The eurozone crisis has spectacularly increased the European Union's (EU's) institutional demand for expert knowledge. While the crisis has challenged the legitimacy of the EU in many ways, it has in contrast amplified the visibility and the role of Brussels-based think tanks as laboratories of ideas that think ahead about eurozone governance and policies. Drawing on the analysis of more than 450 expert reports produced by two leading Brusselsbased think tanks, over 300 CVs and biographical notes as well interviews, this article explores when, how and why Brussels-based think tanks expand their networks in times of crisis. While the article leaves aside the question of their ideational impact upon agenda-setting and the policy formulation process leading to the new European economic governance, it shows how think tanks adapt to crises and how they seek to have a voice in thinking about the future of the EU's economic governance.
In the post-Maastricht era, member states of the European Union (EU) have proved increasingly reluctant to transfer further competences to the supranational level and are willing to safeguard their sovereignty. Though the responses to the contemporary multiple crisesrelated to economic and monetary policy, borders and migrations, or democracy and the rule of lawhave brought about conflicts over values and sovereignty losses surrounding the legal, economic and political legitimacy of the EU. Against this backdrop, we argue that beyond the traditional contentious (re)distribution of competences between nation-states (national sovereignty) and the EU (and its embryonic forms of supranational sovereignty), new conflicts of sovereignty involve two other key types of sovereignty belonging to the democratic tradition, namely parliamentary sovereignty and popular sovereignty. This introductory article proposes a common analytical framework in order to investigate conflicts in their multi-dimensionality.
Université libre de Bruxelles and researcher at CEVIPOL and the Institute for European Studies. Her research deals with Euroscepticism, parliamentary representation, and the linkage between citizens and political institutions. She is the author of Opposing Europe. Rebels and Radicals in the Chamber (2018) and the co-author of How the EU really works (2018). She recently co-edited a Special issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies entitled The EP through the lens of legislative studies: recent debates and new perspectives (2018, 24/1).
This article examines the debates surrounding the Regulation 1303/2013 on structural funds, arguing that the rules adopted in the midst of the eurozone crisis to strengthen the governance of the euro area had spill-over effects on cohesion policy. It shows how, in the fast-burning phase of the crisis (2010-2013), some actors pushed forward the idea of suspending structural funds in case of non-compliance with the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact, making funding conditional on Member States' compliance with the rules of the new economic governance, and how, after the entry into force of this Regulation, in the slow-burning phase of the crisis (from 2013 onwards), a greater number of actors has been calling for a more flexible interpretation of the rules. To explain the disruption between t1 and t2, the article examines the change in the power relations between and within institutions and the change in ideas.
A B S T R A C TFor multivalued traveltime computation on dense grids, we propose a wavefrontorientated ray-tracing (WRT) technique. At the source, we start with a few rays which are propagated stepwise through a smooth two-dimensional (2D) velocity model. The ray field is examined at wavefronts and a new ray might be inserted between two adjacent rays if one of the following criteria is satisfied: (1) the distance between the two rays is larger than a predefined threshold; (2) the difference in wavefront curvature between the rays is larger than a predefined threshold; (3) the adjacent rays intersect. The last two criteria may lead to oversampling by rays in caustic regions. To avoid this oversampling, we do not insert a ray if the distance between adjacent rays is smaller than a predefined threshold. We insert the new ray by tracing it from the source. This approach leads to an improved accuracy compared with the insertion of a new ray by interpolation, which is the method usually applied in wavefront construction. The traveltimes computed along the rays are used for the estimation of traveltimes on a rectangular grid. This estimation is carried out within a region bounded by adjacent wavefronts and rays. As for the insertion criterion, we consider the wavefront curvature and extrapolate the traveltimes, up to the second order, from the intersection points between rays and wavefronts to a gridpoint. The extrapolated values are weighted with respect to the distances to wavefronts and rays. Because dynamic ray tracing is not applied, we approximate the wavefront curvature at a given point using the slowness vector at this point and an adjacent point on the same wavefront. The efficiency of the WRT technique is strongly dependent on the input parameters which control the wavefront and ray densities. On the basis of traveltimes computed in a smoothed Marmousi model, we analyse these dependences and suggest some rules for a correct choice of input parameters. With suitable input parameters, the WRT technique allows an accurate traveltime computation using a small number of rays and wavefronts.
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