Good afternoon everybody.

I'm Kenneth Arnishon Director of the European Legal Studies and welcome to our exciting

programme of lunchtime seminars this term.

Today we kick off in great style with Federico Fabrini.

Federico is assistant professor of law at Tilburg University and soon to become associate professor of law at Copenhagen.

So congratulations on the move.

Federico works broadly in the area of EU

and comparative constitutional comparative federalism,

I suppose in many ways.

I've been very much active in recent times on working on the economic crisis and its consequences.

Co-edited a book on constitutionalisation of European budgetary constraints,

but particularly well known for his monograph on European Fundamental Rights,

published by Oxford University Press, which is fast becoming an absolute must-read for anybody interested in European fundamental rights and its development in the EU.

Today's paper, though, takes them away from fundamental rights and back to the crisis and its consequences.

And I have the great fortune to read Federico's paper, and I have to say it's probably his most provocative paper, I think,

in setting out a very ambitious argument that the politics of austerity

needs some form of calming influence.

And one mechanism for that might be to look at where power

seems to increasingly lie these days, and that's with the European Council, and particularly

with the role of its president. So I will hand over now to Federico to provoke you even further.

Thanks Federico.

Thank you very much, Kenneth.

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