The establishment of harmonized bank resolution frameworks was a fundamental element of the reforms undertaken in the EU in response to bank failures during the latest financial crisis. The... Show moreThe establishment of harmonized bank resolution frameworks was a fundamental element of the reforms undertaken in the EU in response to bank failures during the latest financial crisis. The frameworks empower authorities to intervene in failing banks as an alternative to the opening of an insolvency procedure to protect financial stability and minimize the costs for taxpayers. The fact that national insolvency laws play an essential role in the bank resolution regimes but have not been fully harmonized in the EU, is likely to be a source of complexity and legal uncertainty in cross-border resolution procedures.This book investigates the bank resolution regimes in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK. It analyzes how the national frameworks interact with and have been embedded into Dutch, German and English private law, including insolvency law. The study shows that the frameworks deal with specific topics and objectives and contain rules and terminology that are different from those in existing national legislation. It also shows which differences may exist between the bank resolution procedures in the three jurisdictions. The study makes an important contribution to the existing debate about the further development of the EU bank insolvency framework. Show less
Background: While the European Union is striving to become the 'Innovation Union', there remains a lack of quantifiable indicators to compare and benchmark regional innovation clusters. To address... Show moreBackground: While the European Union is striving to become the 'Innovation Union', there remains a lack of quantifiable indicators to compare and benchmark regional innovation clusters. To address this issue, a HealthTIES (Healthcare, Technology and Innovation for Economic Success) consortium was funded by the European Union's Regions of Knowledge initiative, research and innovation funding programme FP7. HealthTIES examined whether the health technology innovation cycle was functioning differently in five European regional innovation clusters and proposed regional and joint actions to improve their performance. The clusters included BioCat (Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain), Medical Delta (Leiden, Rotterdam and Delft, South Holland, Netherlands), Oxford and Thames Valley (United Kingdom), Life Science Zurich (Switzerland), and Innova Eszak-Alfold (Debrecen, Hungary).Methods: Appreciation of the 'triple helix' of university-industry-government innovation provided the impetus for the development of two quantifiable innovation indexes and related indicators. The HealthTIES H-index is calculated for disease and technology platforms based on the h-index proposed by Hirsch. The HealthTIES Innovation Index is calculated for regions based on 32 relevant quantitative and discriminative indicators grouped into 12 categories and 3 innovation phases, namely 'Input' (n = 12), 'Innovation System' (n = 9) and 'Output' (n = 11).Results: The HealthTIES regions had developed relatively similar disease and technology platform profiles, yet with distinctive strengths and weaknesses. The regional profiles of the innovation cycle in each of the three phases were surprisingly divergent. Comparative assessments based on the indicators and indexes helped identify and share best practice and inform regional and joint action plans to strengthen the competitiveness of the HealthTIES regions.Conclusion: The HealthTIES indicators and indexes provide useful practical tools for the measurement and benchmarking of university-industry-government innovation in European medical and life science clusters. They are validated internally within the HealthTIES consortium and appear to have a degree of external prima facie validity. Potentially, the tools and accompanying analyses can be used beyond the HealthTIES consortium to inform other regional governments, researchers and, possibly, large companies searching for their next location, analyse and benchmark 'triple helix' dynamics within their own networks over time, and to develop integrated public-private and cross-regional research and innovation strategies in Europe and beyond. Show less
This paper looks into the increased capacities, tasks and competences of Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency), brought about by the 2016 legislative reform. We examine whether this... Show moreThis paper looks into the increased capacities, tasks and competences of Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency), brought about by the 2016 legislative reform. We examine whether this development was accompanied by an accountability regime of equal strength. The existing accountability mechanisms are measured against the standards of European Union (EU) primary and secondary law. The paper assesses the political, administrative, professional and social accountability of Frontex, including parliamentary oversight and the newly introduced individual complaints mechanism. The final part of the paper focuses on legal accountability, a strong, yet highly complex, form of accountability. There, we introduce the concept of systemic accountability and investigate possible courses of legal action against Frontex. In sum, Frontex is subject to moderately increased scrutiny under its renewed founding Regulation and to various EU accountability mechanisms of general application. But several procedural and practical hurdles could render legal accountability difficult to achieve in practice. Show less
In less unusual times, the European Union’s Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy would have been received as merely the latest iteration of the main tenets and ambitions of EU external... Show moreIn less unusual times, the European Union’s Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy would have been received as merely the latest iteration of the main tenets and ambitions of EU external action – this time with an enhanced dose of pragmatism to respond to a more challenging international environment. However, with ‘Brexit’ looming large and one and a half years into the Trump Presidency in the United States, the Global Strategy has acquired a new level of significance. This article argues that while meant to express a largely uncontroversial ‘Western’ consensus, it now needs to be re-contextualized as a distinctive vision in the face of trends of antiglobalism and Euroscepticism. This concerns in particular the Strategy’s emphasis on rules-based global governance. Challenged by both President Trump’s ‘America First’ policy and the British government’s course for a ‘hard Brexit’, the Global Strategy now represents a contested blueprint and rallying point for a continued pursuit of a liberal world order based on the rule of law. Show less
Wonka, A.; De Bruycker, I.; De Bievre, D.; Beyers, J.; Braun, C. 2018
Contemporary studies on interest group politics have mainly used single interest organizations as their central objects of study. This has led to a rich body of knowledge on the motivations of... Show moreContemporary studies on interest group politics have mainly used single interest organizations as their central objects of study. This has led to a rich body of knowledge on the motivations of interest group mobilization, strategy development and even policy access and influence. The focus on single interest groups, however, has resulted in limited knowledge on aggregate patterns of interest groups’ activity. This article seeks to address this lacuna, by examining patterns of mobilization and conflict of interest groups’ activity in EU legislative policymaking. To do so, it adopts a unique policy-centred research design and an empirical assessment of policy mobilization for a sample of 125 EU legislative proposals based on extensive media coding as well as structured elite interviews. We find that levels of policy mobilization vary substantively across different legislative proposals and that political conflict between interest groups is remarkably low. This suggests that interest group conflict and mobilization contribute little to EU politicization and that in cases where interest groups voice opposing positions, conflicts do not occur between business and non-business groups. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of interest groups in EU legislative policymaking. Show less
Deetman, S.; Oers, L. van; Voet, E. van der; Tukker, A. 2018
Since signing the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997, the European Union (EU) has been working on increasing its renewable energy supply. However, the progress has been uneven across member states. A vibrant... Show moreSince signing the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997, the European Union (EU) has been working on increasing its renewable energy supply. However, the progress has been uneven across member states. A vibrant literature advances several explanations for this variation, but pays insufficient attention to a critical structural factor – varying levels of natural resource wealth across the EU – and provides an incomplete account by focusing on consumption indicators. Reconciling divergent views in the literature in a single framework, we hold that while overall natural resource abundance can be conducive to renewable energy production within a country, specific natural resources, such as petroleum, are likely to be harmful. These hypotheses find empirical support in a mixed-methods study that combines a fixed-effects statistical analysis of comprehensive panel data between 1997 and 2015 with a comparative qualitative case study of the Netherlands and Belgium. The findings suggest that to achieve the ambitious goals on renewable energy deployment, the EU needs additional policies that explicitly tackle pernicious effects of specific natural resources, including rent-capturing by politicians, rent-seeking by corporate vested interests, and lack of economic incentives to diversify. Show less
The article elaborates on the significance of the duty of sincere cooperation as a legal principle in the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) of the European Union (EU), in particular as regards the... Show moreThe article elaborates on the significance of the duty of sincere cooperation as a legal principle in the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) of the European Union (EU), in particular as regards the relationship between the Union and its Member States. It argues that while the duty of sincere cooperation is a judicially enforceable duty vis-a-vis the Member States, it is losing some of its relevance in the context of the CCP. This is due to the fact that the Lisbon Treaty, as confirmed by the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU, expanded the scope of the CCP and clearly identifies it as an exclusive competence of the Union. Loyalty in the CCP, therefore, is mainly covered by the obligation to respect the exclusivity of the Union’s international powers in this area. While this does not equate to the disappearance of the Member States as actors in international economic governance, it does seriously constrain their leeway for autonomous action. In addition, the article applies this finding to a number of current developments surrounding the CCP. These include, firstly, the new Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy, which promotes the idea of a “joined-up” approach between different actors and policies; secondly, “Brexit” and the prospect of the United Kingdom negotiating new trade agreements of its own; thirdly, the position of the Member States in the WTO; and fourthly, the nature of the wave of new free trade agreements that the EU is negotiating and concluding. Show less
Berkhout, J.; Beyers, J.; Braun, C.; Hanegraaff, M.; Lowery, D. 2017
Scholars of mobilisation and policy influence employ two quite different approaches to mapping interest group systems. Those interested in research questions on mobilisation typically rely on a... Show moreScholars of mobilisation and policy influence employ two quite different approaches to mapping interest group systems. Those interested in research questions on mobilisation typically rely on a bottom-up mapping strategy in order to characterise the total size and composition of interest group communities. Researchers with an interest in policy influence usually rely on a top-down strategy in which the mapping of politically active organisations depends on samples of specific policies. But some scholars also use top-down data gathered for other research questions on mobilisation (and vice versa). However, it is currently unclear how valid such large-N data for different types of research questions are. We illustrate our argument by addressing these questions using unique data sets drawn from the INTEREURO project on lobbying in the European Union and the European Union’s Transparency Register. Our findings suggest that top-down and bottom-up mapping strategies lead to profoundly different maps of interest group communities. Show less
The European Union interest group population is often characterised as being biased towards business and detached from its constituency base. Many scholars attribute this to institutional factors... Show moreThe European Union interest group population is often characterised as being biased towards business and detached from its constituency base. Many scholars attribute this to institutional factors unique to the EU. Yet, assessing whether or not the EU is indeed unique in this regard requires a comparative research design. We compare the EU interest group population with those in four member states: France, Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. We differentiate system, policy domain and organisational factors and examine their effects on interest group diversity. Our results show that the EU interest system is not more biased towards the representation of business interests than the other systems. Moreover, EU interest organisations are not more detached from their constituents than those in the studied countries. Everywhere, business interest associations seem to be better capable of representing their members’ interests than civil society groups. These findings suggest that the EU is less of a sui generis system than commonly assumed and imply the need for more fine-grained analyses of interest group diversity. Show less
This document summarizes the main findings from the research carried out in Workpackage 9, Policies and Diversity over the Life Course, within the FamiliesAndSocieties project. We present key... Show moreThis document summarizes the main findings from the research carried out in Workpackage 9, Policies and Diversity over the Life Course, within the FamiliesAndSocieties project. We present key results from our studies (1) on policies directed to young people at the transition to adulthood and self-sufficient living, (2) on preferences, usage, and consequences of parental-leave and fathers’ leave policies on family dynamics; (3) on the legal family formats for same-sex and/or different-sex couples in European countries, (4) on the emergence of private markets and issues of migration and care, and (5) on European Union family-policy initiatives. In our summary, we focus on policy-relevant findings and in particular on those of broader implications for policies, policy directions, and policy design in Europe at large. In concluding we summarize some of the core policy implications of our studies.See also www.familiesandsocieties.eu and www.lawsandfamilies.eu. Show less
This contribution investigates the impact of the Eastern enlargement on the decision-making capacity of the European Union. On the basis of new data on the number and types of legal acts produced... Show moreThis contribution investigates the impact of the Eastern enlargement on the decision-making capacity of the European Union. On the basis of new data on the number and types of legal acts produced by the EU (1994–2014) and on the time between the proposal and adoption of legislative acts (1994– 2012), the contribution argues that enlargement has had a rather limited impact on legislative production and duration and that it is extremely hard to disentangle this impact from other contemporaneous institutional and socioeconomic developments. On the basis of analyses of expert-based policy positions of member states in EU negotiations and on voting data from the Council of Ministers of the EU, it is argued that enlargement has possibly added a new dimension of contestation in EU legislative decision-making, but one that concerns a relatively small share of all negotiations in few policy fields like environment. All in all, there is no evidence that the Eastern enlargement has led to the institutional gridlock and loss of decision-making capacity that the public, many politicians and some academics as well have feared. Show less
Wensink, W.; Warmenhoven, B.; Haasnoot, R.; Wesselink, R.; Ginkel, B. van; Wittendorp, S.; ... ; Rijken, T. 2017
Executive Summary In June 2016, High Representative Mogherini presented the EU’s new Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS) to the European Council. With the Strategy now... Show moreExecutive Summary In June 2016, High Representative Mogherini presented the EU’s new Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS) to the European Council. With the Strategy now finalized, attention needs to turn to its implementation in an environment mired by crises both within Europe and the wider world. In September 2016, The Hague Institute for Global Justice and Europe House—the European Parliament Information Office and the Representation of the European Commission in The Netherlands—organized an expert meeting and a public panel discussion, which inform the present document as a first appraisal of the Global Strategy. Focusing on three areas of particular salience in EU foreign policy—the EU as a security actor, developing rules-based global governance in new areas, and the ‘joined-up’ approach in pursuing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)— the following recommendations for the implementation of the EUGS can be made: The EU as a security actor The EU needs a pragmatic and flexible approach in order to solve the crises around Europe and to improve its credibility in the short and long term, for example by using ad hoc coalitions. Moreover, a possible withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU could open up political space for deepened defense cooperation. The EU would need to find ways to make use of this political space in order to generate political will in the capitals for deepening defense cooperation. More broadly speaking, the EU should devise plans to connect with its citizens as a security actor and communicate the message that EU defense cooperation tangibly benefits the security of all citizens. Developing rules-based global governance Using the area of cyber governance as an example given its cross-cutting importance, the EU should fully embrace the role of ‘agenda-shaper, connector, coordinator and facilitator within a networked web of players’ by investing in multistakeholder initiatives and, together with the Member States, showing coordinated political leadership in this area. The EU, furthermore, needs to take its internal normative innovations (such as the “right to be forgotten”) to the global stage, where they can serve as inspiration to other actors. It should also use regional approaches and coalitions of like-minded countries as building blocks for working towards a global consensus. In addition, the EU should bolster its credibility as a cyber power by capacity-building, both within the EU Member States and third countries, to fight criminal activities and strengthen cooperation between law enforcement agencies. Capacity-building as part of a ‘joined-up approach’ in the case of the SDGs For SDGs to be progressively realized through ‘joined-up’ EU action, they need to be translated and concretized into measurable goals, which should be pursued through already existing policies and strategies and be taken into account during the framing of new ones. Moreover, the EU should invest, in tandem with the Member States, in communicating to the public that the SDGs are a global commitment with implications, both positive and negative, in the daily lives of citizens. For the EU, the most important next step is to translate the EUGS into prioritized and coherent sub-strategies with a view to maintaining the SDGs as a central element of the follow-up of the EUGS. The Global Strategy will remain the core guidance for EU external action for years to come. However, the period until the first yearly progress report in June 2017 will be crucial for establishing the traction and first concrete results produced by the Strategy. As the calendars of the EU institutions and Member State policymakers are filling up with more milestones for its implementation, existing sectorspecific strategies will be updated and new ones developed. Implementing the Global Strategy will be a momentous endeavor by any standard, both for the EU and its Member States. How well they will work together, use their resources, build political momentum and voice their common message will ultimately determine the role of the EU in the world. Show less
Considering the implications of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) for the architecture of global (economic) governance, including the international rule of law, the article... Show moreConsidering the implications of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) for the architecture of global (economic) governance, including the international rule of law, the article addresses some of the most pertinent systemic consequences TTIP is likely to produce, based on the shape the agreement is currently taking. The article’s main arguments are that despite representing innovation and added value in some areas, TTIP may produce negative consequences in at least three respects. Firstly, it will cater to an imbalance in terms of access to justice in the area of investment protection; secondly, by providing a way out for the World Trade Organization's (WTO) two most active litigants, it can contribute to the de-judicialization of international trade law; and thirdly, it creates potential for a fierce backlash from the rest of the world as regards the global promotion of an overtly transatlantic regulatory and normative agenda. Show less
On 8 and 9 December 2015, The Hague Institute for Global Justice, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, organized both a public high-level discussion and a... Show moreOn 8 and 9 December 2015, The Hague Institute for Global Justice, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, organized both a public high-level discussion and a closed expert consultation on the EU’s forthcoming Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy. The events focused on how the Union and its Member States can promote a rules-based international system and effective multilateral institutions in a rapidly changing environment marked by numerous crises and challenges. The high-level discussion on the morning of 8 December featured keynote addresses from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Bert Koenders, and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini. The high-level discussion also served as a prelude to the subsequent expert consultation, which was carried out according to the following methodology. The participants in the consultation were selected from among leading experts in EU foreign policy, global governance, European and international law, and multilateral diplomacy. Reflecting a diverse and representative set of stakeholders and professional perspectives, the experts came from think tanks, academia, international organizations, NGOs, and the private sector. Particular attention was paid to ensuring gender balance and including external perspectives from emerging powers and key partners of the EU, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Nigeria. In the course of several breakout sessions and plenary discussions, the participants elaborated on the themes of: the EU’s role in developing the international legal order, promoting effective multilateral institutions, and engaging non-state actors in tackling the most pressing global challenges (see Annex I for the program). The expert consultation, held under the Chatham House Rule, was preceded by an e-consultation, which ran from mid-November and included a wider circle of experienced international specialists, as well as younger, emerging experts and youth representatives from diverse disciplines and professions (see Annex II for the summary of the econsultation). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, working together with a number of like-minded Member States, such as Romania and Austria, can draw on the output of the high-level discussion and the expert consultation to contribute to the discussion on the new EU Global Strategy. Show less
