With Brexit approaching, the Capital Markets Union (CMU) initiative acquires greater importance for the EU financial system. Faced with the looming threat of losing its pivotal financial centre and the risks it will entail, the European Commission counts on the CMU to reinforce the EU financial market. At the same time, bilateral financial relationships are too close and intertwined to imagine that a hard Brexit will provoke no harm and negotiators, being aware of the risks, make their moves carefully.
READ MOREA reform of trade and investment agreements has been undergoing over the past ten years. While these agreements used to focus solely on facilitating the movement of goods and capitals, their scope is wider today and covers contemporary issues. The European trade policy also evolved and gave birth to a new-generation of free-trade agreements such as the ones concluded with Singapore, Canada or Vietnam. Several factors drove this wave of reform towards a more comprehensive approach to trade and should lead to further improvements.
READ MOREPESCO, a dormant Lisbon Treaty provision to deepen defence integration among EU Member States, finally saw the light of day. While broad questions remain about the future of European defence, the initiative surely promises to be the biggest leap forward for the bloc’s defence policy in decades.
READ MOREOne of the main goals of the post-Lisbon Institutional reforms was to make EU decision-making more efficient. Following many claims that EU legislative processes are overly bureaucratized, the main goal of such efforts was to make the EU law-making more fit for the many ongoing challenges requiring great institutional re-activeness. The result of such fitness operation is quite striking.
READ MOREIn his annual address to the European Parliament, European Commission’s President Jean-Claude Juncker set out a blueprint for his final two years in office, covering a wide range of policy areas. On his call for deeper and more inclusive integration for all Member States, I say we are rolling the ball back to the starting point: the avant-garde option remains the only plausible route to closer political unity in the continent.
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