Past events

EconPol Parliamentary Dinner | EEAG Report 2020 | Fair Taxation in a Mobile World

2 March 2020, Brussels

This invitation-only dinner presents the 19th edition of the European Economic Advisory Group (EEAG) report on the European Economy. Experts from EconPol Europe and the EEAG will present the report to members of the European Parliament and provide expert insight and analysis of its findings and proposals.

This event is strictly by invitation only. For further information contact Juliet Shaw at shaw@econpol.eu

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EconPol Europe Annual Conference 2019

Europe’s Competitiveness and the Rise of China

7-8 November 2019, Brussels

Europe’s Competitiveness and the Rise of China was examined at EconPol Europe’s annual conference on the 7 and 8 November 2019, with a keynote speech by Carlos San Basilio (Secretary General of the Treasury and International Financing, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Business) on the deepening of the EMU. The EU and China was the focus of Daniel Gros’s keynote (Director, CEPS & EconPol Europe), followed by a panel discussion including Koen Jonkers (Deputy Head, Joint Research Centre‘s Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growth Unit, European Commission), Sherry Madera (Global Head of Industry and Government Affairs, Refinitiv), Luisa Santos (Director of International Relations, Business Europe) and Xu Zhengbing (Counsellor for Economic and Commercial Affairs, Chinese Mission to the EU). The panel was chaired by Maithreyi Seetharaman (FORTUNE). A plenary session on Chinese Competition included Stefano Schiavo (University of Trento), Andrea Ciani (Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics) and Koen Jonkers (European Commission). 

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Parliamentary Breakfast

Current Account Imbalances

7 November 2019, Representation of the Free State of Bavaria to the European Union

When the current US administration took office, the current account surplus of China increasingly became a focus of the political debate. While the trade dispute between the governments of the US and China naturally focusd on the trade balance between these two economies, our breakfast discussion examined the development of the current account balance between China, the Euro Area and the individual member states. The Euro Area deficit in trade with goods towards China reached its maximum in 2016 and has declined slightly since. Germany has even been recording a trade surplus since 2011. We discussed some potential drivers of the trade balance, such as the real effective exchange rates, the development of domestic demand or the fiscal stance with Members of the European Parliament. Finally, we asked whether excessive imbalances exist and, if government action is needed to tackle them.

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CEPS-EconPol Europe Lunch Debate

Pension Reform in Europe: Recent Experience and Challenges Ahead

02.10.2019, CEPS, Brussels, Belgium

Ageing populations in European countries are putting pressure on public finances through higher spending on old age benefits and lower tax revenues. Several European countries have conducted pension reforms in recent years aimed at enhancing fiscal sustainability. However, further policy challenges will arise due to the projected demographic changes ahead.

The second joint CEPS and EconPol lunchtime seminar discussed the issue of pension reform from different angles. In particular, it reflected on the experience with recent pension reforms in Europe, their public finance and labor market consequences and intergenerational fairness aspects. Another crucial question the seminar focused on is under which conditions pension reforms may find political support.

You can see the video of the debate here.

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Venice Summer Institute 2019

Taxation in the Digital Economy: Theory and Evidence

03.06.2019 | 9:00 - 14:00, San Servolo, Venice, Italy

Recent technological changes challenge fiscal systems. For instance, the internet allows consumers to shift purchases from physical firms to online retailers, which possibly results in the creation of digital products that have no “physical” component. At the same time, internet platforms use different business models compared to standard ones. Digital platforms like Netflix and Google connect different groups of customers and thereby use pricing strategies for their products that reflect how desirable one group is for the other groups. The multi-sidedness of the platform and the global outreach of the platforms might lead to unconventional incidence and efficiency effects of taxes. These technological changes have important policy implications. For example, the issue of how value creation by digital platforms might be allocated to the various jurisdictions for corporate taxation purposes is currently the subject of hotly debated reforms proposed by the European Commission. Taxation of online sales is the subject of U.S. federal legislation such as the Marketplace Fairness Act and recent Supreme Court action. This workshop combined theoretical research and empirical evidence of taxation in the digital economy. It facilitated interactions between researchers focused on industrial organization, i.e., responses of prices/firms and public finance economists interested in the effect of the digital economy on fiscal systems.

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