Articles for author: Peter Lindseth

Democratizing Draghi

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The Draghi Report is now published, outlining the “existential challenge” of European competitiveness going forward. In view of the geopolitical developments of the last several years, the scale of the challenge is difficult to deny, and the need for collective action at the EU level is commensurately intense. Despite these “compelling” reasons and the hoped-for “strength to reform”, however, the Report is hesitant on one crucial point: the EU is apparently not strong enough to undertake Treaty change to fulfil the Report’s ambitious objectives. We believe this approach is legally dubious, politically unwise and, eventually, helps constructing a diffused governance architecture that will fail to tackle the very real challenges the continent indeed faces.

12. September 2024

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How Cohesion Became the EU’s Vehicle for Economic Policy

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In Brussels, something remarkable has happened in the last four years. Cohesion policy—which had heretofore been a policy backwater, aimed at addressing regional disparities—has emerged as the EU’s primary vehicle for reshaping economic and related fiscal policies in the Member States. As a result, any economic or fiscal policy measure that can be plausibly described as a structural reform (primarily an area of Member State competence, subject to Union coordination) can now be reframed as a measure of EU cohesion policy (a shared competence) that can be supported by EU funds to incentivize compliance. How did this happen?

14. August 2023

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Rule-of-Law Conditionality and Resource Mobilization – the Foundations of a Genuinely ‘Constitutional’ EU?

The compromise negotiated by the German Presidency and agreed at the European Council’s meeting of 10-11 December has been roundly criticized for subordinating the hopes for a robust rule-of-law conditionality to the imperatives of "Next Generation Europe". From our perspective, the result may put the EU on the path toward a genuinely ‘constitutional’ transformation, one truly worthy of the name, rather than persisting as a system that is unable to mobilize resources in amounts commensurate with the challenges facing it.

11. Dezember 2020

Target2 Imbalances and the „Demokratieprinzip“: Some Questions

By PETER LINDSETH One main effect of the Eurozone crisis has been a dramatic shrinkage in interbank lending, which is the normal source of bank liquidity for routine business operations.  In this context, a technical feature of the EMU — the ECB’s so-called Target2 payment system — has taken up the slack, providing a means of moving liquidity to those banks that need it.  The result, however, has been major imbalances in the Target2 system, with excess liquidity flowing away from the Eurozone core (Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Finland) toward the periphery, where it is sorely lacking. From an official ... continue reading

5. April 2012

Rescue Package for Fundamental Rights: Further Comments from PETER LINDSETH

It is a tribute to the thoughtfulness of the Heidelberg proposal that it has stimulated such a provocative exchange of views so far. It is quite obvious that, regardless of one’s position vis-à-vis the merits of ‘reverse Solange’, there is widely shared concern regarding the evolution of the Hungarian regime. Therefore, at least on an instrumental level, the debate is primarily over the proper balance between judicial and political approaches in challenging that evolution, a debate that the Heidelberg proposal has stimulated quite nicely. But on a deeper level—one of principle—the debate has been over the character of European integration ... continue reading

28. Februar 2012

Rescue Package for Fundamental Rights: Comments by PETER LINDSETH

I’d like to thank Alexandra, Max, and Christoph for inviting me to participate in this fascinating exchange.  As an American, I feel like the outsider here.  Moreover, I have just written a book (in part from an American perspective, but also deeply grounded in integration history) that argues that the EU is best understood as ‘administrative, not constitutional’.  So it should perhaps be unsurprising that I am reluctant to endorse the deeply constitutionalist ‘reverse Solange’ proposal of Armin von Bogdandy and his team. I generally join in the cogent reservations already expressed by several commenters (notably by Pál Sonnevend, Anna ... continue reading

18. Februar 2012

The Eurozone Crisis and Europe’s Persistent ‘No-Demos Problem’

By PETER LINDSETH As usual, things are moving so quickly in the Eurozone crisis that pressing controversies one day seemingly become old news the next.  In the lead up to this week’s EU summit, for example, Germany caused a stir by calling for the appointment of an external commissioner with the power to veto the Greek budget because of Greece’s inability to meet its budgetary commitments.  We’ll see where that leads, but outrage in Athens was the predictable result. The Greek finance minister reportedly said: ‘Whoever puts before a people the dilemma of choosing between financial assistance and national dignity ... continue reading

2. Februar 2012