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Corporate boards have a lot of work to do to “future proof” their companies against impending shocks from blockchain and AI. A new report summarizes the recommendations and concerns covered during a panel discussion hosted by the European Corporate Governance Institute.

  Corporate taxes are “out of control,” argues Matthias Bauer in a new report for the European Centre for International Political Economy.   Among other charges, the report characterizes the EU taxes on digital platforms as a form of “tax protectionism.”    

The 2016 increase in Ireland’s minimum wage had a marginal impact on household incomes, although it did succeed in reducing inequality between high and low wage earners by up to 8%, according to Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute.

French automaker Peugeot is pointing the way for other big companies to burnish their image and address the social crisis fueling the “yellow vest” protests in France — through profit-sharing bonuses. Michel Albouy details the market-friendly, business-driven response at Contrepoints.

The UK’s asylum policy may be the single biggest challenge to enforcing real control of the nation’s borders, as promised by Brexiteers, writes David Wood, former director general of immigration enforcement.  Wood’s analysis is available for download from Civitas.

The 20-year-old Toledo Pact, by which Spanish politicians attempted to head off the long-term unsustainability of the national pensions system, is defunct, writes F. Cabrillo of Spanish think tank Civismo. Cabrillo notes that the Spanish roundly rejected plans to import privatized models some decades ago, and now the national pension system is “bankrupt.”

If Britain is to regain its competitive edge in innovative technology-based industries, the government needs to institute a number of reforms and new measures, the Centre for Policy Studies argues — and that could include special “Unicorn Visas” (probably not actually called that) to attract promising tech talent.

The tortuous, and as yet inconclusive, course of Brexit will have real impacts on the UK’s relations with European allies, according to Sophia Besch writing in the Berlin Policy Journal.  British participation in a proposed defense union is one area that could suffer from growing mistrust amid a hard Brexit.

Happy thoughts!  A majority of German financial professionals expect the UK to crash out of the EU without a withdrawal agreement, with a major chance of serious disturbances to international financial markets, according to Germany’s Center for Financial Studies.