ABSTRACT
The paper contains a critical analysis of the new system of own resources of the European Union, established to address the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. Analysis is mainly from the perspective of the balanced budget rule. Under Council Decision 2020/2053 of 14 December 2020, the Commission is to be, inter alia, empowered to borrow an unprecedentedly huge amount of funds on capital markets on behalf of the EU. This means that, for the first time in history, common budgetary commitments on the part of the EU will be on such a scale that repayment will be spread over many years and will be charged to future generations of EU citizens (known as the ‘Next Generation EU' programme). The research aims to compare these innovations with the long-term financial policy of the EU, as a result of the provisions of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the Fiscal Compact. It also elaborates on the limits of societal debt issued by their representatives who form public authorities. © 2023 The Author(s).
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Work mobility is not something new, but it certainly received an important boost with the COVID-19 pandemic as many people began working remotely which reflected on their lifestyle. In this context, the objective of the present study is to analyse the challenges imposed by what is known as 'digital nomads' from the exclusive perspective of individual taxation. The first part aims to understand the first 'W', i.e., who the 'digital nomads' are and the factors that favour the choice for this type of work. Subsequently, it examines the impacts caused by the 'digital nomadism' in determining the tax residence (second 'W' – where) and presents the measures, albeit incipient and indistinguishable, adopted by some countries in relation to this phenomenon. The third section delves into the taxation of income obtained by 'digital nomads' through either an employment relationship or the provision of services (third 'W' – what). Based on the analysis of examples and the presentation of some alternatives, this study seeks to demonstrate the need to adapt the tax residence rules at both of the levels of domestic law and double tax treaties (tiebreaker rules). The rules on the taxation of income from employment and the provision of independent services also demand modifications that detach them from the strict need for a physical presence.
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Le versement massif d'aides publiques par les États membres pour venir au secours de l'économie affectée par cette crise sanitaire sans précédent, s'effectue dans un cadre qui peut apparaître très permissif. L'observateur peu averti pouvant avoir le sentiment que la Commission autorise toutes les aides sans conditions et sans lignes claires. Un examen plus attentif doit toutefois conduire à une conclusion bien différente car si la Commission utilise son pouvoir de contrôle pour sauver des pans entiers de l'économie européenne, elle instrumentalise aussi ce pouvoir d'autorisation pour d'autres finalités : la résilience de notre modèle social et la mutation de notre économie pour l'adapter aux impératifs du XXIe siècle.Alternate : The massive disbursement of public aid by Member States to come to the aid of the economy affected by this unprecedented health crisis is taking place within a framework that may appear very permissive. The uninformed observer may feel that the Commission is authorizing all aid without conditions and without clear lines. A closer examination should however lead to a very different conclusion because if the Commission uses its power of control to save whole sections of the European economy, it also exploits this power of authorization for other purposes: the resilience of our social model and the transformation of our economy to adapt it to the imperatives of the 21st century.
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International solidarity is indispensable for coping with global crises;however, solidarity is frequently constrained by public opinion. Past research has examined who, on the donor side, is willing to support European and international aid. However, we know less about who, on the recipient side, is perceived to deserve solidarity. The article argues that potential donors consider situational circumstances and those relational features that link them to the recipients. Using factorial survey experiments, we analyse public support for international medical and financial aid in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show that recipient countries' situational need and control, as well as political community criteria, namely, group membership, adherence to shared values and reciprocity, played a crucial role in explaining public support for aid. Important policy implications result: on the donor side, fault-attribution frames matter;on the recipient side, honouring community norms is key to receiving aid.
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La crise sanitaire du Covid-19 s'est rapidement transformée en une crise financière qui a des répercussions sur la politique actionnariale de l'État. Certaines cessions ont été reportées ;des prises de participations ou des augmentations de capital dans des entreprises en difficultés sont envisagées. Cette politique devra donc être repensée par le biais du compte d'affectation spéciale « Participations financières de l'État ».Alternate : The Covid-19 sanitary crisis rapidly turned into a financial crisis having negative effects on the government's shareholder policy. Some divestments were postponed and acquisitions or capital increases in firms facing difficulties are being considered. This policy will therefore need to be given extra thought via the "State holdings” special purposes account.
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This dataset covers 2476-2479 Polish municipalities and cities (dependent on the year) over a period from 2004 when Poland joined the EU to the pre-COVID-19-pandemic 2019. The created 113 yearly panel variables include budgetary, electoral competitiveness, and European Union funded investment drive data. While the dataset has been created out of publicly available sources, their use requires advanced knowledge of budgetary data and their classification, as well as data gathering, merging, and clearing, which required many hours of work over a year. Fiscal variables were created out of raw data of over 25 million subcentral governments records. They were sourced from Rb27s (revenue), Rb28s (expenditure), RbNDS (balance), and RbZtd (debt) forms, which are reported quarterly by all subcentral governments to the Ministry of Finance. These data were aggregated according to the governmental budgetary classification keys into ready-to-use variables. Furthermore, these data were used to create original EU-financed local investment drives proxy variables based on large investments in general and in sports objects in particular. Moreover, subcentral electoral data from 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018 were sourced from the National Electoral Commission, mapped, cleared, merged, and used to create original electoral competitiveness variables. This dataset can be used to model different aspects of fiscal decentralization, political budget cycles, and EU-funded investment in a large sample of local government units.
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Indian economy is expected to be one of the top performers in the world economy in the post covid era. While all the major economies of the world are finding it difficult to come back to pre-covid level, the Indian economy is on the path of a speedy recovery. With significant urbanization taking place, India will need to make a significant investment in its urban infrastructure. It is expected that $840 billion of investments is required in urban infrastructure over the next 15 years. This private player will have a significant role to play. This article attempts to identify the significant constraints in financing such a massive infrastructure needs of India.
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La réaction française à la pandémie de Covid-19 a entraîné de considérables baisses de recettes et hausses de dépenses publiques. Faut-il pour autant la réduire à un coût pour les finances publiques ? Si celui-ci est considérable et mérite d'être précisé, la stratégie adoptée s'apparente également à bien des égards à un investissement pour l'avenir.Alternate abstract: France's strategy to address the Covid-19 pandemic led to a significant deterioration in government revenue and increase in its expenditure. Does this strategy only involves costs for public finances ? These are significant and need to be identified, but the Government policy in response to the pandemic also appears to be an investment for the future.
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This expanded and enlarged third edition of Theodore Pelagidis and Michael Mitsopoulos' popular Who's to Blame for Greece? covers almost a decade of Greece's economic crisis from 2009 to 2019, as well as recent developments in the first months of 2020. It provides an overview of recent developments in the Greek economy and outlines the most important obstacles to a return to robust and sustainable growth rates. It considers the new optimism being developed in Greece after the crisis, but also the policy challenges facing Greece emanating from a deeply hurt economy in the aftermath of the crisis and the structural problems that persist. The book covers the most recent issues that affect the Greek economy including, the migration crisis at the borders with Turkey as well as a faltering global economy hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. This book will appeal to researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in the EU and the political economy of Greece and offers valuable updates on the second edition. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.
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The climate crisis and global pandemic have accelerated the urgency of providing safe drinking water services around the world. Global progress to safe drinking water is off-track with uncertain and limited data on the extent and performance of rural water service providers to inform policy and investment decisions. This report documents a global diagnostic survey to evaluate the status and prospects of rural water service providers from 68 countries. The service providers describe providing drinking water services to a population of around 15 million people through over 3 million waterpoints. The data provides information on the scale and sustainability of rural water services to examine: . The extent and type of professional water service provision in rural areas globally;. Self-reported metrics of operational and financial performance;and, . The size and scope of current rural service providers that could transition to resultsbased funding. Five major findings emerge. First, most service providers aim to repair broken infrastructure in three days or less. Second, almost all service providers reported at least one type of water safety activity. Third, most service providers collect payments for water services. Fourth, about one third of service providers reported major negative shocks to their operations from the COVID-19 pandemic. Fifth, non-governmental service providers in low income countries less often report receiving subsidies for operations, and more often report paying part of user fees to government, including through taxes. Most rural water service providers are working towards provision of affordable, safe and reliable drinking water services. Key barriers to progress include sustainable funding and delivery of services at scale. We propose four conditions to promote scale and sustainability based on policy alignment, public finance, professional service delivery, and verifiable data. To illustrate these conditions, we consider the differing context and service delivery approaches in the Central African Republic and Bangladesh. We conclude by identifying a group of 77 service providers delivering water services for about 5 million people in 28 countries. These 77 service providers report operational metrics consistent with a results-based contracting approach. Technical assistance might support many more to progress. We argue that government support and investment is needed to rapidly progress to the scale of 100 million people to provide evidence of pathways to universal drinking water services for billions more.
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Pendant la crise du Covid-19, l'État a opté pour une approche dialectique dans sa politique de gestion de la dette publique. D'un côté, il a eu recours à des émissions supplémentaires de dettes publiques qui lui ont permis de couvrir le déséquilibre budgétaire provoqué par cette pandémie. De l'autre côté, s'il a négocié une suspension de certaines créances bilatérales, il n'a procédé à aucune annulation de ses dettes et a ainsi pu éviter la défiance des marchés auprès desquels il s'endette de plus en plus. En creux, l'État du Cameroun a choisi de garantir sa dette publique afin de continuer à emprunter dans des conditions satisfaisantes pour son niveau de développement.Alternate abstract: During the Covid-19 crisis, the Cameroon's State has opted for a dialectical approach in its public debt management policy. On the one hand, it had to resort to additional public debts which enabled to cover the budgetary imbalance caused by this pandemic. On the other hand, although it had to negotiate a suspension of the repayment of part of servicing of its bilateral debt, it did not cancel any of its payment obligations and thus avoided provoking the distrust of the markets which already accepts to lend them more and more. In fact, the State has chosen to guarantee its public debt in order to continue to borrow under satisfactory conditions for its level of development.
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L'objectif de cet article est d'examiner le co-mouvement et la corrélation dynamique entre l'évolution du taux de vaccination contre la Covid-19 au Maroc et la performance de la bourse de Casablanca, sur la base des données quotidiennes couvrant la période du 1 Mars 2020 au 6 août 2021. Pour ce faire, l'approche de Cohérence en Ondelettes (CEO) a été adopté. Nos résultats empiriques montrent la vulnérabilité de ce marché financier à performer en période de crise sanitaire. De plus, CEO révèle une cohérence forte et significative entre la performance boursière et le taux de vaccination contre la Covid-19, avec une dominance positive de la vaccination sur les rendements.Alternate abstract: The aim of this article is to examine the co-movement and dynamic correlation between the evolution of the COVID-19 vaccination rate in Morocco and the performance of the Casablanca Stock Exchange, based on daily data forecast for the period from March 1, 2020 to March 6, 2020. August 2021. We used the wavelet coherence technique (WCT) for this purpose. Our empirical results reveal the vulnerability of this financial market to perform in times of financial turmoil. In addition, CWT reveals a strong and significant coherence between stock market performance and the COVID-19 vaccination rate, with a positive dominance of vaccination over returns.
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Cet article analyse la crise des finances publiques au Brésil qui persiste depuis 2013 et est aggravée par les effets de la Covid. Malgré les contraintes budgétaires imposées par le cadre constitutionnel, le Gouvernement fédéral a déployé des moyens importants vers les entités fédérées pour faire face à la pandémie. Un régime financier d'urgence a visé à contrecarrer la pénurie, le chômage et les effets du confinement. Le pacte fédératif en ressort renforcé, sachant qu'une décision de la Cour suprême a rappelé que les organes fédérés et les municipalités ont une compétence concurrente en matière sanitaire, ce qui dilue politiquement le pouvoir fédéral.Alternate abstract: This article analyses the public finances crisis in Brazil, which lingers since 2013 and is worsened by the effects of Covid-19. In spite of the budgetary constraints imposed by the Constitution, the federal Government has deployed substantial resources towards the federated entities to tackle the pandemic. An emergency financial mechanism was aimed to counteract shortage, unemployment and lock down consequences. The federative pact was consequently strengthened, knowing that a ruling of the Supreme Court recalled that federated bodies and municipalities have a concurrent jurisdiction on health matters, which weakens the political influence of the federal power.
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Dans le cadre du retour d'expérience de la gestion de crise Covid-19, l'Association des administrateurs territoriaux de France (AATF) a étudié les tendances d'évolution du télétravail par les collectivités locales. Alors qu'elle était marginale avant la crise, cette question est désormais reconnue comme un sujet stratégique majeur. Cette évolution rapide et radicale implique des ajustements profonds du dispositif managérial, en veillant aux risques psycho-sociaux émergents, et au maintien des équilibres sociaux.Alternate : As part of the feedback from the Covid-19 crisis management, the French association of higher local civil servants (AATF) studied the trends in the development of telework in local administrations. While it was marginal before the crisis, telework is now recognized as a major strategic issue. This rapid and radical evolution implies main changes in management, by monitoring emerging psychosocial risks, and maintaining social equity.
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L'argent public est venu au soutien d'une économie très perturbée par la crise de la Covid-19. Nous sommes devant deux murs de dettes : la dette publique et la dette des entreprises alors que l'épargne des ménages est très abondante. Les dettes, publiques et privées, existaient avant la crise. Elles ont pris beaucoup d'ampleur avec la crise. Il va falloir apprendre à vivre avec elles pendant très longtemps. Le remboursement, ou non, de cette dette publique est une question centrale. Le défaut de remboursement des entreprises est tout aussi important. La situation sanitaire et financière nous laisse présager une longue sortie de crise qui peut être l'occasion d'envisager les politiques publiques de long terme, avec une planification qui reste à définir, autrement que par des logiques comptables et managériales.Alternate : Public funds were called in support of an economy heavily affected by the Covid crisis. We are in front of two debt walls : the public debt and the corporate debt while the household savings are plentiful. Actually both the public and the private debts already existed before the crisis. But during the crisis , they have tremendously grown. We must learn to live with them for a long time. Repaying or not repaying the public debt is a central issue. A failure of companies not being able to repay theirs is equally crucial. The sanitary and financial situation leads us to foresee a long period of recovery from the crisis, which might also be an opportunity to consider long term policies, based on a planning strategy which is still to be defined, in a different way than through merely accounting and management logics.
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Parce que les politiques européennes s'exécutent majoritairement en gestion partagée au sein des États membres, et que plusieurs d'entre elles traitent des enjeux qui dépassent le périmètre national, la coopération entre la Cour des comptes européenne, chargée du contrôle du budget de l'Union, et les institutions supérieures de contrôle nationales, est nécessaire. Cette coopération, prévue par le Traité, prend des formes diverses qui doivent toutefois respecter l'indépendance de chaque institution,. Entre la Cour des comptes européenne et la Cour des comptes française, les échanges professionnels sont nombreux et féconds, peu formalisés et orientés vers les enjeux majeurs du contrôle des politiques européennes dans les années à venir : environnement, énergie, gouvernance économique et financière, relance post-Covid.Alternate : The European policies are predominantly implemented under a shared management in Member States, and most of them address challenges exceeding national borders. A cooperation between the European Court of Auditors, in charge of auditing the European budget, and national Supreme Audit Institutions is therefore necessary. This cooperation, provided for by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, takes various forms that have however to respect the independence of each institution. The relationship between the European and the French Courts of Auditors involves a number of fruitful professional exchanges, conducted in an informal way and oriented towards addressing the major challenges that the EU will be confronted with in the coming decade: environment, energy, financial and economic governance, post-Covid recovery.
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March 2020. On the borders of EU Europe, with the Covid pandemic threatening human lives, sociality and welfare everywhere, Syrian refugees on the ‘Balkan Route', bombed out of Idlib, are being beaten in the forests with wooden clubs by Romanian border guards before they are thrown back onto Serbian territory for further humiliations.1 Romanian return migrants, fleeing the Italian and Spanish Corona lockdowns en masse, are being told over the social networks that they should never have come back, contagious as they are imagined to be and a danger for a woefully underfunded public health system for which they have not paid taxes. Further South, the Mediterranean is once again a heavily policed cemetery for migrants and refugees from the civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa – collateral damage of Western imperial delirium and hubris – as Greece is being hailed by the European President for being the ‘shield' behind which Europe can feel safe from the supposedly associated criminality. Viktor Orbàn, meanwhile, has secured his corrupt autocracy in Hungary for another indefinite stretch of years after the parliament gave him powers to singlehandedly fight the Covid pandemic and its long-run economic after-effects in the name of the Magyars and in the face of never subsiding threats from the outside to the nation. Orbàn will also continue, even more powerfully so now, to fight immigrants, gypsies, gays, feminists, cultural Marxists, NGOs, George Soros, population decline, the EU, and everyone else who might be in his way. Critique from the EU is in Budapest rejected as being ‘motivated by politics'. Vladimir Putin, too, has just been asked by the Russian parliament to stay on indefinitely in his regal position, so as to safeguard Russia's uncertain national future. Erdogan of Turkey is sure to be inspired and will not renege from his ongoing and unprecedentedly brutal crackdown on domestic dissent and ‘traitors to the nation' while his armies are in Syria and Libya. Turkish prisons will continue to overflow.All these, and manifold other events not mentioned here, are part of processes in the European East that have been continuous (as in ‘continuous history versus discontinuous history') for at least a decade, all with a surprisingly steadfast direction. They appear to be diverse, occasioned by ethnographically deeply variegated and therefore apparently contingent events. Anthropologists, professionally spellbound by local fieldwork, are easily swayed to describe them in their singularities. But that singular appearance is misleading. These and similar events are systemically rooted, interlinked, produced by an uneven bundle of global, scaled, social and historical forces (as in ‘field of forces') that cascade into and become incorporated within a variegated and therefore differentiating terrain of national political theatres and human relationships that produce the paradox of singularly surprising outcomes with uncanny family resemblances. These forces can be summarily described as the gradual unfolding of the collapse of a global regime of embedded and multi-scalar solidarity arrangements anchored in national Fordism, developmentalism and the Cold War, into an uncertain interregnum of neoliberalised Darwinian competition and rivalry on all scales, with a powerfully rising China lurking in the background. Neo-nationalism appears from within this unfolding field of forces as a contradictory bind that seeks to enact and/or re-enact, domestically and abroad, hierarchy and deservingness, including its necessary flip side, humiliation. That is one aspect of the argument I have been trying to make since the end of the nineties (for example Kalb 2000, 2002, 2004), when such forces began to stir in the sites that I was working on and living in: The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Hungary and Poland.That universalising argument is easily corroborated by events in the west of the continent, which paint a similarly cohesive though phenomenologically variegated picture.2 Marine Le Pen nd Matteo Salvini are still credibly threatening to democratically overthrow liberal globalist governments in France and Italy on behalf of the ‘people' and ‘the nation', and against the elites, the EU, immigrants, the left and finance capital. Dutch politicians, in the face of the global coronavirus calamity, still believe one cannot send money to Italy and the European South lest it will be spent on ‘alcohol and women'. Anonymous comments in the Dutch press on less brutal newspaper articles often echo the tone of the one that claimed that Southern countries were mere ‘dilapidated sheds … and even with our money they will never do the necessary repair work' (NRC 30 March 2020, comments on ‘Europese solidariteit is juist ook in het Nederlandse belang'). Until its impressive policy turn-around in April/May 2020 in the face of the Covid pandemic and the fast-escalating EU fragmentation amid a world of hostile and nationalist great powers, the German government did not disagree. It was Angela Merkel herself who set up the Dutch as the leaders of a newly conceived right-wing ‘frugal' flank in the EU under the historical banner of the Hanseatic League to face down the federalist and redistributionist South. That Hanseatic banner suggested that penny-counting, competitive mercantilism and austerity, and its practical corollary, an imposed hierarchy of ‘merit' and ‘successfulness', must hang eternally over Europe. Britain, meanwhile, has valiantly elected to leave the EU in order to ‘take back control' on behalf of what Boris Johnson imagines as the ‘brilliant British nation' (The Economist 30 January 2020). It would like to refuse any further labour migrants from the mainland, and seek a future in the global Anglosphere, beefed up by a revitalised British Commonwealth where hopefully, when it comes to ceremony, not juridical equality but imperial nostalgia and deference will rule (see Campanella and Dassu 2019).
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En réponse à la pandémie de Covid-19, le gouvernement britannique a pu s'appuyer sur un système budgétaire original caractérisé par une grande souplesse (un calendrier budgétaire adaptable, le recours au Fonds d'urgence et à une autorisation de découvert auprès de la Banque d'Angleterre, une coopération étroite avec les autorités dévolues). Mais les mesures financières mises en place pour limiter les effets de la crise sont globalement comparables à ce que l'on observe dans les autres pays (augmentation du financement des services de santé, aides directes et indirectes aux travailleurs et aux entreprises, exonérations et reports fiscaux).Alternate : In response to the pandemic, the British Government relied on a unique and flexible fiscal system (an adaptable fiscal calendar, the use of the Contingencies Fund and the Ways and Means facility with the Bank of England, and close cooperation with the devolved authorities). However, the financial measures in place to mitigate the effects of the crisis are to a large extent comparable to those of other countries (increased funding for the NHS, support for workers and businesses, tax reliefs, and tax holidays).