The construction of a European banking union is one of the most significant developments in European integration since the agreement on Economic and Monetary Union in the Maastricht Treaty. Banking ...union was proposed by the European heads of government and state in June 2012 to restore confidence in European banking systems weakened by the double whammy of the international financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis; break the sovereign debt-bank doom loop that plagued the eurozone periphery; counteract the growing fragmentation of European financial markets since the outbreak of the international financial crisis; and - in the words of Council President Herman Van Rompuy (2012) - complete economic and monetary union, thus saving the euro and protecting it better from future shocks (Howarth and Quaglia, 2013; see also Donnelly, 2013). Banking union was to be based on five components: a single rulebook on bank capital and liquidity; a single framework for banking supervision; a single framework for the managed resolution of banks and financial institutions; a common deposit guarantee scheme; and a common backstop for temporary financial support (European Council, 2012b, c).
The German Government refused to accept the development of a European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS) for Banking Union member states. Publicly, the German Government was preoccupied with the ...creation of a moral hazard that common funds would create for banks in those participating countries that had weak banking systems. This paper argues that to understand German moral hazard concerns it is necessary to look beyond the ideational - notably concerns stemming from German Ordo-liberalism - and focus on the existing national institutional arrangements that the German Government sought to protect. German moral hazard concerns stemmed from the fear that well-funded German deposit guarantee schemes (DGS) - especially those of small savings and cooperative banks - could be tapped to compensate for underfunded (and largely ex post funded) DGS in other member states. We thus demonstrate that the difficulties facing the construction of an EDIS owe to the weakness of the previously agreed harmonization of national DGS. This failure to harmonize schemes beyond a low minimal standard can be explained through an analysis focused on national systems. Different existing national DGS stem from the different configuration of national banking systems, the longstanding relationships among national banks and well-entrenched regulatory frameworks.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) was officially part of a coordinated European Union (EU) strategy to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we argue that despite the worst ...socio-economic crisis to hit most European countries since the Second World War, the EIB failed to deviate from a set path that delimited acceptable forms of lending. We apply a historical institutionalist analysis to explain how and why the EIB continued to engage in principally low risk lending activities via the commercial banking sector, and failed to significantly increase lending to the public health sector.
Our contribution demonstrates and explains the ineffectiveness of European Union (EU) bank resolution rules, a core element of Banking Union. This inadequacy owes in large part to the limited access ...to and insufficient availability of EU resolution funds and inadequate national deposit guarantee schemes in most EU member states, in conjunction with the relatively high minimum requirements for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) for many EU banks. In many cases, these requirements are unlikely ever to be met – particularly for retail banks most likely to require resolution in the euro periphery. We offer a liberal intergovernmentalist analysis to explain the inadequacy of the EU resolution regime by examining German and French government preferences on EU rules on bank capital requirements agreed earlier in 2013 and national deposit guarantee schemes agreed in 2014. These government preferences were shaped significantly by the preferences of national banks and bank associations.
At least since the French Revolution, France has the peculair distinction of simultaneously fascinating, charming and exasperating its neighbours and foreign observers. Contemporary France provides ...an essential introduction for students of French politics and society, exploring contemporary developments while placing them in a deeper historical, intellectual, cultural and social context that makes for insightful analysis. Thus, chapters on France's economic policy and welfare state, its foreign and European policies and its political movements and recent institutional developments are informed by an analysis of the country's unique political and institutional traditions, distinct forms of nationalism and citizenship, dynamic intellectual life and recent social trends. Summaries of key political, economic and social movements and events are displayed as exhibits.
This article explores what the financial crisis shows about changes in the German and French banking systems, the two largest in continental Europe. In particular, we highlight processes of ...financialization – defined here as the increased trading of risk. We focus on an apparent contradiction: why did the supposedly more protectionist and conservative German banking system suffer much higher losses than the more liberalized French system? This article also examines the responses of German and French banks and governments to the crisis and speculates how far these responses might limit future financialization and shape national banking systems.
Building on the work of Laclau and Mouffe and others, this article develops a distinctively poststructuralist approach to the analysis of policy discourse in the field of environmental politics. ...Despite advances, there remain persistent critiques of the approach. Some claim that its theoretical assumptions are either too ideational or insufficiently attuned to the linguistic aspect of discourse analysis. Others pinpoint methodological difficulties in operationalizing the approach and generating effective research strategies. Addressing such critiques, we seek to articulate elements of Laclau and Mouffe's post-Marxist theory of hegemony with insights gleaned from Foucault's archaeology of discourse, more specifically his idea of the statement. When supplemented with the logic of hegemony, we argue that describing and mapping statements of various types, as they appear and disappear, circulate and change, in relation to particular policy problems in specific historical contexts, provides vital clues for delimiting competing discursive formations. It also enables researchers to detect and explicate the underlying rules that made them possible and brought them into being. We illustrate such claims through an empirical analysis of three exemplary statements in aviation policy in the United Kingdom, demonstrating how the critical evaluation of these statements offers a lens through which to examine the continuities and discontinuities of on-going hegemonic struggles.
Palm oil production has been linked to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. We explore consumer awareness of palm oil, perceptions of its environmental impact, recognition of ...ecolabels including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) ecolabel, and inclusion or avoidance of ecolabels in household shopping using a representative sample of the British population. We find consumer awareness of palm oil to be fairly high (77%), with 41% of those aware of palm oil perceiving it as 'environmentally unfriendly', more than double the level of any other vegetable oil examined. However, recognition of the RSPO ecolabel is the same as those who 'recognize' a fictitious ecolabel, making recognition indistinguishable from zero. Based on our logistic regression analysis, members of the British population most likely to actively include ecolabelled products in their weekly household shopping are those who are female, from higher socioeconomic groups, spend more than £120 per week on household shopping, and have received a Bachelors degree or higher. Despite clear benefits of environmental certification and ecolabelling, a relatively niche segment of the general population actively includes ecolabelled products in their weekly household shopping. Therefore, we recommend current policies be amended to require companies to source 100% identity preserved certified palm oil that can be traced to the plantation level to avoid having to rely on consumer decisions to enable a shift towards more responsibly-sourced palm oil. Additionally, requiring multinational companies to map and publicly disclose full supply chain information for all global operations, including palm oil suppliers and concessions, could help illuminate and discourage unsustainable practices.
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