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Since 2010, five Eurozone governments in economic difficulty have received assistance from international lenders on condition that certain policies specified in the Memoranda of Understanding were implemented. How did negotiations take place in this context? What room for manoeuvre did the governments of these countries have? After conditionality, to what extent were governments willing and able to roll back changes imposed on them by the international lenders? Do we find variation across governments, and, if so, why?
This book addresses these questions. It explores the constraints on national executives in the five bailed out countries of the Eurozone during and beyond the crisis (2008–2019).
The book’s principal idea is that, despite international market pressure and creditors’ conditionality, governments had some room for manoeuvre during a bailout and were able to advocate, resist, shape or roll back some of the policies demanded by external actors. Under certain circumstances, domestic actors were also able to exploit the constraint of conditionality to their own advantage. The book additionally shows that after a bailout programme governments could use their discretion to reverse measures in order to attain the greatest benefits at a lower cost. It finally explores the determinants of bargaining leverage – and stresses the importance of credibility.
This highly original book constitutes one of the first attempts to examine the problem of distributive justice in the EU in a systematic manner. The author starts by arguing that the set of shared political institutions at EU level, including the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the EU, generate democratic duties of redistribution amongst EU citizens. Furthermore, he claims that the economic structure of the EU, comprising a common market, a common currency, and a free-movement area, triggers duties of reciprocity amongst member states. He contends that the responsibilities to fulfil these duties should be shared by three levels of government – local, national, and supranational. More specifically, he argues that the EU should act as a safety net to the national welfare systems, applying the principle of subsidiarity. In turn, the common market and the Eurozone should balance efficiency targets with distributive concerns. Concrete policy proposals presented in this book include a threshold of basic goods for all EU citizens, an EU Labour Code, a minimum EU corporate tax rate, and an EU Fund for Global Competitiveness. These proposals are thoroughly examined from the standpoint of feasibility. The author argues that his proposals fit in the political culture of the member states, are economically feasible, can be translated into functioning institutions and policies, and are consistent with the limited degree of social solidarity in Europe. This book is a major contribution to the understanding of how a just Europe would look and what it takes to get us there.
Since 2010, five Eurozone governments have received financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU), on the condition that a long list of policies were implemented. This is often described as a period in which powerless bailed out governments had no choice but to follow the lenders’ prescriptions; and it was contested whether these were in the former's best interest (see for example Capelos and Exadaktylos, 2015 on media representation). The effectiveness and fairness of conditionality have also
, Spanish and Portuguese have benefits for the unemployed. (OPZZ leader Jan Guz on the 14 November 2012 European Day of Action and Solidarity) Poland is a non-member of the Eurozone. Despite this, the Polish labour movement was exposed to pressures associated with Europeanization. This was particularly the case at tripartite level; scholars at one point predicted that Polish tripartism would ready the country for membership of the euro (Meardi, 2006 ). Given this concern, a key issue is the extent to which Polish unions
Introduction Our last case study, Cyprus, is particularly interesting insofar as it is the only one where there was a bail-in rather than a bailout during the Eurozone crisis. By the time Cyprus entered the Adjustment Programme, the rescue mechanisms had already been well institutionalised. In fact, it was 2013 when Cyprus signed the Economic Adjustment Programme as a result of delays on the part of both Cyprus and the European partners. Cyprus successfully exited the programme three years later in March 2016. The Cypriot
are suggested. Attention then turns to the political context that Habermas addressed. The failure of the Constitutional project and, five years on, the crisis of the Eurozone can be traced to the same underlying ‘conceptual deficit’: a dearth of postnational political thought. A reluctance to transcend the nation-state as a frame of reference has characterised elites as well as European populations – only a minority of key players (the late Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa 3 , for example) have stated this to be a problem. A critical
state of affairs is reinforced by a fierce competition amongst member states regarding corporate taxes and labour laws. In turn, I argue that poor policy choices can only partially explain the levels of indebtedness of the currently distressed member states. I claim that the design of the Eurozone and the “distributive vicious circle” I just mentioned played an important role in the origins of the Eurocrisis. In addition, I argue that freedom of movement generates two types of distributive obligations. First, EU mobile workers should be protected from the social risks
Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg, September 2014) France occupies an intermediate position in the Eurozone. Trade unions in the country are weak and divided, which raises the question of the manner in which unions in inauspicious structural positions respond to Europeanization. After the introduction of EMU, such incapacity meant that unions tended not to participate in wage moderation. Challenges associated with the single currency were partly resolved by a state incomes policy which limited potential loss of
countries within the Eurozone benefits workers in these countries to the degree that strategies for European solidarity are weakly prioritized and consequently unsuccessful. I end the chapter by arguing that such partitions evoke Marxist-Leninist theories of imperialism, though I stress differences between formal imperialism and contemporary Europe. Conceptualizing the European insider–outsider regime As emphasized in chapter 2 , literature on dualization is relevant because it conceptualizes the relationship between
-term investment and development programme for Europe. (DGB, 2012) Voluntaristic nonsense. (IG Metall leader Bertold Huber on the 14 November 2012 European Day of Action and Solidarity) Germany is the archetypal core Eurozone country. After the launch of the euro, wage moderation helped guarantee competitive advantage for the country within EMU. A number of authorities have associated this outcome with the efficacy of German sectoral bargaining (Hancké, 2013 ; Hassel, 2014 ; Johnston