Current European integration very much focusses on harmonisation and convergence. This streamlining goes far beyond what is demanded by economic reasoning and turns out - as the euro crisis has demonstrated - to foster tensions among EU member states instead of promoting a flourishing common...

The European Council and the European Parliament adopted the European Electricity Directive in 1996. Since the end of the implementation period in 1999, some parts of the European power sector have been liberalized. In most countries, e.g., in Germany, price reductions and comprehensive...

In this paper, the relationship between the degree of centralisation and the distributive outcomes in European schemes of social assistance is investigated. For this purpose, a scheme of classification suitable for grouping the EU15 schemes according to features related to centralisation is...