In a federation of sovereign states, common debt can provide insurance against idiosyncratic shocks even without any intended, ex ante transfers. This insurance property arises automatically when the common debt service is financed by a levy on members that is proportional to national income....

The aim of this study is to analyse the role of social policies in different European welfare states regarding minimum income protection and active inclusion. The core focus lies on crisis resilience, i.e. the capacity of social policy arrangements to contain poverty and inequality and avoid...

Recent events and rising geopolitical tensions have raised concerns about the external dependence and vulnerability of Europe’s economy. Decision-makers need to rethink the playing field of geoeconomics and should be prepared for different trade policy scenarios that may arise from new...

Europe has to respond to a new and more contested security order. Russia’s imperial ambitions threaten stability and peace, while the United States demands from the European NATO countries to contribute more to their own security. To improve defence capabilities, Europe has to increase defence...

From the earliest announcement of the European Green Deal, the current EU political cycle has been defined by an unprecedented acceleration in the scale and pace of climate policy. Under difficult conditions that sometimes tested the ability to engage stakeholders, including various external...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a wake-up call for Europe regarding its unhealthy levels of dependence on the energy and metals fronts, and the associated threats this posed to its competitiveness. Meanwhile, the need to decarbonize the economy has become ever more pressing. Soon after the...

Alongside a range of already well documented factors such as deindustrialization, technological progress and international trade, a series of recent empirical econometric studies show that immigration has contributed to the rise of extreme right-wing parties in Europe. Our study highlights,...

This paper discusses the introduction of new own resources to finance the EU budget. Currently roughly two thirds of the budget is financed from GNI-based own resources, which are essentially contributions made by the member states out of national tax revenues. While GNI resources are...

We design and conduct large-scale surveys and experiments in eleven European countries to examine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on social trust, reciprocity, solidarity as well as institutional trust. Using incentivized outcome questions on trust and solidarity towards fellow citizens,...

This policy report analyzes one aspect of the sovereign-bank nexus: the feedback effects between banks and sovereigns derived from the holdings of sovereign debt in domestic banks. We study how this relationship evolved during the European debt crisis and how it responded to the implementation...