Nicolas Véron

The EU in the Crisis: A Status Report

In my column for January, I look at the European Union's policy performance in the crisis so far. While there have been obvious failures, the EU so far has given the lie to the many doomsayers that predicted that the crisis would be its undoing. That said, considerable challenges lie ahead.

Click here to read the piece, which is soon to be published as well by La Tribune (France), Forbes Russia, and other newspapers.

IFRS Governance Reform - Letter to the IASC Foundation

Last week Bruegel published my response to a consultation by the IASC Foundation, the body that oversees the setting of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), on reform of its governance arrangements. In my response, I call for more ambition in making the Foundation accountable to its ultimate stakeholdersin the global investment community.

Click here to read the document if the above link does not function.

Will Governments Resist Overreaching?

My column this month considers the extraordinary increase of state power in the economy that results from the financial crisis. While massive intervention was justified by the emergency circumstances, the question now is how governments will use (or abuse) their newfound economic power or whether they will scale it back to maximize competitiveness. Early indications suggest that the risk of overreach is real.

Click here to read the column, which was also published by PIIE, Bruegel, La Tribune, Forbes Russia, Referans, and Czech Business Weekly.

The CIty of London: Turbulence Ahead

With the financial crisis, the likely advent of a Eurosceptic conservative UK government next spring, and the growing threat of a reversal of cross-border financial integration, the City of London's strategic environment is changing at a rapid pace.

Click here to download the column, which is also published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, where I am now a Visiting Fellow (as well as a Senior Fellow at Bruegel). It was also published by NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch), La Tribune (in French), Forbes (in Russian), Referans (in Turkish), as well as the Australian Financial Review and Czech Business Weekly for the English version.

Global Accounting Convergence: A Race to the Bottom?

I forgot last month to post this piece, published in the Accountancy Column of the Financial Times. Just before the Pittsburgh Summit of the G20, I looked at convergence between the two main remaining systems of accounting standards (IFRS and US GAAP), and conclude that the current convergence process is becoming increasingly dysfonctional.

Click here to download the piece, which correctly predicted that a reaffirmation of the convergence goal would be the main thing the G20 leaders would have to say about accounting in Pittsburgh.

The unfinished job of restructuring Europe's banking system

Click here to download my October column, which builds again on the policy brief I co-authored with Adam Posen in June and argues that the European banking sector still needs comprehensive sorting out and restructuring for orderly credit conditions to be restored. Especially since the September general election, Germany has a pivotal role to play on whether this will happen or not. If not, the price will be a crippling drag on EU growth rates in the foreseeable future.

The piece was published on 19 October online by Caijing, on 20 October by Boersen-Zeitung as part of a special series on 'a new order for financial markets', on 26 October by La Tribune, on 12 November by Referans, and on 14 November by Cinco Dias.

The EU and Financial Regulatory Reform

This month, Financial World, the City of London's monthly magazine published by the ifs School of Finance and produced by CSFI, has commissioned five articles on what will change in financial regulation as a consequence of the crisis.

Click here to download my piece, the first of the series. I argue that the EU has lost the opportunity it had last year to take the lead in defining the new regulatory framework, but that it is probably making progress in fixing its own institutional gaps.

Europe's Oligarchs

Earlier this year, Simon Johnson's article in the Atlantic Magazine stirred a debate in the US on whether the power of the 'financial oligarchy' had been a determining factor in the crisis. In this month's column, I look at the corresponding situation in Europe. Here too, oligarchies play a big role and we would gain from more public discussion of it.

Click here to download my column in English, which was published on 7 September by Czech Business Weekly and on 17 October by the Australian Financial Review, as well as on 2 September by Caijing, on 19 September by La Tribune, and on 29 September by Forbes Russia. 

Bruegel's Memos to the Next Commission

 

Yesterday, Bruegel published Memos to the new Commission, a collection of essays by Bruegel scholars on the key policy challenges and priorities the European Commission will face over the next five years. I contributed the memo on Financial Services Policy, and coauthored the one on Enterprise and Industrial Policy together with André Sapir.

Click here in case the above link is broken.

FT Comment Piece on European Bank Treuhand

This morning the Financial Times published a comment piece by Adam Posen and myself, in which we briefly outline the proposal of our policy brief 'A Solution for Europe's Banking problem', that a number of European states should jointly create a trustee to manage the triage, restructuring and resolution processes that are indispensible to heal the European banking system.

Click here to download the piece if the above link does not work.