Convergence Report May 2010

The volume contains articles based on presentations given at a conference hosted by the Institute for Law and Finance of Goethe University on October 27, 2011. Collective action clauses are an example of the typical dichotomy of financial regulation: While the problems are economic in nature, the solutions need to be implemented by law. The Institute for Law and Finance strives to bring together law and finance in order to foster a better mutual understanding of both disciplines and to improve the regulation of financial markets. Thus, the organizers are particularly pleased that eminent experts from the fields of law and finance agreed to participate in the event and to share their views on and experiences with collective action clauses. The presentations given at the conference have been updated in 2012 to reflect recent developments.

The financial crisis of 2007–10 has presented a number of key policy challenges for those concerned with the long-term stability of the euro area. It has shown that price stability as provided by the European Central Bank is not enough to guarantee financial stability, and exposed fault lines in governance and deficiencies in the architecture of the financial supervisory and regulatory framework. This book addresses these and other issues, including why the crisis affected some countries more than others, whether the euro is still attractive for new EU states, and what policy changes and structural reforms, both macro and micro, should be undertaken to ensure its future viability. Written by a team of leading academic and central bank economists, the book also includes chapters on the cross-country incidence of the crisis, the Irish crisis and ECB monetary policy during the crisis, and studies on Spain, the Baltics, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The Eurosystem, having purposefully expanded its footprint in recent years, confronts a period of loss-making as rising policy rates lift the remuneration of bank reserves while assets churn more slowly. This paper projects the net income of the Eurosystem and its “top-five” national central banks over a ten-year horizon, finding that losses, while large, will be temporary and recoupable. The policy conclusions are fourfold. First, the temporary and recoupable nature of the loss-making obviates any need for capital contributions or indemnities from the state, instead allowing losses to be offset against future net income. Second, it must nonetheless be communicated that fiscal impacts will be material, with annual taxes and transfers of 0.1−0.2 percent of GDP giving way to potentially long interruptions in some cases. Third, more-conservative profit distribution policies in the future steady state could help mitigate the on-off pattern of dividends. Finally and most vitally, loss-making must remain orthogonal to monetary policy decision-making, as indeed it is at the ECB. Ultimately, credibility will rest on performance in delivering on the price stability mandate.

Spanish politics has been transformed. Using new techniques, this book looks at 30 years of Spanish political history to understand party competition, the impact of the EU, media-government relations, aspirations for independence in Catalonia and the Basque region, and the declining role of religion.

With many EU non-majoritarian bodies growing in political influence, this volume sheds light on the inherent tension between independence and legitimacy in the EU's institutional system, and explores ways to reconcile the two.

This book provides a commentary on the law of the EU related to the Monetary Union. It contains a comprehensive analysis of all provisions of the Statute of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) and the European Central Bank (ECB). In addition, the book also analyses all provisions of the Treaties themselves which regulate the ESCB and the ECB. This analysis is supplemented by commentaries on other Protocols which contain relevant rules for the Monetary Union. In essence, all relevant statutory rules governing the euro and its key monetary authority, the European Central Bank, are unfolded and explained in one volume. This gives the book a unique position in the legal literature on the law of the EU. With contributions by renowned academics and practitioners, this book is an expanded and updated translation of the 2013 German commentary, EWU Kommentar zu Europäischen Währungsunion (Mohr Siebeck) and is an invaluable resource for practitioners and academics alike who are looking for a provision-by-provision commentary on the laws governing the European Monetary Union.