scholarly journals On the Political Decision of Audit Market Regulation: Empirical Evidence of Audit Firm Tenure and Maximum Durations within the European Union

Economies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Markus Widmann ◽  
Florian Follert ◽  
Matthias Wolz
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Magic Number ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Audit Firm ◽  
Audit Market ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Eu

After almost every economic crisis and corporate scandal, political actors announce the need for stricter regulatory measures for financial markets and companies, in an attempt to appease their voters and defend their political agenda. Regarding the latest international financial crisis, the EU responded, among other things, with comprehensive regulation of the European audit market. In the context of auditor rotation, after 17 June 2016, the duration of audit engagements should not exceed a maximum of 10 years. In this paper, we therefore investigate whether there is empirical evidence behind the 10-year threshold—or is it simply arbitrary? Our aim is to evaluate the audit market reform by the European Union (EU) (Regulation (EU) No 537/2014 and Directive, 2014/56/EU) related to the objective of improving the quality of audits. Therefore, our article addresses the most crucial element of this reform, the implementation of a mandatory audit firm rotation for public interest entities (Regulation (EU) No 537/2014, Article 17). Based on a unique dataset of 11,834 firm observations from all listed companies within the EU between 2008 and 2017, we provide for the first time a discussion basis for the assessment of audit market interventions by the EU. Hence, we compare the new maximum durations with average audit tenure in the particular member states. Even where we present only descriptive results, our results at least indicate that the “magic number” 10 (years) could be more the result of a political process—i.e., a consent between the European institutions—rather than evidence based. Therefore, our findings shall serve as a first starting point in the discussion of a vast and interdisciplinary research field.

Endogenous Preferences And Delegation In The European Union

2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hug
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Endogenous Preferences ◽  
The Eu

The interplay among intergovernmental and supranational actors is a defining feature of the institutional life of the European Union (EU). Too often, however, these actors are considered independent of each other, and their autonomy is assessed in a vacuum. This is problematic because if there is such a thing as "endogenous preferences" in the EU, it appears exactly through this interdependence of intergovernmental and supranational actors. None of the institutionalist approaches to the EU has come to grips with this fact yet. Based on some very simple gametheoretic ideas, I offer in this article a rationale for "endogenous preferences" and discuss their impact on issues of delegations. Some cursory empirical evidence supports the claims that the preferences of supranational actors are related to those of the actors who select or appoint them. Similarly, the analyses presented here suggest that preferences over delegation to supranational actors are influenced by differences in policy views between principals and agents.

The ‘puzzle’ of workers’ mobility in Italy

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-108
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Delfino
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Eu Directives ◽  
Italian Legislation ◽  
The Eu

In Italy, workers’ mobility is a very complicated puzzle that is composed of different pieces. This paper deals with such different pieces under the perspective of workers' mobility within the European Union and highlights that the term mobility is not a synonym of posting (of workers), since the latter term indicates only one of the types (although the most relevant) of workers’ mobility. The author starts with workers’ mobility within the national border and beyond the European Union. Then, he concentrates his attention on the Italian way of transposing the EU Directives on the transnational posting of workers, which is very problematic, especially with reference to the role of collective bargaining agreements. Special attention is dedicated to the issue of public policy where an important role is played by Italian case law, which is very interesting and not uniform. The paper ends with some predictions about the forthcoming Italian legislation concerning both national and transnational mobility, which will be possibly influenced by the domestic political agenda.

Challenging the masters of the treaties: Emerging narratives of constituent power in the European Union

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARKUS PATBERG
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Popular Initiative ◽  
The Eu

Abstract:There is a growing sense that if the EU is to avoid disintegration, it needs a constitutional renewal. However, a reform negotiated between executives will hardly revitalise the European project. In light of this, commentators have suggested that the EU needs a democratic refounding on popular initiative. But that is easier said than done. Shaping the EU has been an elite enterprise for decades and it is hard to imagine how things could be otherwise. In this article, I map four public narratives of constituent power in the EU to sketch out potential alternatives. Political actors increasingly call into question the conventional role of the states as the ‘masters of the treaties’ and construct alternative stories as to who should be in charge of EU constitutional politics, how the respective subject came to find itself in that position, and how it should invoke its founding authority in the future. These public narratives represent a promising starting point for a normative theory that outlines a viable and justifiable path for transforming the EU in a bottom-up mode.

scholarly journals WTO Negotiations on Market Access in Agriculture: a Comparison of Alternative Tariff Cut Proposals for the EU and the US

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Christophe Bureau ◽  
Luca Salvatici
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
Market Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Import Demand ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Agricultural Commodity ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Eu

Abstract This paper provides a summary measure of the possible new commitments in the area of agricultural market access undertaken by the European Union and the United States, using the Trade Restrictiveness Index (TRI) as the tariff aggregator. We take the 2001 bound tariffs as the starting point and attempt to assess how much liberalization in agriculture could be achieved in the European Union and the United States as a result of the present negotiations. We compute the index for 20 agricultural commodity aggregates under the actual commitments assuming a specific functional form for import demand. We compare the present levels of the TRI with three hypothetical cases: a repetition of the same set of tariff cuts commitments of the Uruguay Round according to a EU proposal prior to the 2003 WTO ministerial meeting, a uniform 36% reduction of each tariff, an harmonization ( "Swiss" ) formula based on the initial US proposal.

scholarly journals Equality and Diversity Management Inside the Institutions of the European Union

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-240
Author(s):  
Silvia Manessi
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
English Language ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Equality And Diversity ◽  
The Eu

The aim of this paper is to analyse the legal framework regulating the careers of civil servants working for the EU institutions and reveal how the values of equality and diversity are communicated and embedded in their daily lives. The research examines the English language used in the HR legal framework of the EU institutions and explores the linguistic aspects related to equality and diversity management and inclusive language. The starting point of this research is the idea that the European Union is based on the values of democracy, the rules of law and the equal treatment of its citizen, who are celebrated for their diversity. It is thus highly relevant to look at the EU in action and see if it is consistent in the understanding and application of these values. The methodological approach of this research entailed the creation and analysis of a unique corpus composed of all the applicable HR legal provisions in force within the EU institutions, and the examination of the linguistic features (word lists by frequency, concordances, collocations and lexical bundles) of the terminology related to four different areas of equality and diversity – the LGBTI community, gender, the elderly and persons with a disability – with the final aim to take stock of the related developments in the use of the English language. The results indicate that the language used in the EU HRM legal framework is not in line with the EU values of equality and diversity, and the research concludes with highlighting possible improvements of the language used in the corpus.

scholarly journals EEC and Yugoslav cooperation in the frames of modern international relations in Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-55
Author(s):  
E. G. Entina
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Western Balkans ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
South East Europe ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Eu

Traditionally the phenomenon of the European integration towards South East Europe is regarded starting from the XXI century. The explanation for such a periodization are resolution of the open conflicts on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and implementation of the complex EU strategy for the region. Starting point of the majority of researches is the year of 2003 when the EU Agenda for the Western Balkans was started in Thessaloniki. The topic of EEC-Yugoslavia relations, SFRY having been first socialist country to institutionalize its trade and economic relations with Brussels, are unfairly ignored in domestic and foreign scientific literature. It is regarded solely as a chronological period of trade agreements. Nevertheless, this issue is of fundamental importance for understanding the current neighborhood of the European Union. The main thesis the author proves is that in the 1960s and 1980s as it is the case nowadays, the main imperative of Brussels' policy towards the Balkans was to prevent Moscow from increasing its influence. This led to the formation of a very specific format of relations with Belgrade and was one of the reasons why the economic crisis in Yugoslavia became extreme and its economy irreformable. In addition, at a later and structurally much more complicated stage of relations between the countries of the former Yugoslavia and the European Union the specificity and main components of relations of the Cold War period did not fundamentally change. As for the policy of so-called containment of the external actors one could see that besides Moscow, we can speak about similar attitude of the EU towards China. It makes it possible to consider the EU policy towards the countries of the former Yugoslavia in the paradigm of neoclassical realism, rather than in the paradigm of traditional liberal European integration approaches which allows us to unite neorealists elements with the specifics of internal processes, including the modernization of institutes, relations between society and state, types of political leadership.

scholarly journals New EU Initiatives against Terrorism

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-23
Author(s):  
Olga Potemkina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Data Encryption ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Access To Data ◽  
The Eu

The article examines the EU’s response to a series of terrorist attacks in European cities in the autumn of 2020, after which the topic of terrorism once again came to the fore on the EU political agenda. The author analyses the new Counter-Terrorism Action Plan and the Regulation on the removal of terrorist content from the Internet adopted after a protracted inter-institutional dialogue between the EU Council and the European Parliament. The article also looks at the problem of expanding the mandate of the Europol agency in the field of big data analysis, while the author emphasises that member states still doubt the need to grant the agency access to data encryption. The author comes to the conclusion that the European Union quite adequately fulfills the tasks outlined in the documents to respond to terrorist attacks, but has not been very successful in preventing them. It is noted that in the plans of international anti-terrorist cooperation, the European Union, as before, does not include Russia, which can not but reduce the effect of global and regional confrontation with new security challenges.

The European Union in the Mediterranean Sea: Navigating the Political-Legal Shallows

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-298
Author(s):  
Stephan F.H. Ollick
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Regime Complex ◽  
International Migrants ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Eu

The Mediterranean Sea has long been an important and perilous route for international migrants from the coast of North Africa to the European Union (EU). Manygrants and refugees travelling on overcrowded and unseaworthy dinghies do not survive the crossing. Rising numbers of fatalities put pressure on the EU to address the Mediterranean tragedy with renewed urgency. Frontex Operation Triton (2014–) and the naval mission eunavfor med Operation SOPHIA (2015–) were launched to survey and influence migratory flows. Although thousands of migrants and refugees have thus been delivered from distress at sea, casualty rates remain staggeringly high. Some commentators and organizations have dismissed Frontex and eunavfor med Operation SOPHIA as vehicles of an isolationist political agenda. This overlooks the narrow legal, political and practical confines within which these initiatives operate. Frontex and eunavfor med Operation SOPHIA seek to attain a level of control necessary for the delayed implementation of more ambitious and forward-looking schemes. The unsophisticated, temporary nature of the regime complex currently governing the EU’s activities in the Mediterranean Sea manifests in ambiguous language, in frequent and disparate amendments, and in the brevity of the mandates thus dispensed.

Economization of Expert Knowledge about Gender Equality in the European Union

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Elomäki
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Economic Impacts ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
Gender Equality Policy ◽  
The Eu

Abstract The article analyzes (i) how the increasing demand for empirical evidence about the economic impacts of gender equality transforms expert knowledge about gender equality in the European Union (EU) and (ii) the implications of these transformations. The article argues that the much-debated discursive economization of gender equality in the EU context is underpinned by the economization of expert knowledge about gender equality—the increasing reliance on mainstream economics to support gender equality claims. This has increased the influence of gender-biased economics knowledge and its modes of knowledge production in EU gender equality policy.

scholarly journals Competent demand pull and technological flows within sectoral systems: the evidence on differences within Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1525-1547
Author(s):  
Cristiano Antonelli ◽  
Agnieszka Gehringer
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Input Output ◽  
The South ◽  
Dynamic Panel ◽  
Demand Pull ◽  
Derived Demand ◽  
The Eu

Abstract The paper implements the competent demand-pull hypothesis that grafts the advances of the economics of knowledge on the Kaldor–Schmookler demand-pull approach. Demand-pulling effects occur only if the increase of derived demand for both capital and intermediary inputs is accompanied by knowledge interactions carried by market transactions. The competent demand-pull hypothesis rejuvenates the standard demand-pull approach through the focus on the sectoral architecture of market-embedded inter-sectoral knowledge linkages between competent users and innovative producers. We measure such market-embedded and competent influence with the derived demand for intermediates—taken from input–output tables—accounting for productivity increases downstream. The empirical evidence from dynamic panel estimations for the European Union (EU) over the period 1995–2007 suggests the presence of strong and positive competent demand impulses, but the effects vary between three EU sectoral systems, the EU core, the East and the South.

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