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.

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.