The international strength of the euro will grow

Significance The proposals identified areas where the euro could potentially become more dominant, such as the issuance of green bonds, digital currencies, and international trade in raw materials and energy. Ambitions to enhance the international leverage of the euro are being driven by the aim to strengthen EU strategic autonomy amid rising geopolitical risks. Impacts Developing its digital finance sector would be an opportunity for the EU to enhance its strategic autonomy in financial services. Challenging the US dollar would require the euro-area to rebalance its economy away from foreign to domestic demand. Member state division will prevent the economic reconfiguration the euro-area needed to make the euro a truly global currency.

Subject Politics and trade talks. Significance Understanding the factors that determine how long trade negotiations take will help businesses navigate the uncertainty, as the UK government prepares to negotiate trade agreements once it leaves the EU. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU took seven years to finalise. Less comprehensive renegotiations of international agreements can be shorter, including the US-Mexico-Canada agreement, which took less than two years. Impacts UK sectors highly exposed to the EU or United States, including automotive and financial services, face prolonged investment uncertainty. Timing of national elections, lobbying and the ideological divergence between trade partners will determine post-Brexit trade deal talks. Continued polarisation of major economies' electorates will delay or stop other global deals, including on foreign aid and climate change.


Subject Germany’s trade surplus. Significance Germany runs a large trade surplus with other euro-area countries and the rest of the world. Critics have argued that wages in Germany have not increased enough in recent years and that the country should boost domestic demand. However, trade and wage developments with other euro-area countries show that such criticism is largely misguided. Impacts Germany’s offshoring of production processes helps boost GDP growth in countries such as Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Creating a more innovation-friendly environment and investing in R&D would lift the long-term growth potential of the euro-area. Completing the digital single market could contribute to more innovation across the EU.


Subject Brexit and the UK shipping sector. Significance The shipping industry wants to maintain maximum openness with the EU27, avoiding restrictions that might delay the transit of goods or passengers and retaining ‘passporting rights’ for maritime-related financial services into the single market. At the same time, it wants to re-examine the regulatory framework, scrap any measures that damage UK competitiveness or create unnecessary red tape, and adopt a ‘Britain First’ approach to procuring maritime products and services and securing government support. The desire to achieve both aims is close to ‘having one’s cake and eating it’. Impacts Reorienting UK trade towards the wider world would boost shipping, particularly if more raw materials were sourced from outside the EU. In practice a reorientation of trade would have limited effects on the UK shipping sector beyond the ports handling such trade. An increase in traffic would be offset by both a decline in short-sea trading with Europe and Brexit’s short-term impact on demand.


Significance Hungary’s financial and economic woes are deepening amid a second wave of COVID-19 infections, which is undermining business and consumer confidence, and threatening to derail the incipient recovery. The deterioration in the growth outlook is putting further pressure on the forint; currency weakness is in turn stoking inflation, posing an acute policy dilemma for the Hungarian National Bank (MNB). Impacts The ECB is under pressure to continue monetary stimulus against deflation in the euro-area which faces a virus-induced double-dip recession. Expectations of an easing in geopolitical tensions if Democrats take both the US presidency and Congress are benefiting most EM currencies. The need to get the EU pandemic recovery fund through the European and member-state parliaments is reducing pressure on Hungary and Poland.


Significance The MNB’s first rate rise in a decade responds to headline inflation rising to the highest rate in the EU. The US Federal Reserve (Fed) decision to bring forward raising interest rates to 2023 is putting emerging market (EM) assets under increasing strain and heaping pressure on Central Europe’s central banks to begin tightening. Impacts Capital markets’ ‘hunt for yield’ will bolster EM bond and equity funds despite concerns about the Fed’s withdrawal of stimulus. The vast majority of investors are behaving as if the current surge in inflation will prove transitory. A sharp deterioration in sentiment may follow if price pressures last longer than expected. Brent crude’s rise to its highest level since October 2018, despite the recent rally in the US dollar, will fuel inflationary pressures.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Sims ◽  
Patrick Brandt ◽  
Greg Norman

Purpose To explain two papers published by the European Securities and Marketing Authority (ESMA) covering the application of the mar-keting “passport” under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD). Design/methodology/approach Explains ESMA’s first paper, containing an advice to the European Parliament, Council and Commission (collectively the Trilogue) on the potential application of the AIFMD passport to non-EU Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMs) and Alternative in-vestment Funds (AIFs), and a second paper, containing ESMA’s opinion on the current functioning of the AIFMD (currently used by EU AIFMs marketing EU AIFs in the EU) and National Private Placement Regimes (NPPRs, used for marketing by non-EU AIFMs and non-EU AIFs). Findings The ESMA papers were disappointing because they gave far less guidance and encouragement than anticipated that AIFs located in major jurisdictions such as the US and the Cayman Islands will be any easier to market to EU professional investors in the near future. Practical implications AIFMs (both inside and outside the EU) who are already using, or intending to use, the NPPRs should take some comfort that it seems highly unlikely that these regimes will be removed in the near future. Originality/value Practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.


Significance This could create an alternative benchmark safe-haven asset to rival German Bunds within the region. As part of its issuance plans, the EU intends to issue at least EUR50bn in green bonds annually, which is likely to make it the world’s largest issuer of these bonds. Impacts The increased importance of EU bonds over time will help to support the euro's value and could eventually put pressure on the dollar. The EU is leading the world in green bond issuance, but the risk of spurious environmental claims (‘greenwashing’) must be managed. The creation of new EU bonds will help reduce the funding costs of riskier euro-area members such as Italy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-38
Author(s):  
Samuel Lieberman ◽  
John T. Araneo

Purpose To discuss the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC’s”) increasing focus on disclosure and conflict-of-interest problems arising from how private equity fund (“PE Fund”) managers allocate expenses between management and fund investors. Design/methodology/approach This article summarizes the background of this focus on expense allocations and, drawing from the recent SEC enforcement actions focused on this issue, and identifies the types of both expenses and disclosures that have caught SEC attention. Findings After spending the first two or three years post Dodd-Frank raising awareness of these issues, the SEC has begun to impose large fines over expense-allocation conflicts and disclosure issues. Practical implications It is imperative for PE Fund managers to retain counsel to review their fund offering documents, expense allocation practices, and compliance programs to ensure consistency with the SEC’s recent decisions on these issues. Originality/value Practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.


Author(s):  
Al. A. Gromyko

The research is focused on several key problems in the system of international relations influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is shown that the events caused by it and broadly identified as a coronacrisis have a direct impact on the world economic contradictions (pandenomica) and political ones, including the sphere of security. These particular aspects are chosen as the main objects of the research. The author contends that the factor of the pandemic has sharpened the competition between regional and global players and has increased the role of a nation- state. In the conditions of transregional deglobalisation, regionalism and “protectionism 2.0” get stronger under the banners of “strategic vulnerability” and “economic sovereignty”. A further weakening of multilateral international institutions continues. The EU endeavours to secure competitive advantages on the basis of relocalisation, industrial and digital policies and the Green Deal. The article highlights the deterioration in the relations among Russia, the US, the EU and China, the unfolding decoupling between Washington and its European allies, which stimulates the idea of the EU strategic autonomy. An urgent need for the deconfliction in Russia – NATO interaction is stated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 705 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Arıboğan Deniz Ülke ◽  
Ibrahim Arslan

In the studies carried out within the scope of geopolitical discipline, the expression "geography is destiny" is frequently used and it is claimed that geography has unchangeable, irreversible qualities and the policies implemented are shaped through this assumption. This assumption ignores the humanitarian interventions over the geography and makes it difficult to understand the results produced by these interventions at both regional and global level. Similarly, the dynamic nature of international relations reveals new actors in the international system in times of bounce and collapse, and the borders that expand or narrow with each transformation can differentiate the geopolitical view with new sovereign countries. In the historical process, transportation accessibility, trade, search for raw materials, security and alliance relations have caused the same geography to be interpreted differently in different periods. This situation also applies to the geography of Turkey had been the homeland of empires. The developments in the Middle East over the past two decades has created a sensitivity in the relations between Turkey and the West, especially the United States. Competing interests with the EU and the US in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean, has necessitated a reassessment of Turkey's geography.


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