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Forum

The European Digital Single Market

In 2015 the European Commission adopted the Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy, aiming to establish common European data protection rules, reform telecoms rules and modernise copyright rules, among other goals. The authors in this Forum review the progress made thus far, exploring regulatory responses to issues such as data privacy, online consumer protection, artificial intelligence and big data.

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Figure of the Month

Money Created by EMU National Central Banks

National additional money created by euro area national central banks, 2005-15

This figure from the article ANFA – National Money Creation as an Existential Threat to the Currency Union? by Arne Hansen and Dirk Meyer shows the national additional money created by euro area national central banks from 2005-2015. Click on the image for additional details.

Editorial

Macron a Game Changer for Europe?

Daniel Gros assesses the renewed optimism in Europe following Emmanuel Macron's victory in the French presidential election. Does Macron's triumph signal the beginning of a period of European revival, or are the problems facing the EU too large and too numerous? Will there be a new era of Franco-German leadership? How important to the rest of the EU is the success of Macron's domestic reform programme?

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Money Creation

Is ANFA an Existential Threat to the Currency Union?

The recent publication of the previously secret Agreement on Net Financial Assets (ANFA) directed the public's attention to the possibility that national central banks could create money through purchases of securities on their own account. Arne Hansen and Dirk Meyer provide an overview of the legal foundations for ANFA and explore the interests, risks and consequences for the crisis countries and the currency union as a whole.

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Letter from America

America's Health Care War

After seven years of bitter Republican complaints about Obamacare, they finally had the opportunity to fulfil their promises to repeal and replace the law. This made their failure to do so all the more embarrassing. Jacob S. Hacker details what went wrong for Republicans and why their loss was America's gain. He also looks ahead to the next evolution of the American health care system.

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Quote of the Month

Innovation

“Rather than an innovation gap, the EU suffers from a diffusion gap, which is echoed in a number of widening divides: between cities and rural areas; between leading and lagging countries; between frontier, laggard and even 'zombie' firms; between richer and poorer individuals; and between technology-savvy and less e-skilled end users and businesses.”

from Andrea Renda's Forum article "Will the DSM Strategy Spur Innovation?"

From the Archives

Will the Politics or Economics of Deflation Prove More Harmful?

In his 2015 Letter from America, Mark Blyth explained how continued deflation would lead to a decline of the political centre and why this would be "bad for the EMU project and all that flows from it". Blyth sees the anti-creditor, anti-market populist movements that have arisen since the crisis as threats not only to macroeconomic stability but to the "very idea of Europe".

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