Archive
Essays and public commentary on European integration, political economy, institutions, and policy. Publication announcements from the former website are collected in the research library instead.
47 posts
3 April 2025
Francesco Nicoli is professor of Political Economy at the Politechnical University of Turin and fellow at the Brussels Think-Tank Bruegel. Brexit might have been the coronation of the Eurosceptic dreams of Nigel Farage, but it is fair to say that it also was the genesis moment for the West’s decline in display today. I...
30 November 2020
EU Recovery Fund: beyond the veto In this contribution, we look at feasible alternatives to ensure that the European Union can deal with the post-pandemic recovery should Poland and Hungary maintain their veto on the Multiannual Financial Framework. A shorter version of this piece has appeared on the German constitutio...
4 October 2020
Populism is a conspiracy—but not the one you think. Lots of academic research (mine included) and intellectual reflection has long assumed that populism is the consequence of “un-managed” globalization. While in principle globalization enlarges the “size of the pie”, if left to its own devices will produce redistributi...
12 June 2020
A few words on the waves of statue-topping we are witnessing. I am genuinely puzzled. For once, about time: celebrating genocidal rulers (Leopold II is all over Brussels), slavers, murderers is a terrible thing to do, and we are finally moving beyond it; and not a second too early. On the other side: what's the boundar...
1 April 2020
EURS is here: VERY BIG: the EU launches a European Unemployment Reinsurance Scheme (EURS- or SURE, in the new commission's label). https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1245297406054465541 The news was earlier on the FT ( https://www.ft.com/content/55ffe3e9-b97c-45af-880c-21fa6c7bd332?sharetype=blocked) and on Politic...
19 February 2020
Sometimes it is useful to remind ourselves the enormous welfare effects of currency valuations. I spent most of the afternoon working on GDP data across a panel of 27 European countries, from 1993 to 2017. I was attempting to test a old hypothesis of mine on the effect of income convergence on identification with Europ...
25 March 2019
Will she stay or will she go? The UK is waiting to know the fate of May and of Brexit. A pivotal issue, at this point, is whether the Tories will force the election of a new leader, or whether May will leave as an exchange for the Brexiteers to back her deal. Let's make a simple game-theoretical tree and reason by back...
31 July 2018
Francesco Nicoli, who defended his PhD in February 2017, was awarded the Supranational Political Economy Thesis Prize for his dissertation on the Political Economy of the Eurocrisis, supervised by professor Luigi Bonatti and with the advice of professors Simona Piattoni and Andrea Fracasso. SPE award decision 2018 His...
29 June 2018
In a previous article , I discussed the fundamental issue of contemporary politics: the mismatch between "hyperglobalization" in economic integration, and "under-globalization" in political integration. This mismatch applies, especially, to the European Union. In a forthcoming book chapter I bring that discussion much...
17 February 2018
In a twitter follow-up on my previous post on the flow-diagram of Italian Elections , I've been suggested to attach to my various scenarios on the election results some probabilities. This goes nowhere near professional estimate such those put forward by Alessio in the 2016 Constitutional referendum; they are rather a...
16 February 2018
The Italian elections are approaching. After 3 governments led by the Democratic Party (Letta, Renzi, Gentiloni), the non-winner of the 2013 General Election, the country is heading towards an impossible electoral conundrum. This article discusses the possible outcomes of the election. While of course we do not know wh...
15 January 2018
A new departure for Europe The European Union is a historically unique, successful project of peace; it has to maintain those features. It combines economic integration and welfare, anchored into freedom, democracy and social justice. The core of this vision is that the EU uses its shared political and economic power t...
23 December 2017
I've been told that Bitcoin (and cryptocurrencies in general) are a revolution that would democratize the markets and shake the foundations of modern capitalism. Perhaps. But not the revolution I'd like to see. Let's make an intellectual exercise and try to imagine what would happen if Bitcoin- or any other cryptocurre...
6 December 2017
Today the Commission released a long (very long) awaited package on the reform of the EMU. It's the beginning of the end of a process that started in 2012 with the so-called 4-Presidents Report, led by the then-European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. Today's package (which can be found here ) includes 3 Communica...
22 October 2017
The Scottish Trilemma, by my wonderful students Rihannon and Amber. (Yes, they learn quick!)
4 October 2017
As I stated in the past (here for the British referendum on EU , here for the Dutch referendum on the Ukraine Association Treaty , here for the 2016 Italian referenda) I am really no fan of referendum. Catalonia makes no exception: surely the referendum is illegal and, perhaps, inopportune. One may ask, however, whethe...
19 September 2017
As many of you know, since many years I follow the process of "commercialization" of the Space Sector with great interest. I am finally planning to put in on paper and create a course (BA level) on it. Here below you will find the main points of my proposed course; if anyone has good suggestions for scientific literatu...
31 August 2017
The migration crisis, like the Eurocrisis, is here to stay, for it "traps" EU policy makers into the contradictions of the partially functionning, partially dysfunctional system we built. Frank Schimmelfenning's paper put forward a very convincing argument on the explanation on the different outcomes of each of the two...
10 July 2017
Since the victory in the Moon race, we are accustomed to think about the US as the leading power in space; the iconic Space-Shuttle, and the largely US-financed International Space Station (ISS) have substantially contributed to this perception. However, the US lost leadership in the market for orbital flights in the e...
22 May 2017
What to do with Greece? the question is, seven years on from the outbreak of the Ellenic Greek crisis, still unanswered. Many options were tried, by all sides: austerity; debt haircut; reform packages for competitiveness; populism-via-referenda; etc. None seems to work. Now that the great majority of Ellenic debt is in...
5 May 2017
(some previews from upcoming papers) Integration & crises in the long run: EMU as 5 nested trilemmas from the 50ies to today:
24 April 2017
French Elections, round one: Centre-left out, Centre-right out; Cosmopolitans in, nationalists in. The 2017 French elections seem, prima facie, a textbook case of the death of the traditional Right/Left divide that many have forecasted since the end of the Cold War. Yet, the Right/Left divide is not dead, it's sleeping...
16 November 2016
Come procedere verso un'Unione fiscale? in questo articolo, originariamente scritto per Eunews e visualizzabile qui , sono riassunti i punti chiave del mio paper "From Governance to Government: steps towards a genuine monetary union" , in pubblicazione sul Journal of Economic Policy e vincitore del concorso "How to Gov...
9 November 2016
credit: Reuters So, the year 2016 never ceases to crush our expectations, and – exactly like on Brexit and the Dutch Referendum, the unthinkable has happened: Donald Trump has won the US presidency. In the wake of the election, it is reasonable to assess what are the possible consequences for Europe in particular. This...
3 October 2016
In molti sembrano credere che il "combinato disposto" dell'Italicum e della riforma elettorale costituisca un vulnus democratico. Della questione ho già parlato in passato in un post precedente , ma penso che il problema possa essere visualizzato anche da un punto di vista di teoria dei giochi. Sia la Governabilità che...
30 September 2016
Questo è un post controverso, e quasi paradossale. E' la serata del grande incontro/scontro Gustavo-Matteo, vis giuridica contro vis politica. Ma questo post non è dedicato allo scontro: è invece dedicato a L. L. è una giurista di vecchio ordinamento, sostenitrice accanita del fronte per il NO al referendum costituzion...
19 September 2016
Poiché la Campagna elettorale sulla Referendum per la riforma Costituzionale si sta scaldando, e molti accusano la riforma di indebolire la resilienza democratica della Costituzione Italiana (specialmente in combinazione con la legge elettorale), è opportuno ricordare che - piuttosto - è vero il contrario: il nuovo Sen...
5 September 2016
"This seems paradox and contrary to every-day observation.It is also paradox that the earth moves round the sun, and that water consists of two highly inflammable gases. Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by every-day experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things." Karl Marx, Value, Price...
17 August 2016
Post- Brexit, there has been a growing discussion on how the internet has deteriorated the quality of the public debate, fuelling a run-to-the-bottom between publishers to provide low-quality information aimed to maximise readerships through click-baits strategies. The misconceptions concerning benefits & costs of Euro...
27 June 2016
There is still a slight chance to come out of this post-Brexit vote with a Win-Win for everyone- For the UK, for the Union, and for Democracy. "Democratic deficit" is, of course, one of the strongest arguments of the brexiteers. Today, Merkel, Hollande and Renzi may propose to address it at European level, in three way...
25 June 2016
The secession of the United Kingdom, yesterday, shocked me in the deep. Now that I have a (slightly) colder mind, I offer you a set of reflections on what we should do next. General feeling: It is going to be hard, friends. We need a steady and ruthless leadership. It is unfortunate, but as the Union is at a clear risk...
2 May 2016
The heated debate on helicopter money of the last weeks seems to have, for now, settled down; it's therefore a good time for a reasoned and multidisciplinary attempt to reflect on the issue. "helicopter money", meaning the provision of newly printed money to citizens (and banks, and companies) for free is dreamed to bo...
23 April 2016
In at least two occasions, recently, I have been asked to comment on the growing technological innovation divide between the US and Europe. No doubt, high-tech innovation is in full-traction speed at the moment, in several key sectors: energy, biotech and medicine, artificial intelligence, material science and advanced...
14 April 2016
** I am sorry for my English-speaking readers for this Italian post; a more general English version on the relationship between Peoples and Constitutions will be written soon. In the meantime you can read my recent post on the Dutch referendum , if you didn't already!** Visto il deludente dibattito e il pressapochismo...
9 April 2016
As a follow-up to my previous post on the Dutch Referendum , I receive and I am glad to publish a guest post from Sebastiaan Wijsman, researcher at the KU Leuven. Last week was disappointing for European cooperation and decision-making. A Dutch “majority” of 2.4 million people voted against the EU’s Association Agreeme...
7 April 2016
Once upon a time in the EU, many believed that direct democracy would have helped solving Europe's integovernmental quagmire. Well, even if you didn’t like integovernmentalism, this looks much worse. European democracy appears to have a structural problem, highlighted in a painful way by the Dutch referendum on the Ukr...
2 January 2016
One of my 2016 Committments is to complete a one-week-one-book challenge: at the end, quoting Mr. Elon Musk quoting a random nerdy web cartoon, "books is how people install new software in their brain". Fact is, I always loved reading. When I was a teenage I read multiple books per week, each week. And good books too....
24 November 2015
The EU has a security problem: it has common borders, but it lacks Common Defense, common Intelligence, and communality of intents. Plus, the EU has a budgetary problem: the current, seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) does not include important EU level resources for defense. Finally, the EU has a problem...
21 November 2015
La politica italiana, a estrema sinistra, è soggetto interessante. Vi sono molte persone in gamba, ragazzi eccellenti e dedicati, idee talvolta di valore. Eppure, invariabilmente, questa arcobaleno coalizione di talenti, nelle mani di una litigiosa e poco qualificata leadership, finisce per "trionfare" ad ogni elezione...
16 November 2015
It's Functionalism, once again. We have seen it with the Eurocrisis: a common currency without a fiscal union is unstable; either we go forward with fiscal integration, or we go backward towards national currencies (and eventually, backward again, towards national goods and capital markets). We have seen it with the mi...
11 November 2015
In Today's speech at Chatam House, David Cameron highlighted a series of priorities to reform the EU, if the UK is to remain in the Union. Interestingly, one of them touched upon the issue of "democratic deficit". One could note, at this regard, that progress has actually been achieved independently from the process of...
7 October 2015
Sentivo il bisogno di scrivere una piccola nota introspettiva sui miei primi ventiquattro anni da intellettuale, ovvero la linea rossa dai dinosauri al fiscal compact. Prima venne la smodata passione per i dinosauri, come per molti bambini; ho letto più libri di dinosauri che libri di scienza politica, alcuni peraltro...
6 October 2015
In a recent conversation with my friend and brilliant philosopher Lisa Herzog, it was suggested I suffer from a form of pathological optimism. I must say I do agree indeed: I see many reasons to be optimist if I look to what may unfold in the next 100 years. Here's a short list of what is, and might, go very much well...
23 July 2015
**more recent work on politicization here: Beyond democratic deficit: modelling legitimacy and politicization *** nion is a recurrent theme in post-conference dinner debates. Are we really hedging towards the end of the Commission as “the guardian of the Treaties”? are we assisting to the euthanasia of the Bureaucrat?...
12 July 2015
The incapacity of the European Union of dealing with the Eurozone main problem has one single root-source: its aversion to deploy truly governmental instruments to tackle the crisis. Not differently from US “confederative” interregnum between the independence war and the Constitution, the EU operates as a loose confede...
2 July 2015
A very bothering feature of the European economic debate in these days is the recurring argument that Germans (and Germany as a state) would be against inflation because “of their history”. Of course, memories of Weimar’s hyperinflation plays a role in the diffused opposition against policies which may have an impact o...
27 June 2015
(given the historical moment for the Euro Area and the inevitable ultimate consequences of Tsipras' electoral triumph back in January, it is worth recalling what I said in February about Mr. Tsipras' complex decision set. Because game theory isn't easy if you don't have complete information.. sources: Euractiv , freesp...