The increase in the European Union's executive powers in the areas of economic and financial governance has thrown into sharp relief the challenges of EU law in constituting, framing, and constraining the decision-making processes and political choices that have hitherto supported European integration. The constitutional implications of crisis-induced transformations have been much debated but have largely overlooked the tension between law and discretion that the post-2010 reforms have brought to the fore. This book focuses on this tension and explores the ways in which legal norms may (or may not) constrain and structure the discretion of the EU executive. The developments in the EU's post-crisis financial and economic governance act as a reference point from which to analyze the normative problems pertaining to the law's relationship to the exercise of discretion. Structured in three parts, the book starts by analyzing the challenges to the maxim that the law both grounds and constrains EU executive and administrative discretion, setting out the concepts, problems and approaches to the relation between law and discretion both in general public law and in EU law. It progresses to analyze how these problems and approaches have unfolded in EU's financial, economic and monetary governance. Finally, it moves on from these specific developments to assess how existing legal principles and means of judicial review contribute to ensuring the rationality and legality of EU's discretionary powers.

This book provides new concepts and detailed empirical research on how accountability practices in EU economic governance are evolving.

This book considers national parliaments’ and the European Parliament’s role in European Union (EU) economic governance. It examines the recent strengthening of parliamentary involvement, limitations to improvements, and where and how democratic deficits still exist. It also provides the basis for some reflections concerning possible future evolutions and improvements to EU economic governance. The EU’s economic governance framework has been significantly strengthened as a response to the 2008 economic and financial crisis, and the establishment of a new Banking Union in 2013. It is thus key to determine whether these additional transfers of powers to the EU level have been accompanied by an equivalent empowerment of the national and European legislatures, allowing them to ensure adequate democratic legitimation. The chapters comprehensively re-examine the democratic (throughput) legitimacy of, and within, the EU’s economic governance by focusing on national parliaments, on the European Parliament, and on mechanisms for interparliamentary cooperation. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

One of the apparent contradictions which has puzzled observers of East Asian politics is why, despite the region's considerable economic integration, economic governance institutions remain largely underdeveloped. This book stems from the observation that the study of actual forms of economic governance in Asia has been impeded by the dominance of a ‘regionalism’ problematique. Scholars have focused on the emergence – or not – of regional multilateral institutions, seeking to evaluate these institutions’ capacities to enforce disciplines on Asian states. However, they have also neglected prior, and more pertinent, questions regarding the causal determinants of regional economic governance, which animate the contributions to this collection: What factors shape the scale and instruments of economic governance in Asia; and how and why is economic governance being rescaled between the sub-national, national and regional levels? In the chapters of this book, the contributors explore the social and political struggles over the scale and instruments of economic governance. They identify and explain the emergence of a wide variety of regional modes of economic governance, explain the factors shaping the spatial scale of economic governance in Asia, and discern the patterns of regional integration to which they give rise. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Australian Journal of International Affairs.

Sixty years after its invention, the operational system of the European Union remains little-understood. The 'Community Method' provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of the functioning and achievements of the EU.

The global economic and financial crisis that started in 2007 exposed serious flaws in the euro's original design. This report examines why Europe's economic and monetary union was so badly affected by the crisis, and assesses whether further changes need to be made to the structure of economic governance that underpins it. A Chatham House, Elcano and AREL Report