The EUI-nomics workshops provide a forum for discussion among academics and economists in public and private institutions about the current and expected future global economic conditions, with a special focus on the euro area and its member countries. For each country/area there will be short presentations by leading experts followed by general discussion. The workshops will be completed by a policy panel debating on key economic policy issues for the euro area.

See the programme

As part of this year’s State of the Union conference in Florence, a workshop will discuss the stability of the banking system. The event will be hosted by Professor Richard Portes. He will be joined by the Florence School of Banking and Finance’s director Professor Elena Carletti. The event will conclude with a speech by Ignazio Visco, Governor of the Bank of Italy. 

More information available here

This conference will address the liberalisation of the financial sector that occurred towards the end of the 20th Century, with a particular focus on the 1980s. It will cover different countries and consider the emergence and persistence of a new regulatory paradigm until – or even after – the recent financial crisis.

In most rich countries, various measures have been passed in order to liberalise and “modernise” the financial markets. Each country had its own agenda, but each of them has experienced, to a various extent, a change in regulatory regime. Interest rates paid on deposits have been liberalised, competition has been favoured, traditional barriers between insurance, banking, and
financial market activities, have been removed, as well as exchange controls. Access to domestic markets by foreign financial institutions has been facilitated through reciprocal agreements or through an open door approach attracting foreign investors.
Financial deregulation – or liberalisation – has not yet been thoroughly examined by historians, though, because of the difficulty to access archival material for recent periods. However, such material is becoming increasingly accessible and allows historians to take a new look at the matter, particularly concerning the 1980s.

As major reforms of the financial sector, such as Basel III, are being widely debated today, it is important to take a broader and longer-term view, in order to understand if we are still living under the same regulatory regime as before, or if a truly new paradigm has emerged. We will address the relevance of the notion of “deregulation”, the links between the changes under consideration and globalisation, and the respective influence of market forces and politics in this process. These questions call for an interdisciplinary approach that not only looks at historical and economic aspects, but also addresses legal, conceptual, and political issues.

Organiser: Youssef Cassis

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The European University Institute Forum on Brexit with short contributions from Brigid Laffan, Gary Marks and Liesbet Hooghe.

Brigid Laffan is Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) at the EUI.

Gary Marks is a research professor in Multilevel Governance at the VU University Amsterdam and Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gary Marks is currently a Visiting Scholar at the RSCAS.

Liesbet Hooghe is the W. R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also holds a research professorship in multilevel governance at the VU University Amsterdam. Liesbet Hooghe is currently a Visiting Scholar at the RSCAS.

Watch the Recording of the Conference

Europe has grown out of its crises when reason and solidarity have prevailed, but it has also been devastated by its crises when fear and nationalism have taken the lead. Brexit, in the aftermath of the euro crisis, brings this dichotomy back to the foreground. Since 2010 there have been important advances in the development of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and flexible forms of participation have allowed other EU countries, reluctant to join the euro, to share the basic principles that define the EU and have a common presence in the interdependent global world.

Brexit raises 3 crucial questions:

1. Should the EMU be accelerated to become a centre of gravity within the EU, or slowed down to avoid a centrifugal diaspora? If accelerated, how?
2. Should an ‘exit’ country be allowed free entry to the single market and other EU public goods without accepting freedom of movement?
3. Should the EU remain as it is, or increase its capacity to offer common public services (Banking Union, border security, research funding, environment, etc.), or limit its scope of activity to the EU single and integrated market?

Panelists:

Joaquín Almunia (Former vice-president of the European Commission)
Ramon Marimon (European University Institute and UPF – Barcelona GSE; ADEMU)
Gorgio Monti (European University Institute; ADEMU)
Morten Ravn (University College London; ADEMU)

Moderator:
Annika Zorn (European University Institute, Florence School of Banking & Finance)

The event is jointly organised by the Florence School of Banking & Finance, Pierre Werner Chair and ADEMU Project.

Watch the recording

After two years of existence, it is time to focus on what happened in practice for the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) and the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM), i.e. in the core of the Banking Union, in Member States and beyond the EU. The workshop gathers as broad a range of perspectives as possible with a variety of countries (ins and outs, including non-participating Member States and third countries, crisis and non-crisis countries), levels (national, supra- and international), and backgrounds (academic and supervisory practice).

A good range of the most important issues will be discussed, namely: to what extent does the regulatory framework under the Single Rulebook assist or hinder centralized decision-making? Have the Joint Supervisory Teams (JST) proven to be a tool to have both a sufficiently high information basis on the local level of the banks supervised and robust enough a membership to avoid capture? Has the split of supervisory competences in the SSM created problems or can it be seen as a sensible scheme?

But also, if the purpose of the SRM, as part of the Banking Union project, is to centralize resolution decision-making, to what extent does discretion remain within the national authorities? To what extent should all classes of retail financial services be exempted from bail-in? To what extent does Minimum Requirement for own funds and Eligible Liabilities (MREL) under the BRRD framework and the Total Loss Absorbing Capacity (TLAC) standard developed by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) give raise to a one size fits all approach to resolution?

Joint-seminar organised by the Law Department’s EU Financial and Monetary Law working group and the Robert Schuman Centre 

Stefaan De Rynck (DG FISMA, European Commission) will present a paper on the state of banking union, covering the issues of supervision, resolution and deposit guarantees. The paper reviews competing explanations for the emergence of banking union on the EU agenda. It also discusses the first indications on the effectiveness of banking union, both for a more centralized EU banking policy and for breaking the nexus between national banks and their sovereigns in the context of Euro Area crisis management.
Mr. De Rynck is an EU official who worked with Commissioner Michel Barnier on the creation of the single supervisory mechanism and the new resolution regime for EU banks. He is currently Head of Unit in DG FISMA for free movement of capital and enforcement of financial regulation. He teaches at the Collegio Carlo Alberto (University of Turin) and the College of Europe (Bruges), and has a PhD from the EUI, and has recently published in JEPP on the creation of the banking union. Currently he is drafting a chapter on banking union for a Routledge Handbook on EU Public Policy.

Discussants:

• Manuela Moschella (Associate Professor in International Political Economy, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence)
• Christy Petit (Law Department, European University Institute)

The session will be chaired and moderated by Pierre Schlosser, Florence School of Banking and Finance

Joint seminar organized by the Robert Schuman Centre and the Law Department’s EU Financial and Monetary Law Working Group. Gabriel Glöckler (ECB) will make a presentation on the changing ECB’s role in the EU governance, focusing on its perceived power concentration as the Bank started to use more controversial non-standard monetary policy tools, became involved in the Troika and eventually was given powers to supervise Eurozone banks. The presentation will address the interplay with politics, questions surrounding the means of holding the ECB accountable and ultimately the Bank’s legitimacy in the evolving EMU set-up. Mr. Glöckler has been with the European Central Bank since 1999 and recently joined the Bank’s senior management as Principal Adviser in the Directorate General Communications, where he focuses, in a deputy spokesman role, on the ECB’s outreach towards the general public, politics, and academia and the strategic direction of communications. Previous positions include Head of the Bank’s General Secretariat, Deputy Head of the EU Institutions Division (and in that capacity, member of the EU’s Economic Policy Committee) and Counsellor/Chief of Staff to the ECB’s Vice-President Lucas Papademos. Mr. Glöckler, who grew up in Leipzig, studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University and holds a Master’s degree from the College of Europe in Bruges. He is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, a regular public speaker, and has published in renowned journals, most recently on the creation of banking union. First reactions on the presentation will be provided by:

• Manuela Moschella (Associate Professor in International Political Economy, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence)
• Deirdre Curtin (EUI, Law Department)

The event will be chaired and moderated by Brigid Laffan (Director, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies). The event will be held under Chatham House Rules.

A key policy consequence drawn from the great financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 has been to compel private sector loss participation in case of a bank’s failure. Not only would such a bail-in of investors in banks spare tax payers but also re-instill market discipline by undoing implicit government guarantees. A crucial precondition for this strategy is that banks exhibit sufficient loss bearing capacity. Regulators both globally and in Europe thus prescribe minimum standards for the amount and quality of loss bearing capital to be held by banks. This online seminar looks at the crucial features of the requirements of the Financial Stability Board’s Total Loss-Absorbing Capacity (TLAC) requirements with a particular view to the Minimum Requirement for own Funds and Eligible Liabilities (MREL) prescriptions in the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) and highlights some important implementation issues.

Click here to download the slides of the presentation

Speaker: Tobias Tröger (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

Tobias Tröger holds since 2011 the Chair of Private Law, Trade and Business Law, Jurisprudence at Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main. His research interests include contract law and contract theory, corporate law (particularly, comparative corporate governance and corporate finance), banking law and the economic analysis of law. He holds a Ph.D.-degree from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, where he received the qualification of post-doctoral lecturer, and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. Throughout his academic career, he received various scholarships and awards, among others the Award of the Reinhold and Maria Teufel- Foundation for his Ph.D.-Thesis, and the Irving Oberman Memorial Award from Harvard Law School, John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business. Professor Tröger is Program Director Corporate Finance at the Research Center Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE) in Frankfurt and Chairman of the Board of the European Banking Institute (EBI). He is an advisor to the European Parliament on matters regarding the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). During recent years he taught as a visitor at various universities, inter alia at Stanford Law School and The University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Technical disclaimer

The online seminar will take place on the Adobe Connect platform. To ensure an optimal experience in terms of connection speed and video quality , we suggest to attend the seminar via a device connected to a stable network connection, avoiding if possible shared wi-fi or mobile connections. In preparation for the event, please access the following link to test your computer and network for compatibility (please note that the “Adobe Connect Add-in” is optional): http://admin.adobeconnect.com/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm

If you wish to attend the online seminar through a smartphone or tablet, we strongly suggest installing the free Adobe Connect App, available on the following platforms:

• IOS:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-connect-mobile/id430437503?mt=8
• Android:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.adobe.connectpro&hl=en