Despite the financial crisis and the subsequent euro crisis, the Swedish public opinion is increasingly in favour of the EU. In the 2010 survey, 53 percent are in favour of the Swedish membership while 23 percent are against.
When markets are liberalized and open for competition, the scope of EU law is widening simultaneously. Even though EU law permits considerations other than free competition, the member states must themselves use the space available.
Even though the Member States are ambitious in setting the agenda for the EU, they are less keen to provide the funding necessary to meet these ambitions. Indeed, if the EU seriously sought to attain all goals and ambitions of the Member States, it would easily swallow large parts if not all of the EU’s combined GNI.
At the end of last year, the Hungarian parliament adopted a new media law. It was met by strong reactions and believed – among other things - to constitute a threat to the freedom of the press and being incompatible with EU law.
Sovereignty over the Economic and Monetary Union, EMU, is divided. Monetary policy is unified at the European level while economic policy is in essence national.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, a vast amount of economic analysis and a sizeable number of reforms in the financial markets have followed. In this report, Professor Henry Montgomery takes the analysis one step further by examining the psychological explanations behind the crisis.
The Commission’s Fifth Cohesion Report provides a wealth of new data on social, economic and territorial trends in Europe. This gives an excellent basis for discussing the future of cohesion policy, but the questions asked by the Commission in its consultation are too narrow.
The European Commission recently launched a discussion on the architecture of direct payments, with a view to rethinking the philosophy of agricultural regulation within the EU. The debate has been pursued under the Swedish EU Presidency.
In order to better understand the Swedish Presidency of the European Union, SIEPS invited a number of experts on the European Union from different member states. They were asked to write short analytical texts on how the Presidency has succeeded in relation to expectations and ambitions.
Circular migration has become a central concept for the future EU migration policy, implying that migrants should be encouraged to move repeatedly between the country of origin and the host country. The basic purpose is to utilise international labour mobility to make both countries’ economies more efficient.