Commentaries

2025 - n° 171 25/02/2025

As 80 years ago, today’s large states aim to impose their will on smaller nations. This time, however, no European leader is at the table. Will incoming German Chancellor Merz change this? A commentary by Catherine De Vries

Catherine De Vries
2025 - n° 162 03/02/2025

A recently published report by the Institute for European Policymaking, written by a multidisciplinary team of researchers at Bocconi University and the Toulouse School of Economics, provides timely insights into these challenges and offers concrete policy recommendations across three critical areas

Francesco Decarolis, Guido Roveri
2024 - n° 150 13/12/2024

In a nutshell, we see that 80 years of prime partnership have created a solid base of mutual appreciation and similar sensitivities. Europeans and Americans still see in the other their most valuable ally, NATO is highly regarded and cooperation trumps competition. However, eight years of American hyper-polarisation at home and mixed messaging abroad have taken their toll. In 2024, 63 percent of Europeans agree that it is time for Europe to go its own way. 

Isabell Hoffman, Catherine De Vries
2024 - n° 149 04/12/2024

Reduced economic insecurity generates not only a direct increase in demand for populist commitments but also a change in culture in the direction of lower trust and prevalent exclusionary rhetoric, which in turn are further indirect channels through which populist movements thrive

Massimo Morelli
2024 - n° 135 23/10/2024

“The Commission would like to be taking the lead on defense policy, but defense remains the domain of Member States”. Thomas Gomart is one of the most influential experts on foreign relations and geopolitics at the EU level: he has been director of the Ifri, Institute Francais de Relationes Internationales, since 2015. An expert in Russian geopolitics and the history of international relations, he has recently published the book L'accélération de l'histoire. Les noeuds géostratégiques d'un monde hors de contrôle ( Éditions Tallandier, 2024).

Stefano Feltri, Thomas Gomart
2024 - n° 124 19/09/2024

On September 19, mister Roth gave a lecture to Bocconi students titled “Europe at the Crossroads: Turning Today’s Poly-Crisis Into Tomorrow’s Poly-Opportunity”. Eleanor Spaventa, a professor of European Law at Bocconi and a member of the IEP@BU managing board, chaired the event co-hosted by IEP@BU and the Department of Legal Studies.

Stefano Feltri
2024 - n° 123 18/09/2024

While the focus of the new Commission will be crystallizing over the months and years to come, this short analysis of the mission letters for the future Commissioners suggests that the recent intervention of Mario Draghi on Europe’s competitiveness has been agenda-setting for the policy priorities as defined by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. 

Catherine De Vries
2024 - n° 118 12/09/2024

The September 2024 state elections in Germany mark a low point in public support for the governing left-wing coalition and a high point for the populist right. Often overlooked, the elections might also mark the fading of the German socialist party Die Linke into political irrelevance. Its demise teaches us valuable lessons for modern European politics

Laurenz Guenther
2024 - n° 110 15/07/2024

If Trump is elected in November 2024, the security outlook of Europe could deteriorate very fast as Russia may attempt to seek the opportunity of taking NATO off balance. It is therefore essential that the Commission and the forthcoming Defence Commissioner begin the policy planning and design well in advance and preferably as soon as they take office, as to move past preliminary negotiations and have blueprints ready for approval should the situation require it.

Francesco Nicoli
2024 - n° 107 09/07/2024

There are lessons to be learned by comparing the most recent elections in France and the UK. The French electoral system is characterized by two-turn constituency elections where several short-listed candidates qualify for a second round should no-one reach more than 50% of the votes in the first round. The British system, conversely, assigns a given constituency seat to whoever wins the plurality in a given constituency, regardless of whether or not the candidate reaches 50%.

Francesco Nicoli
2024 - n° 106 02/09/2024

While defense procurement and production remain fragmented across Europe and the EU and its member states invest less in their security and defense than the US, new EU and EU-sponsored initiatives demonstrate that Europeans are aware of this and attempt to reduce these shortcomings – political and fiscal obstacles notwithstanding.

Stephanie Hofman
2024 - n° 102 01/07/2024

The European Sovereign Bond market gyrations erupted in the wake of President Emmanuel Macron’s call for a snap parliamentary vote after his party’s defeat to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the European elections have sparked a debate on the opportunity of an activation of the Transmission Protection Mechanism (TPI). 
 

Carlo Favero, Massimo Amato, Dev Srivastava
2024 - n° 97 10/06/2024

It is therefore possible that even the election of the Commission President will not change the overall picture, with the real game taking place whenever the European Parliament is called to vote on the fundamental choices that Europe will face in the coming years, from managing the digital and green transitions to fundamental decisions on the common defense and security policies.

Carlo Altomonte
2024 - n° 89 03/06/2024

In our first forecast for the EP 2024 elections based on our model, in January 2024, we predicted a “sharp right turn”.  In our latest forecast, and our final one before the election, we are still forecasting that the next EP will be considerably more right-leaning than the current one, and that the two groups to the right of the EPP will be considerably larger than they currently are.

Simon Hix
2024 - n° 87 22/05/2024

ASML has a global monopoly on EUV, the most advanced lithography technology that is on the Wassenaar Arrangement list of dual-use technologies and requires an export license. The Dutch government approved the export license of EUV-technology to China in 2018. The US government was not pleased and tried to press its ally to consider the security issues. 

Sanne van der Lugt
2024 - n° 85 17/05/2024

These findings stem from a survey conducted in December 2023, encompassing nearly 13,000 EU citizens. Our dataset is representative of the EU as a whole and, more specifically, of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. In Italy, we interviewed 1,325 citizens. 

Catherine De Vries, Isabell Hoffmann
2024 - n° 81 26/04/2024

Elisabeth Braw, a widely respected expert in international relations and security, is currently a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. Before transitioning to research, she was a journalist, a background that informed her recent book published by Yale University Press, titled Goodbye Globalization: The Return of a Divided World.

Stefano Feltri
2024 - n° 80 26/04/2024

European automakers currently face increasing pressures. While the region’s manufacturers long dominated global sales revenues, several competitors from Asia have recently moved into the top ten.  But European companies have faced similar difficulties before, and the responses of the region’s automakers and policymakers to previous challenges offer insight for the present, especially on the issues of global competition and energy transition.  

Grace Ballor
2024 - n° 77 17/04/2024

It is now over two years since Russia launched its brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ever since those early days, a broad network of CEPR economists has been working intensively with colleagues in Ukraine and across the international research and policy communities to explore how to tackle the big economic challenges of the war and how to plan for the country’s post-war reconstruction. 
 

Elena Carletti
2024 - n° 69 11/03/2024

The EU-sponsored Eurobarometer polls routinely estimate support for EU defence integration between 70% and 80% of respondents, while a recent poll by the independent Bertelsmann Stiftung polling branch, Euopinions, returned a 87% support level. However, the devil is in the details: what is meant by “European defence policy” can wildly differ between people, and these simple questions present no trade-offs. 

Francesco Nicoli
2024 - n° 68 23/02/2024

The pattern of macroeconomic catch-up seen in the EU’s enlargement process is a remarkably positive story - if largely unsung and still incomplete. The catch-up achieved so far constitutes a key backdrop to today’s debate about further enlargement.  Without the rapid growth of the most recently acceding states it would be impossible for the EU to contemplate taking further poor members.

Michael Emerson, Daniel Gros
2024 - n° 64 12/02/2024

The euro area has been subject to a series of very different shocks, some of which, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, were unprecedented. While the ECB’s reaction to these deflationary shocks was vigorous, it persisted too long with its expansionary measures and failed to see their inflationary impact when energy prices shot up. The future is likely to bring new challenges, but climate change might not be the most important threat to price and financial stability.

This document was provided by the Economic Governance and EMU Scrutiny Unit at the request of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) ahead of the Monetary Dialogue with the ECB President on 15 February 2024.

Daniel Gros, farzaneh shamsfakhr
2023 - n° 57 28/12/2023

On December 200,2023, The European Parliament and the Council agreed on five key proposals of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum proposed by the EU Commission in September 2020 and aimed at creating a uniform system of regulations and policies around migration and asylum for the EU. The main aim of the new pact was to replace the Dublin system which relied heavily on first-country-of-entry criteria creating a burden for frontline member states.

Angelo Martelli

IEP@BU Contributors