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In the context of increasing private provision of social security and welfare, alongside what is argued to be the ‘financialisation’ of daily lives, individuals in many countries face an array of potentially difficult financial choices and decisions. Limitations in levels of knowledge and expertise may lead them to consider seeking financial advice. Yet, in the wake of the great financial crisis, trust in the financial services industry is low.

At the same time, in a number of countries the financial advice sector is facing its own challenges. These include regulatory issues concerning the definition, suitability and delivery of advice; the affordability of advice; and the challenges and opportunities facing the advice sector as a result of the increasing use of technology in the financial services sector.

This chapter examines the implications of these developments for the regulation and governance of financial advice in the context of Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II. In particular, it considers the example of the UK and issues this raises for the implementation of recent European regulatory reforms.

This chapter aims the research whether the application of European Directive, Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), had any significant effects on the European Capital Markets and the progress of the European Integration. This new regulation specifies the tasks and responsibilities of the supervisory authorities of the Member State of origin and the host Member State, in order to enhance the certainty of effectiveness of cross-border transactions supervision and to reduce the risk of imposing unnecessary legal reforms from the host Member State on investment firms which perform cross-border transactions. It has been concluded, among others, that the aligning of the national regulatory approaches to a common European regulatory system is quite necessary. It is finally concluded that MiFID will contribute to reduce problems at country level as the previous experience of the Investment Services Directive, where the European investments and economies of Member States were based mainly on the level of ‘country’ and not of the ‘sector’. An effective capital entrepreneurship market is a strategically important element in the development of new and innovative businesses, encouraging entrepreneurship, increasing the productivity and maintaining high economic growth rates in Europe. Currently, European venture capital market is much less effective than that of the US market, for example. Therefore, in this area, should be specified the priorities that will lead to new initiatives.

In order to understand this new economic environment we need first to look at the context and some of the facts. Firstly society has lost a lot of faith with two important institutions, politics and business. There is a lack of trust in both. The UK political scene has been hit by several scandals involving poor ethical behaviour such as false and fraudulent expenses claims by members of the UK parliament. This has created distrust in politicians according to many surveys and polls such as for the BBC which found 80% of voters did not trust politicians to tell the truth (BBC News 24, 18 March 2010). This distrust arguably created political ambiguity and the country and contributed to the first ‘hung parliament’ in the United Kingdom for many years with no overall majority for one party in the 2010 general election. This subsequently resulted in the first coalition government since 1945 between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives (UK General Election, 6 May 2010). In the United States, Barak Obama in an attempt to differentiate himself from the cosy business-Bush presidential era developed a presidential campaign message about ‘restoring trust’. Arguably companies need to do the same as we enter the second decade of the second millennium. According to the 11th annual Edelman Trust Barometer (2010) we have seen trust figures plummet with two-thirds of the study's public trusting companies less than a year ago. Furthermore in the context of organisations' responsibility, just 38% trust business to do what is right, which is down 20% from just the previous year. Perhaps most disturbing of all for corporations only 17% trust the information coming from a company's CEO (chief executive officer). For companies that is a terrifying statistic. In previous eras rolling out the organisational head was a sure fire way of getting media coverage as well as influencing key stakeholders such as institutional investors and also in building and developing credibility. This was achieved because organisational stakeholders when listening to corporate messages heard it ‘from the horse's mouth’, the CEO. Now these individuals are tarnished with the labels of greed, excessive pay and the abuse of managerial power.

Many European-level networks and regulatory constellations in different sectors (e.g., energy, telecommunications) without clear anchorage into the European Union (EU) institutional landscape have been subject to increasing efforts by the EU institutions to tie them closer to the EU. They are serving increasingly as platforms for preparing EU policy or for implementing EU decisions, which may result in closer institutional bonds with the EU. This chapter aims at examining the differences and similarities between the process towards more EU-integration in two different domains (i.e., telecommunications and patents) and regulatory constellations (i.e., supranational and intergovernmental).

The chapter analyzes the evolution in the European telecommunication sector and the European Patent System and juxtaposes this analysis with the literature on institutionalization, Europeanization of regulatory network-organizations, and multilevel governance (MLG). It focuses on the role of the European Commission and the interaction with the national regulatory agencies (NRAs) and networks within the institutional framework.

Irrespective of the particular regime (intergovernmental/supranational) in a certain domain or sector, a common trend of closer coordination and integration prompted by the Commission is taking place, which triggers a certain resistance by the national bodies regulating that domain. As long as a specific competence is considered instrumental in the creation of the single market, the Commission has strong incentives to strengthen its influence in this field, even if those competences have been regulated through an independent intergovernmental regime.

The dynamic described in this chapter allows us to reflect upon the MLG conception as developed by Marks and Hooghe (2004), which distinguish between two types of MLG. Type I MLG refers to different levels of governments, more specifically to the spread of power along different governmental levels and the interactions between them. Type II MLG refers to jurisdictions that are both task-specific and based on membership that can intersect with each other. They respond to particular problems in specific policy fields (Marks & Hooghe, 2004). Our analysis shows that the increase in coordination and integration are the outcome of both MLG Type II processes (coordination between two issue-specific bodies) and of MLG Type I processes (tensions between two governmental levels). Furthermore, the negotiation dynamics regarding this increased coordination and integration reveal that the tensions typical of MLG Type I took place as a consequence of the increased coordination between Type II bodies. Put differently, multi-level coordination and integration mechanisms in the EU can be seen as both Type I and Type II processes. They combine features of both categories and reveal that their Type I and Type II features are interdependent.

The analysis in this chapter shows a need for further strengthening the MLG Type I and II conceptual framework by balancing the analytical distinction between the two types with developments about how Type I and Type II are often entangled and intertwined with each other rather than separated realities.

The chapter describes and compares the dynamics in the European telecommunications sector and the European patent system with interesting observations for NRAs and the European Commission with respect to coordination and integration.

The original nature of the current chapter relates to the two selected areas and the addition to the literature on MLG.

First, with respect to the areas investigated the dynamics of the European telecommunications sector have been analyzed also by other authors, but the European patent system is an area which is relatively unexplored in terms of governance research. The combination of the two sectors with a detailed analysis of similarities and differences is highly original and generates interesting lessons with respect to coordination and integration in supranational and intergovernmental regimes.

Second, Marks and Hooghe (2004) distinguish between the two types of MLG as if they are two different constructs that are not related to each other. Our cases and argument cover both types of MLG and show the interconnection between the dynamics taking place in the two types of MLG.

This chapter is intended to provide the reader with information and insights on the transition or transformation from socialism to a market economy in what are generally termed the transition economies. This includes countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), sometimes referred to as the Former Soviet Union (FSU), the South East European (SEE) countries, sometimes referred to as the Balkans and the major socialist economy of Asia, China. The chapter covers the critical years of reform for most of these countries, from 1990 to 2000. Some transition economies started reforming earlier, such as China which has continued state-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms to the present time. Other transition countries, primarily the SEE economies, lagged due to the conflict which raged throughout most of the region and the period of isolation which followed, particularly for Serbia. China and Serbia are sui generis for a number of reasons. They will be referenced as examples in this chapter, but they will not form part of the core statistical and data analysis.

The purpose of this chapter is to benchmark Tunisia against other emerging economies in terms of the regulatory barriers affecting particular services sectors and to assess the economy-wide effects of further liberalizing these services trade restrictions, compared with reducing the dispersion in barriers to its merchandise trade. On the basis of a rather restricted sample of services sectors, partial regulatory reform would yield gains roughly equivalent to full unilateral reform of manufacturing tariffs, but roughly one-tenth the gains from full bilateral reform of border protection in agriculture with the European Union. The adjustment costs associated with these services trade reforms would be minimal. The chapter identifies the reasons why the gains from these services reforms are relatively small and argues that a wider set of reforms could provide win-win outcomes and even fewer adjustment costs. By contrast, the gains in agriculture and manufacturing tend to come at the expense of domestic output in the reforming sectors – the gains are greater, but so too are the adjustment costs.

The 17 December 2004 was a turning point in both Turkish and European history: The European Council followed the European Commission's recommendation and approved the opening of accession negotiations with Turkey, which commenced on 3 October 2005. The goal of accession to the European Union (EU) has become one of the main driving forces for broadly defined legal, political, economic, and financial reforms in Turkey.²