The Dark Side Of European Monetary Union

Across Europe, radical right-wing parties are winning increasing electoral support. The Dark Side of European Integration argues that this rising nationalism and the mobilization of the radical right are the consequences of European economic integration. The European economic project has produced a cultural backlash in the form of nationalist radical right ideologies. This assessment relies on a detailed analysis of the electoral rise of radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe. Contrary to popular belief, economic performance and immigration rates are not the only factors that determine the far right's success. There are other political and social factors that explain why in post-socialist Eastern European countries such parties had historically been weaker than their potential, which they have now started to fulfill increasingly. Using in-depth interviews with radical right activists in Ukraine, Alina Polyakova also explores how radical right mobilization works on the ground through social networks, allowing new insights into how social movements and political parties interact.

Across Europe, radical right-wing parties are winning increasing electoral support. The Dark Side of European Integration argues that this rising nationalism and the mobilization of the radical right are the consequences of European economic integration. The European economic project has produced a cultural backlash in the form of nationalist radical right ideologies. This assessment relies on a detailed analysis of the electoral rise of radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe. Contrary to popular belief, economic performance and immigration rates are not the only factors that determine the far right's success. There are other political and social factors that explain why in post-socialist Eastern European countries such parties had historically been weaker than their potential, which they have now started to fulfill increasingly. Using in-depth interviews with radical right activists in Ukraine, Alina Polyakova also explores how radical right mobilization works on the ground through social networks, allowing new insights into how social movements and political parties interact.

Providing readers with a multi-faceted assessment of the implementation of fiscal policies in the euro zone and their macroeconomic effects five years after the inception of the euro, this book, international in perspective and scope, is the first reliable reference source for discussions in this area for both academics and policy makers.Comprising

European integration has long defied previous notions of state sovereignty and has since the days of the Coal and Steel Community been conferred with original supranational instruments. Yet the Treaty of Rome did not raise the same popular reactions as the Maastricht Treaty about the infringement of national sovereignty. This book suggests that the end of the Cold War has modified the functions of European integration so that the original ideals of integration have lost part of their appeal; hence the birth of the European Union can be regarded as an attempt to seek a new legitimacy. How far did the EU Treaty meet this unprecedented challenge? This book argues that the Maastricht Treaty established a constitutional framework for a new kind of polity without resolving the issue of its purpose and scope. The volume seeks thus to explain some of the reasons for the defeat of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 dating them back to the Maastricht Treaty. In so doing, the book links the actual state of European integration with the decisions taken at Maastricht in five different realms of supranational policy-making. The first is the constitutional setting of the EU Treaty and its effect on national constitutional law; the second is the concept of governance and the changes introduced by the Economic and Monetary Union; the third is the historical background of the Maastricht agreement; the fourth the political economy of the Economic and Monetary Union; the fifth is the impact of European citizenship in the recent case-law of the European Court of Justice and the prospects of a EU politicisation. The book puts in perspective the solutions to the recent stalemate of the European integration process offered by the Lisbon Treaty.

Firmly rooted in the International Political Economy (IPE) tradition, this book addresses the negative consequences of globalisation, what is termed here the ‘dark side of globalisation’. It explores different definitions of globalisation, whether the globalisation we have seen since the 1970s is substantially new, and to what extent it can be governed. Building on these foundations, the work assesses the prospects for de-globalisation. By focusing on this dark side of globalistion, the authors show how the global economic crisis, and its various local and sectorial manifestations, intensified – rather than generated – existing trends. This scholarship provides an account of the current predicament that is both more complex and more persuasive than the opposition between globalisation and de-globalisation.

Banking Regulation and World Trade Law concerns the legal aspects of the interaction between banking regulation and international trade in financial services. The author studies the internal banking market of the European Union, the liberalisation of financial services trade in the World Trade Organization, the accords of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the European Central Bank. The book focuses on the balancing between banking regulation and international trade law. It discusses discrimination and proportionality in national banking regulation, the allocation of prudential regulation and supervision between home and host country, and international financial law-making. The author questions decentralised/nation-based banking regulation and supervision as a foundation for a sustainable liberalisation of international trade in financial services. The book considers various reforms of the international financial architecture, such as the incorporation of the Basel processes and accords into the WTO system, and the setting up of new international institutions by building on the Basel Committees or the IMF structures. The role of central banking in designing the international financial architecture is also explored: the book reviews the ECB's competence over foreign exchange policy and its function as lender of last resort, and treats price stability, banking soundness and representation as critical concepts. The analysis also reveals that the concept of 'prudential', despite its extensive use in banking regulation, has not been defined with adequate precision. In seeking to delineate the interface between international economic law and banking regulation, Dr Panourgias builds on the rich European scholarship on institutional financial issues and the US interdisciplinary approach to world trade law. He also entertains the notion of international financial law as a distinct field. The book will be of particular interest to those concerned with financial law and international banking.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with leading figures associated with the Euro and scores of secret documents from international archives, the author underscores the Euro's importance for the global economy, in particular for U.S. and British economic and political agendas.