatives in the insurance sector, all of them pursuing three main objectives: firstly, a strengthened insurance supervision with convergent supervisory standards at EU level; secondly, a better risk management of insurance companies; and thirdly a greater protection of policyholders. All these initiatives contribute to the EU programme on consumer protection and herald a new approach to EU insurance regulation and supervision. However, while the new supervisory rules are a direct response to the financial crisis and shortcomings of crossborder cooperation between national supervisors, the plans for the revision of insurance mediation rules were conceived much earlier due to scandals with mis-selling of insurance products in the United States and some EU Member States. This article will focus entirely on the Commission’s initiative in the consumer mediation area and the aspects of insurance supervision and risk management will be dealt with in separate articles.

The current state, problems and future of Germany's air and missile defence. OSW Commentary No. 105, 2013-04-10

From German point of view, air and missile defence systems are of little relevance for the protection of Germany’s territory. However, they are seen as important for conducting ‘out of area’ operations, providing military assistance to allies, and for Germany’s political and military- technical position within NATO. The Bundeswehr has been modernising its air and missile defence systems for several years. The modernisation of very short-range and short-range systems is slightly behind schedule. Plans to modernise the medium-range air and missile defence have been encountering problems since the United States decided to refrain from buying the jointly developed MEADS system. Therefore Germany is currently considering using the results of the MEADS program in the development of its own medium-range air and missile defence system, possibly in co-operation with France and Italy. Such a system would ensure protection against short-range ballistic missiles (up to 1000 km) and might become part of NATO’s ballistic missile defence, replacing the Patriot batteries which Germany is currently operating. Furthermore, Germany could expand its involvement in NATO’s ballistic missile defence in the future by buying or developing system to intercept medium- and intermediate- range ballistic missiles (up to 3000 km and 5500 km). The final decision on this matter has not yet been taken, and will be left for the successive governments of Germany to resolve. It will depend on a number of political, military and financial factors.

An economy with unrealistic indicators: an evaluation of the economic situation in Belarus and a forecast for 2013. OSW Commentary No. 103, 2013-02-20

The macroeconomic results achieved by Belarus in 2012 laid bare the weakness and the inefficiency of its economy. Belarus’s GDP and positive trade balance were growing in the first half of last year. However, this trend was reversed when Russia blocked the scheme of extremely lucrative manipulations in the re-export of Russian petroleum products by Belarus and when the demand for potassium fertilisers fell on the global market. It became clear once again that the outdated Belarusian model of a centrally planned economy is unable to generate sustainable growth, and the Belarusian economy needs thorough structural reforms. Nevertheless, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka consistently continues to block any changes in the system and at the same time expects that the economic indicators this year will reach levels far beyond the possibilities of the Belarusian economy. Therefore, there is a risk that the Belarusian government may employ – as they used to do – instruments aimed at artificially stimulating domestic demand, including money creation. This may upset the relative stability of state finances, which the regime managed to achieve last year. The worst case scenario would see a repeat of what happened in 2011, when a serious financial crisis occurred, forcing Minsk to make concessions (including selling the national network of gas pipelines) to Moscow, its only real source of loans. It thus cannot be ruled out that also this time the only way to recover from the slump will be to receive additional loan support and energy subsidies from Russia at the expense of selling further strategic companies to Russian investors.

The Market for Tractors in the EU: Price Differences and Convergence. Factor Markets Working Documents No. 35, February 2013

This study evaluates the degree of segmentation of the market for agricultural machinery and equipment in the EU. We focus on agricultural tractors, the most common and biggest investment in machinery and equipment in the agricultural sector. By using country price data for individual tractor models, we test the law of one price, i.e. the existence of a common price for tractors across EU member states. We find that significant price differences exist, yet unlike most other studies we find that large price deviations are penalised within a short time. The study also shows that transport costs are an important source of price differences, as domestic production leads to lower prices on the domestic market and as price convergence is negatively correlated with distance. Finally, price differences should not solely be understood from a geographical perspective, as evidence supports the idea that farmers’ buying power is significant in explaining price differences within countries.

Greater TTIP Ambition in Chemicals: Why and how. CEPS Special Report, 28 July 2015. Paper No. 10 in the CEPS-CTR project ‘TTIP in the Balance’ and CEPS Special Report No. 114/July 2015.

To date, the negotiations over chemicals in the Translatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have not shown sufficient ambition. The talks have focused too much on the differences in the two ‘systems’, rather than on the actual levels of health and environmental protection for substances regulated by both the US and the EU. Given the accomplishments within the OECD and the UN Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS), the question is whether TTIP can be any more ambitious in the area of chemicals? We find that there is no detailed or systematic knowledge about how the two levels of protection in chemicals compare, although caricatures and stereotypes abound. This is partly due to an obsessive focus on a single US federal law, the Toxic Subtances Control Act (TSCA), whereas in practice US protection depends on many statutes and regulations, as well as on voluntary withdrawals (under pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency) and severe common law liability. This paper makes the economic case for firmly addressing the regulatory barriers, discusses the EU’s proposals, finds that the European Parliament’s Resolution on TTIP of July 2015 lacks a rationale (for chemicals), argues that both TSCA and REACH ought to be improved (based on ‘better regulation’), discusses the link with a global regime, advocates significant improvement of market access where equivalence of health and environmental objectives is agreed and, finally, proposes to lower the costs for companies selling in both markets by allowing them to opt into the other party’s more stringent rules, thereby avoiding duplication while racing-to-the-top. The ‘living agreement’ on chemicals ought to be led by a new TTIP institution authorised to establish the level of health and environmental protection on both sides of the Atlantic for substances regulated on both sides. These findings will lay the foundation for a highly beneficial lowering of trading costs without in any way affecting the level of protection. Indeed, this is exactly what TTIP is, or should be, all about.This paper is the 10th in a series produced in the context of the “TTIP in the Balance” project, jointly organised by CEPS and the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) in Washington, D.C. It is published simultaneously on the CEPS (www.ceps.eu) and CTR websites (http://transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu).

Flashlight Europe N°5–June 2015. OMT is Monetary Policy and Not Economic Policy

In January 2014, for the first time in its history, the German Federal Constitutional Court submitted several questions to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg and asked for a preliminary ruling. The questions had arisen within the framework of the OMT case, and the issue was whether or not the OMT (“outright monetary transactions”) programme announced by Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), is in compliance with the law of the European Union. The OMT programme (which has be-come well-known because Draghi said “what-ever it takes to preserve the euro” when he unveiled it) plays an important role in the stabilization of the euro area. It means that the European System of Central Banks will be empowered to engage in unlimited buying of government bonds issued by certain Member States if and as long as these Member States are simultaneously taking part in a European rescue or reform programme (under the EFSF ot the ESM). Hitherto the OMT has not been implemented. Nonetheless a suit contesting its legality was filed with the Federal Constitutional Court. The European Court of Justice now had to decide whether or not the activities of the ECB were in compliance with European law. How-ever, the ECJ had to take into account the prior assessment of the Federal Constitutional Court. In its submission the Federal Constitutional Court made it quite clear that it was of the opinion that there has been a violation of European law. But at the same time it did not exclude the possibility that the ECJ set up legal conditions for OMT in order to avoid a violation of European law.