Stefania Gallo and Moritz Rehm are the selected candidates to receive the 2024 European Court of Auditors (ECA) Postgraduate Research Grant at the Historical Archives of the European Union.
Stefania Gallo is a PhD candidate in European Union Law at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome, from where she previously earned a master’s degree in economics and finance.
Her project, ‘The equity of the own resources system’ will investigate the evolving concept of equity or fairness in the European Union's (EU) financing system, focusing on the principle of equity in the context of the EU's own resources. The study examines the historical and legal foundations of equity in this context, particularly the shift from traditional own resources to a gross national income-based system and, lately, to new own resources like the plastic packaging waste contribution. It explores how fairness has been interpreted, the implications of these interpretations on member states, and the compatibility of current standards with future developments in EU financing. The research employs legal, historical, and economic analyses to assess these dynamics and aims to contribute to ongoing debates on EU fiscal capacity.
Dr Moritz Rehm is a postdoctoral researcher in sociology at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. He recently received his PhD in Political Science and Political Economy in 2023 from the University of Luxembourg, where he researched and taught on European banking union and institutions of the European Union.
His project, entitled ‘Headwind to headroom: the evolution of the European Union's financial power and its impact on financial assistance,’ aims to explain how the European Economic Community and later the European Union built its financial power and how this financial power has impacted the development of Community's lending mechanism established in and for times of crises and beyond. He looks to provide an historical account of relevant factors for Community borrowing and lending including market aspects, fiscal capacity building and financial organisation, and an analytical explanation how these aspects impacted the way the Community started to use credit facilities for and on behalf of its member states since the early 1970s.
The ECA research grant at the HAEU
Up to two European Court of Auditors Postgraduate Research Grants are awarded to early career scholars each year to facilitate access to and consultation of the sources deposited at the HAEU, to which the Court entrusts its own historical archives and those of the Audit Board (1958-1977).
The grant aims to promote original research into the EU's public finances, EU policies, and the development of the EU's accountability. It also seeks to nurture a community of researchers interested in these areas.