Research

EN

My thesis deals with the history of European borrowing operations. I study the instruments by which the Commission of the European Communities was empowered to borrow money in the financial markets.

Using a political economy approach, I first analyse the negotiations of these instruments and I identify how the mechanisms were legitimised. Secondly, I focus on the establishment of the Commission’s borrowing policy, by examining the financial techniques used by the Commission in the financial markets.

FR

Ma thèse porte sur l’histoire des emprunts européens. Plus précisément, j’étudie les instruments par lesquels la Commission des Communautés Européennes a été habilitée à emprunter des fonds sur les marchés financiers.

En utilisant une approche d’économie politique, je m’intéresse en premier lieu à la négociation de ces instruments d’endettement communautaire et étudie comment de tels mécanismes ont été légitimés et acceptés par les États-membres, qui ont autorisé la Commission à contracter une dette. Dans un seconde temps, je m’intéresse plus précisément à la mise en place concrète des politiques d’emprunt, en étudiant les techniques financières utilisées par la Commission sur les marchés des capitaux.

The Borrowing Policies of the European Communities

The Commission of the European Communities was empowered to borrow money through 4 instruments:

• the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC): the ECSC Treaty empowered the High Authority of the ECSC to borrow money in order to grant loans

• the Community Loan Mechanism (CLM): the CLM was established in 1975 and empowered the EEC Commission to borrow on the financial markets in order to grant loans to Member States

• the New Community Instrument (NCI): created in 1978, the instrument empowered the EEC Commission to borrow in order to grant loans to companies

• Euratom: Euratom Treaty authorized borrowing operations. In 1977, the Commission was empowered to contract a debt in order to grant loans to nuclear companies

Research Interests

• Institutional Economics and Political Economy
• Monetary and Financial Economics
• European Integration Process
• Public Debt and Public Finances
• Economic Sociology

Data

The history of the borrowing policies of the European Communities is under-studied. For my PhD research, I have created dabase on the borrowing operations of the European Communities. Using the Financial Reports of the European Communities, I reported the core information of borrowing operations: amounts, maturity, interest rates, currency.

The data are available here