The Erasmus Center for Economic and Financial Governance (ECEFG) is succeeding the European Research Centre for Economic and Financial Governance (EURO-CEFG). These are but a few examples of activities previously organised by EURO-CEFG. More information about our current and future activities may be found under our "Agenda".
Expert Dialogues
On a regular basis, the Centre organises its ‘ECEFG Expert Dialogues’ in Rotterdam, the Hague, and Brussels for policy makers and representatives of the leading thinks tanks.
Brussels, 22 October 2015
On 16 June 2015 the European Court of Justice rendered its judgment in case C-62/14 (also known as ‘Gauweiler’) on the EU legality of ECB’s ‘Outright Monetary Transactions’ programme (OMT). The Court decided, upon the first reference from the German Constitutional Court, that the ECB acted still within the boundaries of its powers and of EU law when announcing the OMT.
The judgment raised many questions:
- How will the German Constitutional Court that was clearly opposed to the legality of the OMT respond to the judgment?
- What would be the consequences of a judgment by the German Constitutional Court declaring that the OMT violates the German constitution?
- What is the impact of the judgment on the legal framework for future unconventional monetary policy measures such as ‘Quantitative Easing’?
- What is the impact of this judgment and a future judgment of the German Constitutional Court on the economic situation in the Eurozone?
- How to draw, based on the ‘OMT’ and the previous ‘Pringle’ judgment, the dividing line between economic policy (within Member States’ competence) and monetary policy (within ECB’s exclusive competence)?
The discussion turning around these very concrete questions relating to the ‘OMT judgment’ have furthermore to be placed into the broader context of unconventional monetary policy measures, their economic necessity and the legal boundaries for their adoption.
In order to address all these questions the European Research Centre for Economic and Financial Governance (EURO-CEFG) organised an expert dialogue in Brussels and invited in the interdisciplinary spirit of the centre Prof. Dr. Martin Nettesheim (who was representing the German ‘Bundestag’ in the proceedings in front of the German Constitutional Court) and Prof. Dr. Casper de Vries, two outstanding experts in the field of law and of economics. Both experts will enrich the roundtable debate with their different academic perspectives on the questions raised by the ‘OMT judgment'.
Martin Nettesheim is Professor of Law at the University of Tübingen Law School since 2000. He is chaired Professor for German Public Law, Public European Community Law, International Law and International Political Theory and Director of the Tübingen University Center for International Economic Law (TURCIEL). He studied law at the Universities of Freiburg, Berlin and Ann Arbor (MI), He also holds a degree in Economics. Professor Nettesheim has taught courses at various universities (Berkeley, Miami, Nanjing, Kyoto). He has served as Dean of the Law School (2003-2005) and is Member of the Board of the Center for Studies in Federalism at the University of Tübingen. He chairs the Working Group on European Constitutional Law within the Association of German Professors of Public Law. Professor Nettesheim has published comprehensively in the areas of EU law, International Economic Law and German Constitutional Law. He is editor of a multi-volume commentary on the Treaties on the European Union (Grabitz/Hilf/Nettesheim, Das Recht der Europäischen Union, 2010) and author of a comprehensive introduction to EU law (Oppermann/Classen/Nettesheim, Europarecht, 6th ed. 2014). His current projects include a book about democratic theory in settings of multi-level governance and a publication about the protection of personal privacy.
Casper de Vries holds the chair of Monetary Economics at the Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and co-heads the risk management program at the Duisenberg School of Finance. Casper is a fellow of the Tinbergen Institute, he is a member of the Sociaal Economsiche Raad (Dutch Council of Economic Advisors), the Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (Scientific Council of the Government) and is active as a consultant for pension funds. He headed national committee on insurance. His graduate training was received at Purdue University, after which he held positions at Texas A&M University and KU Leuven. He has been visiting scholar at several European and American research institutes and central banks. He has served as vice dean of research and education at the Erasmus School of Economics..
Casper De Vries’s research interests are focused on international monetary issues, like foreign exchange rate determination and exchange rate risk, the issues surrounding the Euro, financial markets risk, risk management and systemic risk and, last but not least, applied game theory. In his research on financial risks, Casper has specialized in calculating the risks on extreme events by means of statistical extreme value analysis. Casper also takes an active research interest in contest and auction theory, which can be applied to the theory of lobbying. He has published widely in leading internationally refereed journals, like the journal of econometrics, the journal of economic theory, the American economic review and the review of economics and statistics.
Brussels, 10 February 2015
Against the background of the publication of the European Commission’s Economic governance review (COM (2014) 905 final) the Spring 2015 Brussels EURO-CEFG Expert Dialogue focussed on the state of affairs of economic governance in the euro area, namely the “Six Pack” and “Two Pack”, and discussed the potential need and direction for reforms.
In the interdisciplinary spirit of EURO-CEFG, the centre invited two outstanding experts in the field of economics and of law. Both experts not only enriched the roundtable debate with their different academic perspectives on EU Economic Governance, but also with their view from inside and from outside of the euro area.
Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, chairperson of the French “Conseil d’analyse économique” (CAE) and Professor of Economics at Paris School of Economics, Université de Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne. Before moving to academia she worked for the French Ministry of economy and finance. She is a former member of the Shadow ECB Council. Her research interests focus on the international monetary system and European macroeconomic policy. She is the co-author of the book “Économie de l’euro” and of the CAE report on the economic governance of the Euro area “Compléter l’euro”.
Damian Chalmers, Professor and Jean Monnet Chair in EU law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and EURO-CEFG research associate. Until August 2010 he was head of the European Institute as well as of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the co-editor of the “European Law Review” and co-author of the leading EU law textbook “European Union law” as well as of the “Oxford Handbook of EU law”. His focus of research is on the relationship between the public and constitutional law of the EU, on the one hand, and its economic law, on the other.
Workshops, Seminars, and Lectures
The ECEFG workshops and seminars reflect our Centre's interdisciplinary approach. Specialists from various disciplines - mainly economics, law and political science - are invited to exchange knowledge, views and expertise on complex problems of European economic and financial governance.
On Friday November 6 2015, the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial Law and EURO-CEFG hosted a symposium on the occasion of the publication of the Research Handbook on Crisis Management in the Banking Sector, edited by prof. Matthias Haentjens, professor of Financial Law, and prof. Bob Wessels, emeritus professor of international insolvency law, both from Leiden University.
This handbook on bank insolvency law is already regarded as the definitive work on banking sector crisis management, especially in the EU. More than thirty prominent academics, practitioners and regulators give a comprehensive overview of the rules around the insolvency of banks. The book covers all recent legislative developments from the whole spectre of banking sector crisis management, from the perspective of the bank itself to the perspectives of the relevant authorities and of the bank’s counterparties. In addition, the book contains (macro) economic introductory chapters and country reports of all major jurisdictions.
Brussels, 22/23 June 2015
The 'Centre for the law of EU External Relations' (CLEER) and EURO-CEFG organised a joint workshop on selected issues of EU External Relations Law in Brussels. Subjects covered by this workshop were questions relating to the external representation in EMU or the use of international law instruments such as intergovernmental Treaties in EMU.
Speakers at the graduate workshop were inter alia:
- Iñigo Arruga Oleaga, Senior legal counsel at the European Central Bank (ECB), Frankfurt/Main
- Lóránt Havas, Member of the Legal Service of the European Commission, Brussels
- Taneli Lahti, Head of Cabinet of Vice-President Valdis Dombrovski, European Commission, Brussels
- Jean-Victor Louis, Professor Emeritus at the University of Brussels (ULB) and Honorary Director of the Legal Service National Bank of Belgium
- Frederik Naert, Member of the legal service of the Council of the European Union
- Anders Neergaard, Head of the unit for external relations at the Legal Service of the European Parliament, Luxembourg/Brussels
- Ricardo Passos, Director of institutional and parliamentary affairs at the Legal Service of the European Parliament, Luxembourg/Brussels
- Simona Popan, Member of the Legal Department of the EEAS, Brussels
- René Repasi, Scientific Coordinator of EURO-CEFG and researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Natacha Rouam, Member of the Legal Service of the Council of the European Union
- Juan Santos Vara, Associate Professor in Public International Law and International Relations and Director of the Master in European Studies at the University of Salamanca, Spain
- Roland Tricot, Member of the Legal Service of the European Commission, representing the EU at the EU Council Working Group and the Council of Europe Committee of Legal Advisers on Public International Law (COJUR/CAHDI)
- Kees van Duin, Economic advisor at the Secretariat-general of the European Commission, Brussels
- Ramses A. Wessel, Professor of the Law of the European Union and other International Organizations at the University of Twente
Delft, 18 June 2015
The architecture of EU financial regulation is characterised by fragmentation. There are several financial regulators on the EU level (horizontal fragmentation) and each of the 28 member states has its own set of regulators (vertical). Fragmentation is likely to imply gaps, but also overlaps, and to elicit attempts of coordination as well as competition. This, in turn, evokes important legal, economic and political questions.
The European Union is a community of law (‘Rechtsgemeinschaft’), reflecting the constitutionally engrained principle of the rule of law of the member states. Horizontal and vertical fragmentation may very well create challenges to legal principles such as legal clarity, protection of rights and the right to appeal/legal redress. To what extent do legal problems materialize and how should legislation and legal processes be redesigned to address those problems?
From an economic perspective the issue of efficiency arises. How would an efficient architecture of regulators in the European Union look like? What kind of regulators for what areas should be established on the EU level and on the national level? Should there be clearly delineated competences (‘hierarchical/federal model) or is some level of built-in redundancies or ‘competition’ between regulators desirable?
From a political science/public administration perspective agencies can be conceived of as an important part of regulatory policy making and the question arises why this architecture came about in the first place. What is the impact of policy legacies, public opinion, interest group power and the preferences of political actors on the design? What are implications in terms who wins and who loses? One might also wonder to whom these agencies are accountable and how they relate to representative democracy which claims an important role for parliaments. Finally, issues concerning the inner working and coordination come to the fore.
EURO-CEFG organised on 18 June 2015 a workshop that addressed these issues. Speakers at this workshop were Professor R. Daniel Kelemen (Rutgers University), Professor Dariusz Adamski (University of Wrocław), Dr. Adam Chalmers (Leiden University), Professor Steffen Kern (Head of Financial Stability of ESMA) and Laura Wissink (DNB).
Leiden, 21 April 2015
The European Research Centre for Economic and Financial Governance (EURO-CEFG) organized a seminar on “The European Banking Union and the promise of financial stability.” The Banking Union is a major pillar of the regulatory reaction by the European Union to almost a decade of financial turmoil. The theoretical underpinning of the Banking Union is that an integrated financial market – which is one of the major goals of the European Union – has proven not to be stable in the absence of joint supervision, resolution and deposit insurance of the banks operating in that market. This economic argument is, however, less straightforward than it sounds. Moreover, there are legal and political restrictions to the implementation of a fully-fledged Banking Union in Europe, as shown inter alia by the political unfeasibility of a European deposit insurance scheme and the legal obstacles to a joint banking resolution stemming from national bankruptcy laws.
The goal of this seminar was to tease out the economic, legal, and political shortcomings of the Banking Union as is currently designed and being implemented by the European Union. In this perspective, the seminar asked the broad question whether and how the Banking Union could be improved to support financial stability and sustainable economic growth in the European Union. We invited three of the most eminent European experts to provide their views on this topic from the standpoints of economics, law and political science. The ambition of the seminar was to stimulate a discussion among these disciplines that arguably would lead to more comprehensive findings than any monodisciplinary approach.
The interdisciplinary approach of this seminar is a reflection of the spirit of EURO-CEFG. By integrating the three perspectives of economics, law and political science in a strategic cooperation between Leiden University, University of Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Centre strove to investigate the following policy-relevant question: “What governance is needed to support financial stability and sustainable economic growth in the European Union?”
Speakers at this seminar were Professor Martin Hellwig (Max-Planck-Institute for Research on Collective Goods), Professor Eddy Wymeersch (University of Ghent) and Professor Lucia Quaglia (University of York).
17 June 2015
R. Daniel Kelemen is Professor of Political Science and Jean Monnet Chair in European Union Politics at Rutgers University. Kelemen’s research interests include the politics of the European Union, law and politics, comparative political economy, and comparative public policy. His most recent book ‘Eurolegalism: The Transformation of Law and Regulation in the European Union’ (Harvard University Press 2011) won the ‘Best Book Award’ from the European Union Studies Association. He is editor of ‘Lessons from Europe? What Americans Can Learn from European Public Policies’ (CQ Press 2014) and co-editor of ‘The European Union: Integration and Enlargement’ (Routledge 2014), ‘The Power of the European Court of Justice’ (Routledge 2012), and ‘The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics’ (Oxford University Press 2008). He serves on the editorial boards of the ‘Journal of European Public Policy’ and ‘West European Politics’ and is a former member of the Executive Committee of the European Union Studies Association.
Publications
Commentaries
The ECEFG Commentaries are a series of publications in which ECEFG (formerly EURO-CEFG) research fellows comment on current developments in economic and financial governance Read more
Studies and Reports
ECEFG provides for expertise in the area of economic and financial governance for policymakers and political institutions. ECEFG Studies and Reports is a series publishing expert opinions by the centre. Read more
Contributions to Conferences and Publications
ECEFG Research Fellows contribute with own statements to conferences, workshops or public hearings. This section presents their work done in their personal capacity. Read more