Tag / Italy

by Erik Jones

Europe Today — A Twenty-First Century Introduction (Sixth Edition)

European politics is changing, and fast. But the significance of that change is hard to appreciate without a deep understanding of ‘Europe’, meaning its history, politics, culture, and economics. Unfortunately, so much of what we ‘know’ about Europe is based on caricatures and stereotypes. (The same is no doubt true for the rest of the world as well. I blame the demise of area studies, but that is another conversation.) This edited volume — called Europe Today and published by Rowman & Littlefield — can help shed important light.

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by Erik Jones

The Italian Presidential Elections and the Politics of Trust

The Italian electoral college will start voting for the successor to Sergio Mattarella as President of the Republic on 24 January. Between now and then, at least two pages of every major national newspaper will be devoted to rumours and speculation about what Italy’s party leaders are planning, who might get drafted as a candidate, and how the votes are likely to line up. It is the usual blizzard of noise that comes at the end of the white semester — the last six months of any presidential mandate, during which the President of the Republic is no longer able to dissolve parliament. What is at stake is not just who will take over the leadership of the Italian state but also whether the current government can hold together and whether the any new President will send Italy’s parliamentarians back to face the voters. By implication, Italy’s successful implementation of its national recovery and resilience plan is also on the table — together with all that entails for the rest of the European Union.

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by Erik Jones

This Is What European Disintegration Looks Like

The European Council decided during a summit organized to address the COVID-19 crisis on 23 April to confirm a European Commission program to support national insurance systems. They also approved a program by the European Investment Bank to support lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, and another by the European Stability Mechanism to make loans available to national governments to pay for health care expenses related to the pandemic. Finally, the Council asked the Commission to set out a roadmap for the creation of a ‘recovery fund, which is needed and urgent’. Supporters of the decision hailed it as an unprecedented leap toward a Europe of solidarity; critics decried it as vague and insignificant. They are both wrong and right at the same time.

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by Erik Jones

Getting Ready for the 23 April European Council

The European Council will meet by video conference next Thursday.  When it does, the three main items on the agenda will be to approve the recommendations made by the Eurogroup on 9 April, to push forward the conversation about a European Recovery Fund, and to restart and restructure the talks about the upcoming multi-annual financial framework.  In English, that means the conversation will be about money.  Like any conversation about money it will be difficult.  The opportunities for misunderstanding are everywhere.  Now is a good time to sort out some of the issues.

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by Erik Jones

Why Share Risk through the ECB?

I am an American – an outsider – not a European. I have been studying and living in Europe for a while; I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Dutch politics; I spend more time now looking at politics in Italy. Alongside that political interest, I have spent much of the past thirty years looking at European monetary integration. Europe has taught me a lot, but there are still many things I find confusing. Top of the list right now is that the governments of the euro area would rather accept a higher shared risk in the ECB than they would face if they agreed to share risks through an institution specifically designed to raise credit in the markets. This strange choice about how to share risks matters because the risks the European face have never been greater.

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by Erik Jones

Paolo Gentiloni: Macroeconomic Governance in the Crosshairs

Paolo Gentiloni began his tenure as European Commissioner today by giving an interview in Corriere della Sera. He spoke about a number of the major issues the new Commission has to face, but the part of the conversation that made the front page ran something like ‘the reform of the European Stability Mechanism is not a threat.’ Flip to page three and the title is even more explicit: ‘There is no plot in Brussels against Italy.’ European macroeconomic policy coordination is politically explosive. Gentiloni is the Commission’s first line of defence.

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by Erik Jones

Italy: This Time is Different

Seasoned observers of Italian politics will tell you that there is a fairly consistent pattern to political crisis. The pattern starts with infighting among the governing coalition; it accelerates suddenly when one of the coalition partners ‘pulls the plug’ on the government; and then things slow down again as the various stakeholders realize how much is at stake for them personally if they let things fall apart. Parliamentary seats are prestigious, the salaries are high, and the pensions are generous provided the members just stay in post long enough to qualify. More important, real crisis comprises a lot of work with very uncertain pay-offs to be gained from an often-fickle electorate. Meanwhile, bad things can happen to the country’s economy, particularly vis-à-vis the banks and bond markets. In such a context, it is only reasonable to expect that cooler heads will prevail. Given the possible threat that an Italian meltdown would pose for the future of the euro (and hence also the European Union), we should all hope these observers are right. Nevertheless, there are four good reasons to believe that this time is different.

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by Erik Jones

Sovereign Debt Restructuring and Debt Mutualisation in the Euro Area

The euro area lacks a framework for sovereign debt restructuring and it lacks a common risk-free asset. Both issues are important in looking ahead to the prospect of any future crisis. Of the two, however, the creation of some kind of sovereign debt restructuring mechanism appears to attract the most political attention. This briefing note outlines the issues that would need to be addressed to bring greater stability to the euro area.

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by Erik Jones

Europe’s Complicated Democracy

Europeans are heading to the polls now in one of the world’s largest and most complicated democratic experiments. Moreover, these European elections are probably the most consequential we have seen since Europeans started voting directly for members of the European Parliament in 1979. This is a good opportunity to think hard about how Europeans are represented, how they make their decisions about voting, and what kind of Europe is on offer. Three recent books suggest new and important lines of argument. Christina Schneider shows that much of the responsiveness of Europe to the voters actually takes place through the Council of the European Union; Jennifer Fitzgerald reveals how votes on the extremes are more likely to be local than national, even if they have an anti-European tinge to them; and Sergio Fabbrini argues that many of the tensions we see surrounding the European project could be resolved if we just changed the way we think about constitutional federalism. These arguments are challenging and sophisticated in ways that much of the commentary that surrounds the European elections tends not to be; they are also counterintuitive. Now that everyone is focused on Europe, it is a good time for some well-grounded, lateral thinking.

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