Between the euro crisis, the refugee crisis, tensions within the single market, and anti-European political extremism, the European Union appears on the surface to be failing. This isn’t quite true though. Every time Europe faces a setback, it tends to make progress in response. This progress is usually only partial (or incomplete), but it is enough to lay the foundations for more comprehensive solutions to emerge in the future. What looks like failure is actually ‘failing forward’, a dynamic that Dan Kelemen, Sophie Meunier and I examined in a recent article in Comparative Political Studies. The latest incarnation of this concept is the recent developments – or lack thereof – at the December 2015 European Council summit, which was supposed to shore up European financial markets by pushing ahead with the construction of common institutions to safeguard European banks.
Category / Weekly note
Europe’s Controversial Single Market
When critics want to explain why the European Union (EU) is in crisis, they usually point to the euro or the Schengen Agreement. These are areas of vital national sovereignty, they argue. A government without a currency cannot preserve its national competitiveness and has no status as a lender of last resort. A government that cannot monitor its borders cannot stem the flow of illegal workers, criminals, and terrorists. There is merit to both of these arguments but they miss the deeper point. Europe’s problems do not originate in money or migrants; they stem from the single market.
Central Banking Divergence Means Market Volatility
There are three divergences in the art of central banking. The most obvious is between the monetary tightening expected in the United States and the loosening expected in Europe. A second divergence is between the prudential oversight of the banking system and the conduct of macro-economic demand stabilization – particularly quantitative easing. A third divergence is between the communication of forward looking policy intentions and the practice of monetary policy decision-making. Each of these divergences acts as a constraint on the conduct of monetary policy; the juxtaposition of all three increases the risk of significant market volatility.
Matteo Renzi’s Liberalism of the Left
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi delivered his ‘Manifesto for 2016’ in a long speech to the parliamentary factions of the Partito Democratico on 3 November 2015. Il Foglio published an editorial on the manifesto some days later alongside a full text version of the speech. The paper also invited a few reactions from outside observers. The English-language version of my comment is below. The Italian-language version was published in Il Foglio this morning (10 November).
Market Infrastructures: The Ties that Bind
Roughly nine thousand members of the global finance community gathered in Singapore last week at a conference devoted to ‘market infrastructures’ – meaning the plumbing (communication, clearing, settlement, depository) that makes finance work. On one level it was a very geeky affair with its own confusing jargon. The name of the conference, SIBOS, refers to another acronym, SWIFT. There was a whole forum devoted to standards – which are precise definitions for how things should look and work. If you wanted to fill a room, all you had to do was shout ‘block chain’ or ‘distributed ledger’. But the buzz was not only about technology. You could pack the room talking about China’s strategy to internationalize the renminbi just as easily. Market infrastructure is about power as well as plumbing. More important, the power and the plumbing tend to work at cross purposes.
Accusations of Arrogance
It is no secret that Europe is facing multiple crises. Migration, deflation, Greece, and Ukraine top the list, but the issues that come after are no less challenging for being less prominent. Let’s not forget, Europe was ‘in crisis’ at the turn of the century and before any of these headline issues emerged. That earlier agenda – which includes population aging, welfare state reform, energy security, industrial change, market competition, and connecting ‘Europe’ to ‘the people’ – still needs to be addressed. Then as now the two questions are whether Europe will hold together and whether European leaders will energize and focus that unity with a sense of purpose. Unfortunately, increasing accusations of ‘arrogance’ suggest that neither unity nor purpose should be expected.
Central Bankers Seeking Normal
There is an ongoing debate about when (not whether) the Federal Reserve in the United States and the Bank of England will raise interest rates. Opponents of such a move acknowledge that interest rates have to go up some time but argue that the ongoing weakness in Europe, the slowdown in emerging market economies, and the turmoil in China are all good reasons to wait as long as possible. Proponents of an early rise worry about the distortions caused by prolonged ultra-low interest rates. They also want to bring interest rates up again so that they will have something to cut should they run into trouble in the future.
This debate may seem like the usual macroeconomic conversation you would expect to hear among central bankers and yet it is not. There is an underlying political controversy around central banking that creates an incentive for central bankers to move more quickly in raising interest rates than economic conditions might warrant. This controversy takes place any time central bankers approach the frontier between ‘conventional’ and ‘unconventional’ monetary policy; it gets stronger and more intense once they crossover and start using unconventional monetary policy instruments; and it lasts until central bankers find a way to return to normal.
The ECB’s Diminishing Room for Manoeuvre
European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi did not disappoint. In his first post-summer press conference, he responded to the recent volatility on Chinese equities markets – and across emerging markets more generally – by promising to relax monetary policy as much as necessary to shore up Europe’s fragile recovery. He articulated the promise in the form of a three-fold commitment: to expand the share of individual bond issues that the ECB could purchase without giving the central bank unwarranted market power; to maintain the pace of monthly asset purchases; and to loosen monetary policy even further ‘by using all instruments available within its mandate’ particularly as this refers to ‘the horizon, the size, and the parameters’ of ‘the asset purchase programme’. Market participants were quick to respond. The euro weakened against the dollar; equity prices rose on European stock markets; and the yields on European sovereign debt instruments declined.
It is easy to interpret living up to expectations as a sign of the ECB’s continuing influence over the markets. ‘Never bet against Draghi,’ is a popular banter among analysts. The transcript of the press conference tells a different story. Time and again, Draghi explains how his quantitative easing program has underperformed due to the influence of exceptional factors. Periodic declines in commodity prices, prolonged weakness in emerging market economies, increasing volatility in asset prices, and adverse movements in exchange rates between major currencies all contribute to the explanation. Of course the ECB could try again and harder, but why should the next time be any different? This question is not simply a rhetorical flourish. The canned opening statement only makes sense if the first commitment to quantitative easing was a failure.
The European Political Centre Cannot Hold (But the EU Can)
Europe’s politicians have cleared the last hurdle in accepting Greece’s third financial bailout but the voting was uncomfortable for everyone. The left-wing populist government in Greece relied on representatives from the more traditional centre-left and centre-right to cover for defections from the ruling coalition; the German government used Social Democrats within the ruling coalition to cover for defections from the Chancellors own Christian Democrats; and the Liberal (VVD)/Party of Labour (PvdA) government the Netherlands got extra support from the left-liberal D66 party to add to its slender one-seat majority.
As a result of these different movements toward the political centre – and similar developments in other countries – the Greek government will get the money it needs to keep up with its debt payments and shore up its banks. That is a good thing for anyone who wants to see Greece have a reasonable chance at recovering from this ongoing crisis. Unfortunately, that centre cannot hold. A populist party like Syriza cannot govern easily with the old pillars of the Greek political establishment; Germany’s grand coalition is an historical anomaly; and the result of eight years of close cooperation between VVD, PvdA and D66 was bad for all. So the question is whether Europe’s political centre will splinter before the Greek situation becomes sustainable.
The EU Needs to Admit Mistakes
The European Union (EU) is good at writing rules; what it needs to strengthen the capacity to suspend, ignore, or replace rules that are obviously not working or inappropriate in a given situation. In other words, the EU needs to get better at recognizing when following the rules is a mistake. This is not going to be a popular argument. Rules are supposed to be rules, after all. Nevertheless, it is vital. So long as policymakers lack perfect foresight, they will never be able to write rules that work in every situation. They will not be able to anticipate the conditions for every possible exception either. Hence they will always need some mechanism to recognize and respond to unexpected situations in a timely manner. In case of emergency, break glass. They will also need some way to hold policymakers accountable for any exercise in emergency discretion. Successful innovations will not always be rewarded but they will be accepted and used to improve the functioning of the organization; abuse will be punished. That is – or at least should be – the measure of political union.
Erik Jones 