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Throughout the crisis, citizens’ trust in the European Central Bank has significantly declined throughout the Euro area (EA-12). Although a decline in the core countries of the EA-12 has been distinct, a more pronounced decline has been taking place in the peripheral countries of the EA-12. Taking panel data and using a fixed effects DFGLS estimation for an EA-12 country sample over the time period of 1999–2012 with a total of 305 observations, this paper detects a negative and significant relationship between unemployment and trust in times of crisis. The robustness analysis of the paper confirms that this decrease in trust is strongly driven by the significant increase in unemployment rates in the four peripheral countries Spain, Ireland, Greece and Portugal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Access to and diffusion of information relating to the Terrorism Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) has become a focal point for discussions about secrecy and democracy in the European Union. This paper analyses the dynamics of secrecy and publicity in the context of post-9/11 security programmes, in particular, the TFTP. Far from a binary between secrecy and transparency, the TFTP involves complex dynamics of knowledge, and strictly regulated information distribution. The purpose of the article is threefold. First, we contribute to debates on EU secrecy and democratic oversight, by advancing an understanding ofsecrecy as practice. Second, we document and discuss the longer trajectory of the contested secrecy and publicity of the TFTP, through examining three ‘secrecy controversies’. Third, we ask whether the logics of secrecy in the EU are being revised and challenged in the context of transatlantic security cooperation. The rationales of secrecy deployed in security practice hinge on particular notions of potential future harm that, we argue, are shifting in the face of current understandings of the terrorist threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jacques Delors’ presidency of the European Commission (1985–1994) is a major example of transformative leadership at a moment of significant innovation in a transnational institution. Leadership by the president involves both leading the supranational Commission, and exercising leadership in the intergovernmental setting of the European Council, which takes key decisions about major innovations for the European Union. This analysis uses a typology developed by Oran Young to analyse Delors’ successes and failures both in mobilizing the Commission for the major projects of the decade and in promoting them in the intergovernmental context of the Council. After reviewing his early career in French politics and the resources it provided, the article analyses Delors’ successes, beginning with the 1985 Single Market program, an exercise that presented innovative win–win proposals to member states that unleashed energy that could be invested in new projects. As Franco-German preferences diverged over monetary union and member states grew wary of his ‘Russian Dolls’ strategy, Delors’ capacity for transformative leadership dwindled. Following the 1992 Maastricht treaty, as the EU turned toward issue areas central to national power and identity, member states began retreating towards intergovernmentalism. The decline of Delors’ leadership became clear when member states refused to support his 1993 White Paper onGrowth, Competitiveness, and Employment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As compensation for their disempowerment in the process of European integration, national parliaments have been provided with various new rights and powers since the 1990s, culminating in the current provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. This paper argues, however, that rather than simply re-enhancing traditional powers of national parliaments, these reforms imply ideas of a new type of parliamentary democracy in Europe. It identifies three different roles for national parliaments in the EU: preventing rather than shaping legislation (gatekeeping role), cooperating with other parliaments and supranational institutions (networking role), and adopting a uniform mode control of government across all party groups (unitary scrutiniser role). All these roles require a significant deviation from the standard role legislatures usually play in European parliamentary democracies. The paper briefly explores how national parliaments in two ‘old’ (France, Germany) and one ‘new’ (Poland) member state fulfil these three new roles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Standard accounts assume that representatives are authorised and held accountable through elections in territorially defined constituencies. In contrast, claims-making approaches hold that representation does not always depend on an electoral connection. This paper argues that the claims-making approach addresses some of the difficulties in the standard account, but remains itself theoretically underspecified. This becomes especially clear when applied to systems with exceptional institutional complexity like the EU. As an alternative to both those other approaches, the paper proposes a revised claims-making approach in which rights claims are used to specify representative claims. It then shows how rights claims do, indeed, play an important role in the representative claims that are made in the European Union arena, and how that, in turn, allows the Union to deal with some of the problems of applying standard forms of representation to its decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides insight into the transposition in Belgium of six EU social policy directives adopted during the 1990s. Arguing that domestic politics matter for understanding transposition of EU policies in this country, it addresses the discordant findings concerning propositions about misfit, administrative inefficiencies and difficulties, as well as veto players. On the basis of an in-depth country analysis, it shows how these concepts can be clarified by taking into account factors that have typically been omitted in quantitative research and by analysing more directly mechanisms that are not easily captured by quantifiable proxies. The paper concludes by describing the efforts that have been undertaken in Belgium to adjust specific features of the national political system so as to cope better with adaptation requirements, which again reinforces the relevance of domestic politics for implementation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the point of departure in the otherwise extensive knowledge on reform and routine within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU), this paper argues that: (1) in order to fully appreciate the insights provided we need to look into the complementary nature of ideational and interest-based approaches; and (2) lessons can be learned by comparing several (here, three of five) reform attempts and by pointing out the importance of periods in between reforms (here, covering a time horizon stretching from 1980 to 2003). Against this background, the paper offers a comprehensive logic of policy development that may be used for other areas of study, which both draws on the insights into bargaining processes as offered by rational choice institutional theory and the insight into arguing processes as offered by constructivist approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union has emerged as the global precautionary superpower, particularly in the field of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The EU has moved away from the initial World Trade Organization (WTO) and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) consensus and shifted toward strict safety assessment and mandatory labelling. In addition, the pathway to this change has been beset with incoherence and a series of crises. What explains this move toward tight regulation despite enduring economic interests to do otherwise? This paper uses the framework of competitive governance to analyse this outcome. The high degree of politicization of the GMO issue has made it a key battleground for competition for leadership, particularly between the Commission and the Council of Ministers. The result has been a protracted battle over agenda setting and issue framing and a cycle of competitive regulatory reinforcement. The Council has used its leverage in comitology to shape the legislative agenda and push the outcome toward its political preferences. The paper unpacks both the steps and incoherence in GMO governance since 1995 and the relationships between key actors involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health systems in Europe were hit by the economic crisis to various degrees. Evidence from worst affected countries shows detrimental consequences for health systems and health outcomes. EU member states face an increased risk of cross-border health threats given the growing difficulties to prevent and control infectious disease outbreaks with resources limited by cuts to public spending on health. Although health systems constitute a core national competence, the crisis has triggered the extension of EU economic surveillance over this field. The related debate focuses on the added value of EU action to support health systems in coping with the crisis challenges vs. the constraints imposed by stricter EU fiscal governance on national health policymakers. This paper provides an analysis of the changes triggered by the economic crisis. The analysis focuses on the EU level, exploring the changes in the output of EU institutions and their (possible) implications for health systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The externalization of the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) as part of the EU’s wider external relations has received increasing scholarly attention in the last years. An important and reoccurring theme within this field, which has occupied scholars and policy-makers alike, has been the EU’s counter-terrorism cooperation with third states. Initially viewed as a ‘paper tiger’ in international efforts to combat terrorism, recent studies have illustrated the increasing activism of the EU in international counter-terrorism cooperation. However, these studies have exclusively drawn on North American or ENP case studies. By analysing the EU’s counter-terrorism with ASEAN this article tries to extend the empirical basis of contemporary scholarship to the case study of EU–ASEAN cooperation. It thereby attempts to examine prospects and limits of the externalization of JHA with a special focus on counter-terrorism policies beyond the immediate EU neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the underexplored relationship between European Union agencies (EUAs) and the member states. It is argued that the vertical link constitutes a hitherto unexplored source of political accountability for EUAs. In particular, member states’ representation on the EUAs’ management boards (MBs) can be considered as an instance of vertical political accountability and, therefore, also as a possible substitute for input legitimacy — a feature EUAs are conventionally seen to be lacking. However, drawing on document analysis and survey data, the empirical results reveal a rather ambivalent picture of MBs’ vertical political accountability. The strong vertical political accountability relationships expected are only present for one EUA out of six. It can also be shown that more powerful EUAs are not held more accountable than less powerful ones. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature on European integration has documented several cases of creeping competences in the EU. None of these studies, however, has fully clarified the conditions under which this phenomenon takes place, nor provided any testable hypotheses on its empirical dynamics. This paper studies one case where secondary legislation was employed to extend a formal treaty-based competence (civilian research and technology policy) to an area that, for historical and strategic reasons, has always been a policy monopoly of national governments: research and technology development policy for security and defence. Through the analysis of a large pool of documentary data, I elaborate a set of linked hypotheses about the empirical dynamics of creeping competences, and show how the theory of incomplete contracting is best suited to explain this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Roma face widespread discrimination and marginalisation in the EU. To address these, the Commission adopted an EU Roma policy—‘EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies’ (2011)—which is implemented with the support of EU legal, financial and soft law instruments. This paper investigates the effectiveness and implications of EU Roma policy in addressing the social exclusion and discrimination faced by the Roma by assessing the policy framing, the key EU instruments and whether they address the root causes of Roma marginalisation. It is argued that the socio-economic framing of Roma exclusion—underpinning the EU Roma policy—along with the EU instruments upholding its implementation, both blurred the responsibility boundaries for Roma inclusion between the EU and national levels, and also proved ineffective and ill-designed in addressing the root causes of Roma exclusion and discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the struggle for policy coherence between two EU policy domains: competition policies and public safety policies. We use the notion of ‘policy coherence’ to demonstrate the difficulty of reconciling divergent policy aims, both within the EU and between the EU and its member states. We analyze the question what caused policy incoherence and why it occurred at a certain time. We aim to contribute to a further development of this concept in two ways: first, we apply it, for the first time, to an empirical domain that deals with EU internal relations. Second, we seek to enrich existing literature on policy incoherence with added insight into the causes and timing thereof. We use the notion of ‘policy framing’ to explain the occurrence of policy incoherence. In this way, we provide policy-makers and area stakeholders with advance warnings of the likelihood of its occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the underlying dynamics of institutional change in economic governance in EMU. We show that the crisis revealed significant gaps between the intentions of the designers of EMU and the observed outcome. Building on the path dependence literature we use the framework of historical institutionalism to understand how policy-makers were constrained in their options for the containment and resolution of the sovereign debt crisis. We argue that the principle which prohibits the central bank from financing governments as enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty was a causal factor in fostering reform and deeper integration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper argues for exploring the functionality of the EU in small states’ comprehensive security strategies. Institutions and states today frequently publish security ‘strategies’ defining their overarching aims and policy principles. For small states, membership of regional institutions can be a strategic aim—easing multiple security concerns—but itself tends to modify strategic agendas and discourse. The paper argues that the EU offers small European states soft security strategic options not previously available nor (currently) paralleled elsewhere; and that small states can and do make use of this broader ‘shelter’, albeit at a certain cost. It calls for an update of the small states literature by focusing on the importance of existential and ‘soft’ security benefits increasingly offered by multilateral institutions like the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates how to address non-traditional security (NTS) challenges where the principal concern is to safeguard individuals. Since unilateral action cannot effectively deal with piracy, terrorism, cross-border conflicts, etc, there is a need for multilateral responses. Yet, time and again, the insistence on non-interference in the domestic affairs of countries has proven a major obstacle. European Union members, conceptualizing sovereignty in terms of ‘constitutional independence’, have made some progress addressing these challenges. Although, recently, some progress has also been made in Asia Pacific, there sovereignty often is still being used as a semantic weapon. Since states not only have rights but obligations, I argue, there is a need for a careful recalibration of sovereignty-related norms that stand in the way of improved human rights. Focusing on a specific issue area within NTS challenges, the Responsibility to Protect, I illustrate how a recalibration of sovereignty-related norms might take place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

European Union policy on regional aid has always exhibited a concern for the possibility of bidding wars for mobile investment, but it is only since 1998 that the EU has had comprehensive rules designed to address investment incentives. The Multisectoral Framework on Regional Aid for Large Investment Projects, now incorporated into the Regional Aid Guidelines, provides for reduced aid maxima for projects over €50 million. This paper shows that the Multisectoral Framework has largely accomplished its goals: aid award levels have fallen significantly since the reform of the Framework in 2002, and in comparison with the unregulated location tournaments of the US, aid packages are smaller in the EU. In fact, in 2010–2011, there were only three aid awards of $100 million or more in the EU, versus 21 in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the issue of fiscal policy coordination in the context of the current crisis. It first aims at clarifying the economic rationale for fiscal policy coordination in a monetary union with decentralized fiscal authorities, and at exploring the foundations of the kind of coordination devices chosen, as well as the incentives and constraints on member states' governments arising from the fiscal rules in the Euro zone, both in tranquil and in stormy economic times. We then proceed with an analysis of the difficulties arising from the heterogeneous nature of the Euro zone. The third section explores some of the possible causes of heterogeneity, with an emphasis on the issue of collective action and country size, with the co-existence of large and small countries, facing different incentives and constraints, hence tending to adopt divergent strategies in the occurrence of common macro-economic shocks. The possible evolution in automatic fiscal stabilizers is then addressed, followed by a section documenting the size and structure of national fiscal stimulus packages. The concluding section advocates a better mix of rules and discretionary coordination for fiscal policies in the Euro zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of the left-right divide for party choice is well established, both for legislative and European Parliament (EP) elections. However, the conditions under which left-right self-placement becomes more or less important in explaining the vote in both legislative and EP elections are clearly understudied. The article uses the 2004 EP elections as a laboratory to understand if there are indeed systematic differences between political systems' characteristics that might explain variation in terms of the strength of the relationship between left-right self-placement and the vote. Using the survey data from the European Election Study 2004 (twenty-one EU member states), the paper has two goals. First, to examine whether citizens' left-right self-placement has a different impact on the vote in different types of democratic regime, defined in terms of the contrast between consolidating and long-established democracies. Secondly, to examine whether this contrast resists the introduction of controls for three other factors hypothesized to make a difference in the extent to which left-right orientations have a greater influence on the vote: the permissiveness of electoral system; the clarity of policy alternatives provided by the party system; and the particular type of party alignments along both the left-right and anti-/pro-integration scales that tend to characterize each country. Our findings corroborate that (the 2004 EP) elections do seem to be about choosing parties in terms of left-right orientations to a considerable extent. Furthermore, we found that the usefulness of left-right orientations as cues to the vote seems to be contingent upon a major contextual factor: greater levels of clarity of the policy alternatives provided by the party system render citizens' left-right self-placement more consequential for their EP vote. Finally, we found that left-right orientations may not be equally useful in consolidating and in the remaining established democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) introduced the market liberal paradigm as the ideational underpinning of the new farm trade regime. Though the immediate consequences in terms of limitations on agricultural support and protection were very modest, the Agreement did impact on the way in which domestic farm policy evolves. It forced EU agricultural policy makers to consider the agricultural negotiations when reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The new paradigm in global farm trade resulted in a process of institutional layering in which concerns raised in the World Trade Organization (WTO) were gradually incorporated in EU agricultural institutions. This has resulted in gradual reform of the CAP in which policy instruments have been changed in order to make the CAP more WTO compatible. The underlying paradigm, the state-assisted paradigm, has been sustained though it has been rephrased by introducing the concept of multifunctionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gauges the extent to which sub-national authorities (SNAs) from the EU’s post-socialist member states are attempting to affect EU policy making and considers whether their efforts heretofore have proven successful. The paper finds (a) that SNAs are engaging four of the five ‘channels of representation’, (b) that significant cross-national and intra-country variation characterizes emerging patterns of mobilization, and (c) that territorial balances of power in post-socialist states remain heavily tipped in the favour of central states. SNAs from central and eastern Europe are rapidly integrating into the EU’s multi-level polity, but the pre-eminence of central state authority in the region is not fundamentally threatened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have highlighted the importance of Frontex risk analysis in the institutionalisation of EU-level border control without, however, sufficiently substantiating alleged harmonisation dynamics. This paper interrogates how and why EU-level actors seek to exploit risk analysis to harmonise European border control. An interpretive policy analysis of three contemporary applications of Frontex risk analysis – the Eurosur impact level assessment, the Schengen evaluation and monitoring mechanism and resource allocation in the Internal Security Fund – indicates that Frontex and the Commission found their harmonisation hopes on the rationalisation promises of risk-based governance – efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency gains and de-politicisation effects. This multi-functional rationalisation of Community decision-making is meant to justify increased EU-level coordination and interventions without challenging member state competencies, thereby enabling soft harmonisation processes in the weakly integrated and much contested domain. Rather than merely adhering to securitisation goals, risk analysis represents a magic bullet in the EU’s own institutional risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU may be asui generispolity but it has not escaped the challenge of establishing narratives that help define its territoriality. Political narratives about territoriality, especially political myths, are important instruments for political communities to develop ontological security. The article argues that the European Union faced a dilemma in the refugee crisis in balancing its foundational values with a narrative about a territory with managed external borders. The EU’s territorial myth is not entirely successful in that it lacks some key narrative forms that are essential for widely diffused myths. Territorial myths are not just about establishing borders but also about defining the community; so long as this remains ill-defined, the paper argues, territorial myths will contribute in a limited way to providing the ontological security to address pressing challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper deals with the legitimacy of the EU’s external borders and the decision-making rules for changing them. First, while the EU should not indefinitely expand, we can identify no normative grounds for precluding in advance any liberal democratic nation-states from participation in the European project. Second, for those countries having more or less thick legal ties with the EU, or who are otherwise substantially affected by European decision-making, we argue for the institutionalisation of flexible deliberative communities. For closely associated countries, we argue that the EU has special duties in opening the door to membership. Third, we address the legitimacy of the EU’s decision-making procedures for deciding on accession candidates and creating association agreements with non-member states. Here we defend the EU’s current unanimity requirement for the former and its supermajoritarian decision rules for the latter. Finally, we suggest that nationalism is the primary obstacle to the achievement of just inclusion outcomes for non-member states. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The renewed emphasis on national political boundaries across Europe would seem to go hand-in-hand with a weaker external personality for the EU. However, there are several prominent examples of EU leadership that challenge this notion, from the December 2015 UN climate change agreement to common sanctions again Russia to a new Global Strategy. This paper examines a policy area that lies at the intersection of populist outrage and external engagement: counter-terrorism. In the wake of the 2015 and 2016 Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks, the EU has made significant strides in enhancing the external dimension of its counter-terrorism policies, particularly in terms of intelligence sharing, formal and informal diplomacy, and the internal–external nexus of security. The article argues that major terrorist attacks in 2015–2016 have served as critical junctures of crisis, driving counter-terrorism policies forward and emphasising the notion of European boundaries beyond any functionalist or securitization explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses how well supranational umbrella organisations represent the interests of their constituencies in European Union (EU) policy-making. I examine two prominent European umbrella organisations – The European Council on Refugees and Exiles and The European Network Against Racism – and their national member organisations. I hypothesise that, due to the notoriously diverse set of actors and issue priorities that comprise migrant inclusion, not all interests are represented equally well at the supranational level, leading to some degree of ‘representational strain’. I first analyse the dimensions on which issue priorities are structured at both the umbrella and constituency levels, and secondly, the degree of congruence between the interests of national members and European umbrella organisations. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the results show that these EU umbrella organisations do well overall, but experience some difficulty representing the full range of issues prioritised by their diverse membership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper summarises a collaborative international research project comparing the impact of the ongoing conglomerate of crises in nine EU policies. All of them saw significant crisis-induced pressures and challenges. Beyond changes in discourse, the crisis-induced pressures have, in many areas, also triggered a rather sizable amount of policy change. Considering EU competences, no single example of re-nationalisation was found, but many new EU-level tasks. The governments were of prime importance in immediate crisis management but supranational institutions and processes continue to matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European crisis has many causes. Worse, the different causes are mutually reinforcing. National economies lost competitiveness within the single currency, governments and households lived beyond their means, banks and other financial firms moved capital across borders and then called it back home again in a fit of panic. Europe is suffering as a consequence. European policy-making is suffering as well. With so many ‘causes’, politicians are dividing their attention across different and at times competing remedies. Europe appears to be ‘muddling through’ rather than acting decisively as a result. This paper argues that European policymakers should focus their attention on financial causal mechanisms. Although there is some truth to claims about lost competitiveness and excessive borrowing, a close focus on financial markets promises to offer the greatest leverage over the largest number of national economies. A close focus on finance also offers a clear choice between competing policy agendas: Europe's politicians must choose either to accept a renationalization of finance or they must embrace reforms necessary to stabilize international financial market integration. Only once that choice is made, and the necessary policy agendas are put in place, should politicians again turn their focus to issues of second-order (if still significant) importance related to market structural reform, fiscal consolidation, or asset market regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers what will be required to make Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) sustainable following the successive crises of recent years. It starts by laying out the policy benchmark, namely the successive ‘President Reports’ produced by EU institutions. It then suggests three dimensions of sustainable integration relevant to EMU, namely the pursuit of sustainable growth, the need to take into account what we call ‘varieties of modernisation’ and the ‘ownership’ of democratically sustainable reforms. It then evaluates the recasting of EMU governance against the benchmark of sustainable integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Single European Act the EU has brought many ‘public’ policy sectors characterised by heterogeneity under the umbrella of the Single Market. Consequently, some of the tools employed to shelter these sectors from supranational governance — unanimous decision-making, limited Commission competence and ‘ring fenced’ national regimes — are no longer fully relevant. The member states and the Commission have therefore developed a series of additional measures to accommodate heterogeneity. The central questions here are: as integration proceeds, what can member states reasonably demand in order to safeguard their interests? And, how can the Commission offer the necessary flexibility? The literature on policy implementation and differentiated integration provides a point of departure for generalisations about changes to mechanisms of intergovernmental governance. The present paper uses developments in the EU gas sector to explore and elaborate how the adoption of new measures changes the mechanisms of intergovernmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the twentieth century, 191 countries agreed to realize the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The European Union (EU) has incorporated many of these goals into its development policies. However, the effect of the MDGs on the construction of EU development policy has not been achieved through a homogenous diffusion of global development norms, but through a heterogeneous process: some MDGs have had a greater impact on EU policy formation than others. By reconceptualizing the EU as a receiver of norms, this paper aims to locate the scope conditions of global norm convergence in EU development policy through a comparison of disaster risk reduction and urban development in slum dwellings. Informed through world society theory, the findings point to the importance of norm ‘theorization’ in explaining the scope conditions of norm diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Comitology is an important part of the EU’s regulatory framework. Hence, lobbying by outside interests is to be expected. However, lobbying in the comitology system has received almost no scholarly attention. This paper provides the first understanding of the subject by analysing the access of business interests to actors in the comitology system. The analysis is designed as a most likely study of two cases, aviation safety and CO2quotas. Based on Bouwen’s rationalist theory of access goods, the empirical analysis shows that lobbying is prevalent, especially by sectoral interests providing expert knowledge and targeted mainly at the Commission, but also at the member states in the comitology committees, and the European Parliament. The case studies therefore indicate that lobbying is widespread in the comitology system and important to study in order to understand the outputs from this part of the EU political system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) has a significant impact not only on European foreign policy-making, but also, more widely, on the transformation of the European political order, and represents a further step in the evolution of a European administrative space. Analysing the EEAS as an instance of European administrative space will inform on the shape of the Euro-polity, in that more independent European administrative capacities in area of core state-powers could be interpreted as an indicator for a shift of the EU’s political order. Based on direct observation, document analysis and expert interviews with EEAS officials, the paper presents a first overview of the outcomes of this capacity-building exercise, suggests a comprehensive conceptual framework for analysis and concludes that the EEAS can be seen as an instance of the European administrative space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Virtually non-existent five years ago, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) into Europe has surged spectacularly in recent years in an international context of declining FDI globally. While the stock of Chinese FDI in Europe is still minuscule, the flows show the rapidly growing interest of Chinese companies in being present in Europe, both through greenfield investment and through mergers and acquisitions. This surge of Chinese FDI occurred concomitantly to the explosion of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and the general economic downturn in many countries of the European Union (EU). This paper asks whether the European crisis contributed to the surge of Chinese FDI in Europe. In particular, did this surge occur as a result of an explicit strategy formulated by governments in EU Member States in order to dig their countries out of the crisis? The main argument is that the crisis has provided Chinese investors with two types of bargains: economic bargains due to depressed prices and a greater number of assets for sale, and political bargains due to the lessened political resistance to deals that may have been objectionable in flusher times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our paper investigates the impact of the global and the Euro crisis on citizens’ attitudes towards the European Union (EU). We measure the impact of the Euro crisis on two different levels: First, the crisis itself at the contextual level and second, and more importantly, at the individual level, referring to citizens’ perceptions of the crisis. Our main assumption is that during the crisis, economic explanations find their way back into the study of EU support. We test our hypotheses with 27 EU member states using different Eurobarometer surveys and apply descriptive statistics as well as multi-level regression analyses. Three conclusions emerge from the analysis: First, the impact of the Euro crisis is stronger than in the case of the global financial crisis. Second, support for the EU depends on both the contextual and the individual level although effects of the latter are more prevalent. Third, the effect of the individual perception of the crisis on EU support is stronger in Euro countries as well as in economically powerful countries. Altogether and contrary to major assumptions following post-functional arguments, our findings show that in times of the crisis economic factors again play a major role in the explanation of support for the EU. This leads to a rather critical evaluation for the future of the European integration process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For decades the European Commission’s possible legislative influence has interested scholars of EU studies, yet few empirical studies on the determinants of the Commission’s influence exist. This paper analyses quantitative data on 60 EU proposals to show to which degree rather endogenous resources of the Commission, external conditions determined by the EU member states or institutional constraints determine the Commission’s influence on EU legislation. Modeling the Commission as an agent having resources and strategic options, I demonstrate that the Commission’s ability to defend the content of its original proposals is to a large extent dependent on its principals, the member states. Endogenous resources of the Commission such as expertise and experience influence only to a small extent the legislative success of the Commission. Thus, this study allows gaining a deeper understanding on the factors influencing the European Commission’s influence on legislative affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper presents two cases of Europeanization in health policy – an area that has so far been viewed as hardly affected by European integration. We show that even in the less likely case of coverage decision-making, some traces of Europeanization can be found. This is possible because the Commission has a strong interest in further integration in this field and all other relevant actors have motives to at least engage in cooperation. Our first case deals with the EU’s transparency directive and shows that this has forced member states to establish formal decision-making procedures, but did not result in a harmonization of decision-making processes and institutions, which is why the Commission has fostered cooperation and networking. The second case looks at the Europeanization of health technology assessment, demonstrating how cooperation and policy learning take place and how the Commission has successfully promoted the emergence of a new policy field. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For a number of years, there has been an international debate on whether and to what extent small member states can influence the common external policies of the European Union. Recent research on the role of small EU states concludes that these states are neither per se political dwarfs nor power-brokers. The paper puts forward the hypothesis that the Nordic countries as small states have had a considerable influence on the EU's policies towards Africa in the current century. The ‘Nordicization' is the result of the fact that the Nordics traditionally have had a high moral profile in international affairs including North–South and specifically Africa policies. Five separate analyses are carried out addressing the question of Nordicization and Europeanization. Based on the empirical analyses, it is not possible to confirm the hypothesis that a Nordicization of the European Union's Africa policy has taken place. Rather, it appears adequate to talk about convergence of policies between the Nordics and the EU and therefore, the Africa policies of both actors are basically the result of Europeanization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Basel III Accord on a ‘Global regulatory framework for more resilient banks and banking systems’ was issued in late 2010 as the cornerstone of the international regulatory response to the global financial crisis. Its adoption into European Union (EU) legislation has, however, been met with considerable member state reticence and intra-EU negotiations are ongoing. This paper investigates the political economy of new capital requirements in the EU, arguing that the institutional features of national banking sectors convincingly account for the divergence in EU member state preferences on capital rules. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the relationship between tax competition, regional development and state aid control. In the 1990s, partly against the backdrop of the impact of globalisation on tax revenues, ‘unfair’ tax competition rose up the policy agenda. EU and OECD initiatives led to the amendment of various tax measures sometimes, paradoxically, enhancing their attractiveness. In parallel, the European Commission pursued an increasingly rigorous approach to disciplining regional aid — even in the most disadvantaged regions. Meanwhile, the European courts addressed the longstanding question of whether corporate tax rates set by regional authorities involve state aid. The consequence of these policy outcomes is that national governments and ‘genuinely’ autonomous regional authorities may operate more generous tax measures than those authorised under the state aid rules in the most severely disadvantaged regions. This raises important issues for EU cohesion policy, small island economies, and the relationship between EU competition policy and taxation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Global developments such as economic interdependence and the proliferation of national and regional competition regimes have created a complex international competition policy environment. The European Commission’s DG Competition has responded to these developments by making the international dimension of competition policy a priority since the late 1980s. It advocated for the establishment of a binding multilateral competition framework at the WTO, pursued bilateral cooperation agreements, extraterritorially applied its competition rules, and tried to export its competition policy model to its neighbors. This paper examines DG Competition’s objectives and strategies in internationalizing the EU’s competition policy, and evaluates the success of these strategies in furthering the EU’s goals in this area. The findings suggest that among all of the strategies it has tried, the DG has had most success with exporting the EU’s competition regime to other countries; however, this strategy may have reached its limits, and needs to be supplemented by multilateral efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Union (EU) and United States (US) are the world’s two largest and most influential legal jurisdictions for corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The pressures of international economic competition have lead to a flurry of M & A activity in these locales in the post-Cold War period. Given the economic impact and, in many cases, political sensitivity of some M&As, it has become critical that transatlantic regulators reach similar decisions with regard to M&A approval, denial, or modification. Incongruent decisions lead to uncertainty in the marketplace, and the possible loss of global economic competitiveness and respect for regulatory processes and outcomes. In this paper, we explore the efforts made by the US and EU over the past two decades to enhance cooperation in merger policies and processes. We argue that, despite a couple of high-profile cases to the contrary, the US and EU have made great strides in reducing uncertainty in the M&A regulatory process by institutionalizing a series of formal agreements and working groups that have served to provide the foundation for a transatlantic merger environment that may serve as a model for cross-border regulatory cooperation in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since early 2000, the European Union (EU) recognized the importance of curbing corruption and began to require that candidate countries adopt and implement anticorruption strategies prior to accession. Given Romania’s long struggle with corruption, it was required to adopt more anticorruption strategies than any other candidate to date. The present paper will elaborate upon the degree to which the EU was able to influence domestic political will, identify and discuss lessons learned from Romania that may aid the EU in future enlargements, and evaluate whether the ‘carrot’ approach was more effective than the ‘stick’ approach in propagating domestic political will. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In comparing the amendments to public procurement laws after the ECJ’s ‘Rüffert’ judgment (European Court of Justice 2008, C-346/06) the paper explores the compliance to Europeanization through law in the 16 German federal states. Instead of unilinear convergence, three types of reactions were identified. First, conservative-liberal governments rescinded the respective regulation. Thus, they dismantled their policy. Second, conservative governments that were susceptible to the pressures from small- and medium-sized business associations absorbed the effects of the ECJ ruling by enacting quick and minor amendments. Third, social democrat led governments tended to seek out policy alternatives that were consistent with European law. These governments engaged in EU-induced policy expansion, eventually setting up new procurement laws that included a number of social and environmental standards. Therefore, the case study at hand confirms studies of Europeanization that highlight the re-assertion of party differences which depends on both fundamental programmatic differences as well as plurality of European law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the adoption of the European Employment Strategy and the Lisbon strategy, convergence of social protection goals and labour market policies across EU countries features prominently on the European agenda. Embedded in convergence, Europeanization and welfare state literature, this paper examines the role of European integration in changing social policies. It shows that since 1995 social expenditures of EU member states have converged and increased on average, whereas those of non-EU countries have diverged, corrected for cyclical and demographic effects. This EU-specific convergence pattern of social expenditures leads to the subsequent question whether or not national policies have also converged. Relying on disaggregated expenditure data and policy indicators, this study shows an EU-specific trend of increasingly active labour market policies. However, within this scope of activation, countries have opted for different mixes of policy instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether and how the process of Eastern enlargement of the European Union has altered the EU party system. This process has added representatives of some forty new parties to the previous structure. Comparing party placements on the two main dimensions of political contestation in the EU — the left-right dimension and integration-independence dimension — it is found that Eastern enlargement did surprisingly little to the format of the party system and the stature of its political groups, both regarding their distinctiveness and their cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social and taxation policies are sensitive fields in which states often have sovereignty concerns. Accordingly, member states hesitate to transfer such competencies to the European Union (EU). Nevertheless, the EU shaped sensitive policies. Do states violate these domaine reserve fields more often than less sensitive European laws? Are those cases more difficult to settle? This paper shows that employment and taxation policies are indeed more frequently violated and that these infringement cases are harder to resolve. Yet, this is not due to sovereignty concerns, as expected by the domaine reserve thesis. Rather, the extent of non-compliance costs, the strength of domestic pro- and contra-compliance constituencies and the fit to governmental programmes are crucial for dynamics of norm violations and settlements. These variables do not systematically vary over policy fields and, in the end, states comply even with inconvenient European laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a brief overview of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from its origins until the present day in order to identify the factors that have been shaping its evolution. It then attempts to evaluate how persistent these trends will be in the future, whether new policy imperatives are gaining relevance in CAP reform and what they imply for the CAP over the coming years. Budget crises, international trade pressures and enlargement have driven the CAP reforms of the last fifteen years. In the future, change will be driven by the need to maintain the economic rationality and political acceptability of agricultural policy in an enlarged European Union of twenty-seven heterogeneous member states. Further decentralization of decision making and financing can be expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent reforms of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have set in motion a process of increased market orientation in the agricultural sector, a process that will be intensified by trade liberalization if an agreement is reached under the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is widely expected that both CAP reforms and a WTO agreement will also lead to a more environmentally friendly European agriculture. It is conceivable, however, that market demand would instead provide renewed incentives for intensive agricultural production. Opening European agriculture to more competition in the world market could increase pressure to slacken regulatory requirements on agriculture. Thus, the question of whether liberalization will hinder or promote environmentally sustainable production methods in agriculture is unresolved. This paper analyses different scenarios of agricultural policy development and examines their consequences for the promotion of environmentally sustainable agriculture in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]