This chapter draws on extensive confidential elite interviews to examine the nature and uses of German power in EMU over time and to test the explanatory power of a distinctive German ordo-liberalism in the design and operation of the euro area. Its significance derives from the role of Germany as the biggest, systematically most significant net creditor power in the European Union. The chapter argues that, in using their power in EMU negotiations, German policymakers have sought to precariously balance two intertwined sets of interests and ideas in which they are differentially embedded. On the one hand, they face an inheritance of a striking cross-party consensus on Germany’s geo-political and foreign and security policy interests and of foreign policy ideas. On the other, they are embedded in a powerful structure of German economic interests and of economic policy ideas that are believed to best serve these interests. Within these strategic parameters, federal chancellors have characteristically sought to pursue tactical flexibility. The outcome has been a dynamic equilibrium in Germany’s role in EMU that has led to a euro area whose character is far removed from the kind of ‘economic constitution’ that had been sought by German ordo-liberals.

This chapter presents current research demonstrating that orthographic variation does not only occur naturally in historical texts, but also shows systematic patterns and functional uses. Premodern orthographic systems are flexible and offer room for innovation. This is a decisive characteristic and an important precondition for orthographic variation and change. This chapter includes an overview of types and functions of historical orthographic variation and different processes of orthographic change on the basis of examples from the history of German and from runic writing. It aims, on the one hand, to give a general introduction to the topic, and, on the other hand, to discuss theoretical and methodological issues in the study of variation and change in historical orthography that provide a background against which a research question and design for the study of variation and change in historical orthographies can be defined.

This chapter examines the origins of European Monetary Union in a debate that started in the 1960s about the dangers posed by German current account surpluses. Solving the question of the German current account in the European setting at first appeared to require some sophisticated and ingenious political mechanism that would force French politicians to pursue more austerity than they would have liked, and Germans less price orthodoxy than they thought they needed. A political mechanism, however, requires continual negotiation and public deliberation, which would have been painful given the policy preferences in the two countries (and in those countries that lined up with either of the Big Two). The increased attraction of monetary union was that it required no such drawn-out political process. The operation of an entirely automatic device would constrain political debate, initiative, and policy choice. But this process raised two questions that were not adequately solved in the sober and meticulous arguments for monetary union, and the monetary union was thus left incomplete. The first concerned the fiscal discipline needed for currency union; the second and even more serious related to the need for a central bank to exercise general financial sector supervision and regulation.

The European Banking Union (EBU) has been a major breakthrough in the European integration process, with the introduction of a single supervisory mechanism, single resolution mechanism, and revision of the deposit guarantee schemes. The EBU has undoubtedly contributed to the strengthening of the supervisory framework, but there remain important legal, economic, political, and operational challenges. This chapter focuses on two serious flaws in the current EBU and potential solutions. First, the lack of a jointly backed deposit guarantee scheme. Second, the inability to effectively use and finance the resolution fund and the absence of an effective liquidity facility.

This chapter explores various aspects and examples of analogy and extension, with particular attention to their interrelations. Analogy can be understood as an automatic cognitive process by which what is known is extrapolated to what is considered similar, which leads to similar outcomes, that is, extension. Later cognitive development usually prevents incorrect analogy. Extension following perceptual analogy in conventional semiotic systems produces changes in the system; instead of being interpreted as erroneous, it should be considered as a reflection of evolving human perception. Thus, semiotic systems generally evolve via extension generated by analogy, which can be illustrated by language and graphemics. Analogy between graphemic systems in contact may induce intergraphemic extension, and analogy between different categories of a given graphemic system may lead to intragraphemic extension. Because graphemic systems are related to language in many ways (for example, to elements of phonemic and morphemic systems), analogy concerning graphemics may produce intersemiotic extension, either from language to graphemics or in the opposite direction. The seemingly ideal synchronic correlation between graphemics and linguistic elements may have been caused by historical analogy and extension between them, and this evolution can be studied by diachronic analysis of language–writing relations.

While the EU recovery plan provides a useful step in alleviating the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis and achieving further European integration, a much-needed permanent fiscal stabilization capacity dealing with major crises is still missing. Such an EU-wide stabilization function would be in accordance with the subsidiarity principle, enshrined in the Treaty of Maastricht, as the risk-sharing that it provides can only be conducted at the supranational level. The chapter envisages a mechanism to semi-automatically respond to region- and country-specific shocks via a central fiscal stabilization fund (CFSF). A well-designed CFSF has the potential to improve welfare not only in crisis-hit member countries, but also in the union as a whole.

This chapter deals with the Capital Markets Union from a political science perspective. It seeks to explain the initiation and content of the CMU agenda, its fluctuating fortunes, and its prospects. Why did capital markets emerge as a market-based solution in the wake of the European economic crisis, after being seen as part of the problem in the context of the Global Financial Crisis? Moreover, did the CMU represent a historical turn in the EU financial markets integration process? To answer to these questions, the chapter focuses on intergovernmentalist, supranationalist, and transnationalist approaches in international political economy. While intergovernmentalism concerns Member State preferences, electoral incentives, and bargaining power, supranationalism focuses on functional spillovers and the role of supranational actors. Transnationalist frameworks put at the centre the role of cross-border socio-economic interests in shaping dominant discourses and political orientations. The chapter argues that the CMU represented a shift towards market-friendly financial markets regulation in the EU compared to the post-crisis reform wave. Yet, far from being a fully coherent and successful initiative, in its policy outcomes the CMU revealed the fragmentation and multiple conflicts beneath its surface. The CMU remains a relatively narrow and technocratic battlefield among competing coalitions of corporate and policymakers’ interests.

This chapter discusses the notion of orthographic principles, the associated theoretical issues and the relevance of these principles in the (diachronic) study of spelling. It provides an overview of the aspects of writing that should be taken into consideration when identifying general patterns or rules governing spelling practices within a specific historic orthographic system, such as the typological make-up of the writing system, levels and regularity of linguistic representation, and graphotactic constraints. The discussion focuses on alphabet-based spelling systems and delineates several general pathways for the conventionalization of spelling across various European vernacular spellings systems at different historical periods, making particular illustrative use of Cyrillic Lithuanian. In addition to foregrounding the importance of sound-oriented and meaning-oriented graphic mappings in shaping alphabet-based spelling systems, this chapter emphasizes the role of graphotactic constraints, which have been central in contributing to morphographization of some European spelling systems in the early modern and late modern periods.

As the EU is finalizing measures for the regulation of cryptocurrencies and the digital resilience of financial institutions, this chapter describes the pros and cons of the new approach for regulating crypto, and assesses the framework for ICT oversight. Both regulations, Markets in Crypto-Assets (MICA) and Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), introduce a host of new provisions, and fundamentally change the regulatory framework for digital operations in finance in the EU. Crypto providers will be subject to a new set of rules in MICA, outside the existing rules for investment providers that are governed by the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). But the digital governance of all financial firms will be more strictly regulated under DORA, including the third-party ICT providers.

Since the introduction of the Economic and Monetary Union at the Maastricht summit in 1991, the framework of fiscal integration is a controversial topic. More recently, the eurozone and COVID-19 crises triggered reforms, which were accompanied by strong political conflicts. Drawing on political science research, this chapter analyses these recent reforms with a focus on the political conflicts among the Member States of the European Union. The findings show that, in the politics of fiscal integration, the lines of conflict among Member States are rather stable, while the success of reform proposals depends on the German–French integration partnership and the influence of the Commission. The more in-depth comparison between the fiscal reforms to the COVID-19 and eurozone crises points to both continuity and incremental change. A major shift is that the more recent fiscal programme in reaction to the COVID-19 crisis includes joint borrowing on a large scale. On a more general level, a defining feature of fiscal integration is the varying extents to which Member States are fiscally integrated within the eurozone and the EU. The final section of the chapter discusses the literature on differentiated integration related to fiscal integration by emphasizing the challenges for democratic legitimacy.

Two main goals of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) are fiscal sustainability and fiscal policies’ contribution to economic stabilization. However, from the very beginning, several Member States of the European Economic Monetary Union (EMU) failed to stay within the SGP’s reference values, all too often leading to large fiscal imbalances, procyclical fiscal policies, and public debt overhangs. The SGP has therefore been revised several times to improve the enforceability and flexibility of the fiscal rules. In practice, however, these amendments made the European fiscal framework overly complex and incoherent, leaving national governments with too little incentive to pursue a prudent fiscal stance. To (better) promote fiscal sustainability in the EMU, the current weaknesses of the SGP need to be addressed. Several options have been suggested, mainly to decentralize the responsibility for fiscal discipline back to the national level or to reform the current framework. Notably, the latter option seems more likely to be implemented. Most proposals suggest a prominent role for an expenditure rule, augmented with a debt anchor. These proposals make perfect sense, but a discussion on the effectiveness and reform of the SGP shows that they will not remedy all current shortcomings of the fiscal rules.

This chapter investigates the topic of orthographic reconstruction of a historical writing system taking as case study the Linear B syllabary of Bronze Age Greece. The Linear B syllabary was used to render the oldest Greek dialect attested in written form, so-called ‘Mycenaean’ Greek (c. 1400–1190 BC). The reader is guided step-by-step through the stages involved in the reconstruction of the orthography of the Linear B syllabary, so as to understand how to bridge the gap between actual attestations and their phonetic rendering (e.g. Linear B a-to-ro-qo representing alphabetic Greek ?????p?? /anthropos/ ‘man’). The discussion covers some of the methodological issues scholars had to reckon with when reconstructing a historical orthographic system in the Bronze Age Aegean context. This complex process eventually made it possible to draw up the ‘rules’ that govern the system and, by assessing deviations, to evaluate the extent to which these were adhered to. This chapter also illustrates the role played in such reconstruction by the historical and linguistic backdrop, within which the adaptation of an already existing writing system (‘Minoan’ Linear A) took place to render a linguistically different language (Greek).

This chapter is devoted to analysing the extent to which courts and legal institutions can contribute to improving the accountability of EU monetary policy. To do so, it draws on a framework designed to examine the normative goods underlying accountability claims, namely the use of accountability to improve the openness, non-arbitrariness, effectiveness, and publicness of official action. Analysing the jurisprudence of both national courts and the European Court of Justice, the chapter examines the extent to which judicial interaction has improved or detracted from these goods. It concludes that judicial intervention (in the absence of meaningful channels of political accountability) has made a modest contribution to improving the accountability of the ECB’s monetary policy.

This chapter provides a brief introduction to grapholinguistics, focusing mainly on its core subdisciplines – graphetics and graphematics (or graphemics). Historically, grapholinguistics can be perceived as a neglected subdiscipline of linguistics, though it also explores the topic of written language in its totality, which is not entirely linguistically oriented. The author specifies that its beginnings, as an organized movement, date back to Germany of the 1970s, but various instances of grapholinguistics emerged at different places (and in different languages). The field now has an established textbook, a special section in the online Dictionaries of Linguistics and Communication Science, and, as of quite recently, a proposal for a unifying general theory. This chapter is centered on graphetics and graphematics in order to expose the crucial linguistic dichotomy – that between form and function. Whereas the primary concern of graphetics is the materiality of writing, graphematics deals mainly with the functions of abstract units. The interplay between these two interrelated grapholinguistic subdisciplines is especially evident in the analysis of allography, which focuses on the variation of both concrete and abstract units (graphs and graphemes, respectively).

The goal of his chapter is twofold: firstly, to provide a general review of the literature on language contact and orthography, with a special focus on how situations of language contact can bring about alternation or conflict among various spelling traditions, and spearhead the emergence of new orthographic standards; and secondly, to explore how a historical sociolinguistic approach can contribute to the study of historical orthographies in language contact situations. Specifically, the chapter tests the possibilities of an ecological framework to the study of historical orthographies in contact settings, by considering spelling norms as a reflection of multiple, simultaneous linguistic and cultural environmental forces. This framework is illustrated in the second half of the chapter by means of a case study of the emergence of orthographic norms in a high-contact environment, namely the development of spelling protocols in colonial Nahuatl and the application of these protocols to Spanish loanwords containing sibilants. This case study exemplifies the interface between linguistic, social and cultural effects typical of language contact environments, and illustrates the affordances of an ecological approach to the study of historical orthographies and orthographic normativization in other contact settings.

This chapter formulates some relatively new lines of enquiry for research in historical orthography, which stem from the concept of a community of practice. The authors propose the idea that communities of practice represent a key bridge across material which inevitably stimulates divergent research interests in the field. They suggest that communities of book producers in England and the Low Countries were not self-standing entities, but were engaged in more or less loose, professional and social interactions, forming networks of practice. The respective histories of English and Dutch had some fundamental similarities with reference to early book production and local organization, and there were links existing even between those working on manuscripts and printed material. This chapter provides useful background information on early book production and large-scale professional networks, with a view to inspiring future researchers to explore the intricate correlation between professional organization, culture and society in the complex framework of early modern Europe.

Fiscal policy in the euro area has been bound by the Maastricht Treaty criteria. The chapter evaluates what this has meant for the effectiveness of fiscal policy, and observes that it has led to suboptimal investments, has been on average procyclical, and has let monetary policy carry the burden of macroeconomic management. The chapter shows that by construction the Maastricht framework has been one that constrains countries, rather than coordinating them. Moving forward, it can be expected that fiscal policy will have a much more active role to play. NextGenerationEU can serve as a good template for coordinating fiscal policy, at least for the big European public goods, like the climate.

This chapter draws on the comparative and sociopragmatic methods in historical orthography research. After first introducing writing systems and describing orthography as a supportive discipline on the fringes of other disciplines, the growing interest in this discipline is explained. The chapter presents the adoption of the comparative method in Slavic studies and principal directions therein. Then, it summarizes theoretical preliminaries in historical sociopragmatics, primarily based upon research on English historical orthography. In what follows, the author offers an overview of the most important approaches in Slavic studies, pragmaphilology and diachronic pragmatics, illustrating the differences and synergies between them mostly with Russian, Czech and Polish material. Finally, the methods proposed are critically appraised and their applicability for prospective research is demonstrated.