This European Policy Analysis proposes a method for analysing the EU budget which combines economic, political and legal aspects. This integrated and multidisciplinary approach was lacking in the previous literature on the EU budget.
The report, which has been written by researchers at the Institute for European Environmental Policy, assesses to what extent the EU budget has contributed to achieving the EU’s climate change objectives and sets out arguments on how and why the EU budget might support the fight against climate change in the future. The analysis shows that there has been little focus on these objectives so far and that this is also true for the current 2007-2013 Financial Perspective.
The report, written by Jorge Nuñéz Ferrer, Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), analyses how the own resources system can be reformed to foster better decision-making in relation to policy-making in the EU. The author argues that a combined strategy of policy reform and changes in the own resources system is necessary and the report therefore proposes to finance the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in a different way.
In December 2006 the Institute for World Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (IWE) was commissioned by SIEPS to map the interests of the EU Member States and their positions with regard to the EU budget, in order to analyse both the prospects for reform, as well as the possible content of such a reform, during the budget review 2008/2009. The study employs a twin-track approach.
The European Commission has proposed a common energy policy conducted in a spirit of solidarity among Member States as an instrument to address the issue of energy security. The authors of this report, Chloé Le Coq and Elena Paltseva, highlight that such a common energy policy may entail biased economic incentives and thereby cause problems with so-called moral hazard.
The author analyzes both the development of common EU asylum systems, and the various models that are discussed to share responsibility for the refugees who come to the EU. The conclusion is that the models discussed today are not likely to lead to an equitable distribution of responsibility and the author proposes a model where the prevention interventions for refugees is taken into account.
Flexicurity has become a popular concept and is associated with a modern labour market policy.
The EU budget should be reviewed 2008 / 09. The author proposes a "Zero Base" approach in which no expenses or income is considered sacred, but are tested as if they were suggested for the first time.
Issue 4 of the European Policy Analysis deals with the mandate to the reform treaty agreed at the European Council meeting on 23 June 2007. The new treaty represents a new attempt to give the EU new tools to address future challenges.
Healthcare is one of the core policy areas of the welfare state which for a long time has been regarded as unaffected by the process of European integration. However, healthcare has increasingly been subjected to the principles of the internal market during the last ten years.