World leaders, ministers, heads of international organisations, top military officials and scientists gather today in Germany for the 48th annual Munich Security Conference, which runs from 3-5 February 2012. The elite-level conference is the most important independent forum for debate on current and prospective security policy challenges.

There is broad political agreement on the desirability of climate change legislation in Ireland. There is no consensus, however, about what the content of a climate bill should be, perhaps due to a lack of consensus about what a climate law should seek to achieve. This study aims to explore this issue. We outline three published models of climate legislation, and assess the implications of these bills for the design of a climate law for Ireland. Read more and download the policy brief in this blog.

Peadar o Broin has written the two latest working papers in this IIEA series. The first looks at the reform of European financial supervision and regulation, focusing in particular on the contribution of the European Parliament and its ECON Committee. The second anticipates continuing strain in the Eurozone over the coming months and asks the question: 'Orderly Default or Euro Exit?'

How to restructure the debt associated with Ireland's banking collapse.

The final text of the 'treaty on stability, coordination and governance in the economic and monetary union' has been released.

Economic policy-making rarely amounts to picking the best possible policy suggested by economic theory. In a choice between an overly-restrictive and badly-designed fiscal compact and the potential alternative of being denied funding for our fiscal deficit next year (and the more extreme possibilities of sovereign default or exit from the Euro) we should stick with the European project and hope we can work to improve its design in the future.

The first European Council meeting of 2012 gets underway this afternoon in Brussels, even as a general strike that began across Belgium yesterday evening serves to remind EU leaders of the social burden created by austerity measures

The provisions on structural budget balances in the draft Fiscal Compact Treaty are aimed at separating the structural and cyclical components of signatories' annual budget deficits. The rationale is that because the cyclical component of the deficit will disappear when the economy recovers, policymakers do not have to worry unduly about it. Instead, they should focus on the structural deficit  which will remain when the recovery comes and must therefore be eliminated by policy action in the form of higher taxes and/or lower spending.