AMTENBRINK Fabian - Towards an Integrated Approach of EMU, the European Banking Union, and EU Emergency Law (25h)

Overall, the objective of the course is to provide participants with a good understanding of the complex legal framework governing the role of the EU and its Member States in ensuring monetary, fiscal, and financial stability. Participants will not only study the law in the books but also the law in action by analyzing, together with the lecturer, the application of the legal framework, including the responses of the EU and its Member States to the global financial and European sovereign debt crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the energy crisis following the invasion of Russia in Ukraine. The experience gained from these events is placed in the broader context the shortcomings of the past and current governance framework. In doing so, particular attention will be paid to the high interconnectedness in practice of the Union objectives of monetary, fiscal, and financial stability that is also increasingly recognized by policy makers, central banks, and courts. Moreover, the legal issues pertaining to the future EU budget, as for example currently discussed in the context of the negotiations for the 2028-2034 EU budget (Multiannual Financial Framework/MFF), are examined. 

In line with these overarching course objectives, in substantive terms the seminar will be provided participants with a critical overview of the following intertwined topics:

1. Legal, economic, and political rationales and principles geared towards ensuring monetary, fiscal and financial stability in the EU, which underpin the framework governing European economic and monetary union and the European Banking Union, covering e.g. price stability, sound public finances, prohibition of monetary financing, the so-called no bailout clause, financial stability;
2. The EU’s own fiscal/budgetary capacity and available (ad hoc) crisis instruments (EU emergency law), covering e.g. EU Own Resource Decision and Multiannual Financial Framework, Articles 122 and 143 TFEU as Treaty-based Union law financial assistance mechanisms, EU borrowing, NextGenerationEU, REPowerEU;   
3. The EU’s economic governance framework to provide fiscal stability through the coordination of the national economic policies of (non-) euro area Member States, covering e.g.  preventive and corrective arm of the European Semester, Stability and Growth Pact, European Stability Mechanism, recent reforms and proposals for future changes; 
4. The legal framework governing the single currency area (euro area) and the ECB geared towards monetary stability, covering e.g. criteria for joining the euro area, use of the euro inside and outside of the EU, ECB independence and the role of the European Parliament and of the European Court of Justice in holding the ECB to account, objectives and powers of the ECB and its competence to engage with objectives other than price stability, such as the transition to a green economy;
5. The role of the role of European Banking Union providing financial stability in the euro area, covering e.g. institutional structure and basic elements of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) and of the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM), significance of financial stability in an economic and monetary union;
6. Lacunae and shortcomings of the EU governance framework in the above-mentioned policy areas and potential solutions.

For more information, please see the ECTS card