Events

The new package of trade accords that was concluded at the World Trade Organisation’s Bali Ministerial Meeting late last year was a fresh start for the battered international trade body. Yet defeat has been snatched from the jaws of victory. A small number of countries refuses to agree on a protocol for the Bali deal on trade facilitation – and the entire agreement is now endangered.

Most Eurozone countries hit by the crisis find it hard to recover. Many economic indicators signal that there still are profound problems, if not a crisis. Government debt continues to rise while businesses reduce their credit exposure and struggle to grow and invest. Recession and deflation fears grow. The ECB continues to flood financial markets with low-cost liquidity, but investors do not celebrate it much. After a time of rosy optimism about the monetary union’s future economic development, consumer and business sentiment recently turned bleak – reflecting the dim prospects of the economy.

TTIP has run into opposition. Governments and NGOs in Europe are calling for key planks of the talks, such as investor protection, to be discharged. The political temperature of TTIP may be lower in the US, but key Congressional leaders and constituencies have their red lines too – with issues like intellectual property and trademarks becoming big concerns.

Europe is dependent on Russian gas for its energy supply. Yet is Europe really so dependent that its energy import should influence its general policy vis-à-vis Russia? While the popular image suggests the Kremlin to get its way in Europe by wielding its energy weapon – e.g. threats of gas cuts – the reality is that Europe has an increasing capacity to substitute Russian gas. Russia, too, has an economic interest to avoid a disruption that could put the country’s heavy energy investments in Europe at risk.

Urbanisation, globalisation and technological change have re-shaped societies and the world economy in the past decades. Urbanisation is accelerating. Globalisation is perhaps retreating now, but is continuously boosted by new technology and its capacity to integrate economies more deeply with each other. How do these forces of development and change link up with each other – and how will they evolve in the future?

Competition policy is a key policy area of the EU – and the power of competition policy to shape the structure of markets has grown. But is the power balanced by mechanisms or checks-and-balances to guarantee fair trials and other principles of constitutionalism?

The world enters into a new-old paradigm where energy security and economic growth are closely entwined. Energy costs, access and variety of supply are now affecting a country’s competitiveness on the export markets, and are increasingly key strategic considerations for economic statecraft.

In the last two years, the French audiovisual sector has witnessed an intense fight between the defensive and traditional vested interests against new forces that are eager to seize the opportunities presented by digital technology – This debate is taking place against a stagnating domestic market share of French movies despite a doubling of public subsidies. Based on some new exhaustive data, Patrick Messerlin’s new report assesses the failure of the current French audiovisual policy – from both an economic and cultural perspective.

China has embarked on an economic reform programme to re-balance its economy and improve its prospects for stable and sustained economic growth. Any government with the ambition to reform the economy faces political obstacles. For China, still a heavily regulated economy with substantial government interference, the task is even bigger. What are its chances for success? What reforms are critical to deliver on its ambition? Can it get reform momentum with the assistance of global economic institutions like the WTO? And if China reforms itself successfully, what does it mean for EU-China economic relations?

In response to revelations on mass online surveillance by foreign intelligence services, several governments are moving to restrict the free flow of data across borders. Whereas previous restrictions on the Internet aimed at keeping data out, this new breed of regulation aims to keep data inside state borders. Data localisation, i.e. the requirement that companies store and process personal data within the country in which they were collected, is being considered by policy-makers around the globe.