Back in the 1960s the EU accepted the idea of Turkish membership in a fit of absent-mindedness, not as part of a coherent strategy. EU leaders and their voters are mostly unenthusiastic about the idea of Turkey joining the EU, and many prominent politicians openly oppose it. Yet the EU has made...

The enlarged European Union will be surrounded, from Russia to Morocco, with states economically dependent on access to its markets, concerned about cross-border travel and trade, and anxious for their voices to be heard in EU negotiations. Since 1989, West European governments have successfully...

While seizing the historic opportunity to reunify Europe by its enlargement to central and Eastern European countries, the EU neglected the strategic preparations for enlargement. It failed to invest enough into analysing the consequences of accession to 10 members for its internal functioning....

On 1 May 2004 the EU will enlarge to 25 member states. Member states are uncertain what they will gain or lose from enlargement and they are concerned about the implications for the functioning of the EU. Talk is even of enlargement as a u0093leap in the darku0094. The reports in this study deal...

The volatility of general government tax revenues has increased in Poland in recent years. The correlation between GDP growth and revenue growth appears to be lower in Poland than in many other EU Member States, which suggests that the instability of its revenues has a different. This Country...

This note provides a brief overview of the work carried out under the auspices of DG ECFIN's fellowship initiative. While the economic policy agenda in Europe is currently dominated by lagging activity reflecting public and private balance-sheet problems and still impaired transmission of...

Summarising the findings of DG ECFIN's fellowship programme on the future of EMUDG ECFIN has now published a series of Economic Papers written by distinguished scholars in the context of its Fellowship Initiative on "The future of EMU & Economic growth perspectives for Europe". This policy brief...

Large and differentiated fiscal adjustments underway in EU countries require credible strategies, including a growth-friendly approach to consolidation design. This brief captures in a summary fashion the main underlying principles for fiscal adjustments of high quality. While setting some...