The Monkey Cage Blog: Cameron’s European Gambit

“In a long postponed speech, British Prime Minister David Cameron today outlined his plan for renegotiating Britain’s relationship with the European Union (EU), promising to bring the result to the British people in an “in-out” referendum within the next five years. Speaking at the London Bloomberg offices, Cameron’s speech comes at a pivotal time, when relative tranquility in financial markets has shifted attention from a possible Greek exit from the eurozone to a “Brexit,” a British exit from the EU itself.  Today Cameron presented a forceful vision of how British interests might be met while also forging a broader collective good for Europe and the world, but made clear that the EU’s current course was straying far from that vision.” Read More

LSE Blog: The ECB is hampered by a lack of democratic legitimacy, despite being responsible for policies hugely consequential for the lives of European citizens.

“When the ECB was created, it was intended to be an independent and apolitical institution that would oversee the running of the single currency. Kathleen R. McNamara argues, however, that far from dealing with purely technical issues, the ECB is the key player in a crisis that is inherently political. Its actions have significant distributional effects, yet the ECB does not have a robust political framework for contestation and debate about those effects. Without broader political union, it is impossible for the ECB to be fully legitimate.”  Read more