Search

This article investigates how informal rules in the European Union change in the periods between formal treaty revisions. On the basis of a case study on the White Paper on Governance presented by the European Commission in July 2001, it shows how institutional change is driven by conflict between the Commission and the European Parliament. The conflict concerns the development of informal rules to structure the interaction of the Commission and the Parliament with Europe's civil society. The interaction with civil society organisations is very important for the EU bodies because it allows them to acquire resources that are indispensable in order to fulfil and expand their organisational role. An additional aim of this article is to examine how these institutional developments might influence the long-term development of formal treaty rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the regulatory developments in the banking sector in the European Union (EU). It mentions the decision of EU Commissioner Michel Barnier to appoint members of the High-Level Expert Group on structural aspects of the banking sector and a consultation launched by the EU Commission the general orientation of European company law. It cites the decision of EU Commission to prohibit the proposed merger between Deutsche Börse AG and NYSE Euronext Inc. and a study published by the EU Parliament which tackles the situation of the venture capital industry in the EU. It also notes the discussion paper published by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) which explains the key concepts of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFM) Directive.

Ever since they first entered the European Parliament in 1979, the EU has proven to be a strong legitimising tool for far right parties, providing them with funding, visibility and a higher degree of credibility and respectability. While recent literature has explored some of these dynamics, the role of the far right's ideological positioning on Europe as a source of public legitimacy has been neglected. This paper argues that as a relatively new and contentious political issue, Europe can function as a powerful ideological resource for far right parties by allowing them to convey a more acceptable political message. This argument is illustrated through a case study of two key aspects of the Rassemblement National's ideological approach to the European Union: the party's claim to be pro-European but anti-EU and its opposition to EU integration on grounds of sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament (EP) has often criticized the agencification of the European Union. Yet in practice it often uses its legislative powers to strengthen the powers and independence of European agencies. To explain this paradox, this paper analyses the six cases where the 2004-2009 EP legislated to create a new European agency. It argues that the Parliament overcame some of its doubts about agencification by proposing amendments which brought the legislation closer to its own legitimation beliefs. Moreover, the EP has developed a substantial repertoire of amendments which it now more or less repeats every time it is confronted with a proposal for a new agency. Many of these amendments are designed to shore up control of agencies, sometimes in novel ways which suggest that the Parliament has in part made its peace with agencification by becoming more amenable to the control of agencies by methods involving multiple principals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue for the introduction of lotteries as a decision-making procedure for the creation of policy in modern democracies. Our suggestions are focused on the political system of the European Union. We start our line of argument by bringing to readers' attention the recent renaissance of the lottery in democratic practices and political theory. Next we follow the rich body of literature on policy-making in the European Union and identify three aspects of the European political system which are normatively problematic. In the last sections of the paper, we suggest dealing with these problems by the implementation of a system of decision-by-lot. Our reform agenda includes: (1) a weighted lottery in order to distribute a reduced number of positions within the European Commission among the European Union member states; (2) the drawing of lots for the members, the chairpersons and the rapporteurs of the European Parliament's committees; and finally (3) the introduction of a second chamber of the European Parliament whose members would be chosen by lottery among all European Union citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses aspects of the developments in the financial regulation in Europe. It explains aspects of the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Short Selling and Certain Aspects of Credit Default Swaps (CDS) which aims to unify and harmonize a myriad of short sale rules across the European Union's (EUs) 27-nation bloc. It notes the first consultation paper on draft regulatory and implementing technical standards issued by the European Sales and Marketing Association (ESMA) in relation to the regulation. It also cites the significant differences between the draft Bill published in June 2011 and the Financial Services Bill to Parliament introduced on January 26, 2012 which reflects a significant milestone in the financial regulatory reform in Europe.

This article examines the increasing relevance of Islam and religion in the institutional arrangement of the EU post-Maastricht and the future policy implications for the complex political system of the EU. By adopting a combination of qualitative methodologies that are theoretically rooted in historical institutionalism and in a systemic view of the EU, the paper studies the emergence of Islam and religion as policy issues in two institutional settings, the European Commission and the European Parliament, during the 1990s and up to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The analysis shows a growing attention to faith communities on the part of the Commission, in the post-Maastricht context, culminating in the elaboration of semi-official avenues for encounter and dialogue with religious groups. It also indicates how, in turn, these semi-official practices and the ideas behind them have gradually imposed themselves upon multiple levels of the EU political system, thus opening up an institutional space in the EU for consultations with and 'informal policies' towards faith communities, both within and outside the EU borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second-order election models are based on several assumptions about individual-level motivations. These can be summarized by a transfer hypothesis: individuals presumably apply their evaluations of national-level phenomena to the EU level when voting in EU elections. In contrast, a suis generis hypothesis stipulates that voters evaluate the EU on its own performance terms. This paper tests these competing hypotheses. We find considerable support for both models. In the election context, where national institutions — political parties — dominate the representation process, the transfer hypothesis receives considerable support. However, we also find surprisingly strong support for the first-order hypothesis: electoral choice in EU election is influenced to a considerable extent by EU level factors. Furthermore, when voters evaluate the mechanisms of representation more broadly without a focus on elections per se, we find much more support for the first-order than the transfer hypothesis — voters clearly separate the two levels and evaluate each level on its own terms. These results have important implications, both for how we analyse voters' decisions in European elections, and how we view the sophistication of voters more broadly in the context of multi-layered institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade ago parties were largely absent from research on and theories of EU politics. The role of parties is now a central part of the research agenda, particularly in the area of EU legislative politics. The new research on parties in EU politics has made significant theoretical contributions, led to the collection and dissemination of new datasets, and employs some of the most advanced statistical methods in contemporary European political science. What is still missing, however, is a general theory of the role and impact of political parties, which helps to explain actors' behaviour in EU politics in a range of situations. This paper sketches some of the basic elements of what might be called a 'partisan theory of EU politics', starting from a discussion of how the policy and office incentives of national parties are shaped by the EU's 'upside-down polity'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections to the European Parliament have been unable to capture the public’s interest— turnout remains far lower than most national elections and many who do vote appear more concerned with sending messages of approval to national political parties than electing representatives at the EU level. This paper seeks to explain why the public does not take these elections seriously. A common explanation is that the public simply does not care about EU politics. In addition to this ‘issue-based’ argument, this article considers where a lack of trust in the European Parliament itself may lead many individuals to abstain from EP elections. Using pre and post-election survey data, results suggest that perceptions of the EP indeed have a significant effect on the decision to vote in EP elections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why did two rounds of EU constitutional reform held within a five-year period yield very different results? The 2000 IGC resulted in the modest Treaty of Nice, whereas the 2002-04 round drafted the Constitutional Treaty which, although it did not involve major substantive changes, did mark a major symbolic step forward. This article argues that the change in outcomes can to a large degree be explained by the change in negotiating structure due to the use of a convention that drafted most of the Constitutional Treaty's text, creating a context which privileged MEPs. While the outer bounds of the possible were set by governments, the EP was able to build coalitions around ambitious yet realistic positions, leading to a final text that was a major symbolic step forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role that intra-ethnic coordination and kin-state alliances play in shaping how parties that represent national minority groups approach their participation in the European Parliament (EP). This is done through an analysis of the political behaviour—electoral strategy, party group choice and modes of interest assertion in the EP—of ethnic minority parties in five Central and East European countries. The article finds that the role of intra-ethnic coordination and kin-state alliances is limited at the level of EP elections, but significant at the level of party group choice and in the visibility of minority issues in the EP. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The euro crisis is increasingly affecting the political debate in the European Union. Exogenously determined power shifts and institutional changes have been imposed on a number of member states. These measures and the direct intervention of external stakeholders in the key realms of domestic politics pose a serious challenge to both the EU's cohesiveness and its democratic nature. This study looks at how the voting dynamics and the government/opposition-like alignments in the European Parliament are affected by the ongoing crisis. It highlights the balance of partisan and nationally driven factors behind legislators' choices related to the management of the crisis. To capture the impact of the crisis-related debate on the actors' cohesiveness and alignments, two sets of vote-based analyses are conducted. This analysis proves that the main determinant of legislators' alignments in crisis-related debates is membership of the eurozone, while the explanatory potential of factors such as ideology and partisanship appears residual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italy is a predominantly Catholic country that developed historically on the basis of a strong, dominant religion and weak state institutions. Yet, openly clerical parties, direct advocates of the interests of the Catholic Church, have nowadays virtually disappeared and the relevance of the religious cleavage is decreasing, in favour of a more indirect support for these interests, mainly among moderate and conservative forces. Although the overall level of secularisation in Italy has increased, the degree of religiosity of Italian society remains one of the highest of the 27 member-states of the European Union (EU) and polarisation over religious issues in domestic politics remains high, particularly regarding moral values and family matters. In our study we explore the role of religion within the Italian political sphere with regard to the functioning of political representation, by taking into account the sub-national, national and European levels of government. We focus on the attitudes and behaviours of Italian political elites at the EU level. We hypothesise a strong influence of religion on the articulation between national and European politics. Our findings consistently show that the degree of religiosity of the Italian delegation to the European Parliament (EP) is high. However, the impact of such a high degree of religiosity among the members of the EP (MEPs) on their political activities appears less direct than one might predict, while the degree of political secularism is higher among Italian MEPs than among their national or regional counterparts. When we discuss a case study, namely the accession of Turkey to the EU, our data show that the religious attitudes of Italian MEPs play a crucial role in their stance on Turkish accession. The picture that emerges is thus nuanced. Religion significantly impacts on Italian MEPs’ ideological, political and moral attitudes, but plays a smaller role in their activities; while their left-right collocation emerges as the most relevant predictor, despite a number of exceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an open question why news media cover political campaigns the way they do. Framing elections in terms of conflict or strategy or focusing on horse-race framing and the role media and journalists themselves play in elections is commonplace, but this study investigates the factors that explain the variation in campaign news coverage. The context of our study is the 2009 European Parliamentary elections, and we use a cross-national media content analysis (N = 52,009) conducted in all 27 European Union member states. Findings show that time, country, and media characteristics all matter in explaining the way news media frame elections, however, to different extents and with different emphasis. Especially the variation in conflict framing is contingent upon the medium, the electoral system, and public aversion against the EU. We conclude with a discussion of our findings in the light of the ongoing debate on the role and impact of media framing during election campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

European Parliament elections are often classified as “second-order” and there are few pan-European media outlets through which European Union (EU) elites can address voters directly. Given these conditions, can online journalism help broaden the scope of European political communication, facilitate interaction across the borders and refocus European Parliamentary election coverage on EU issues? Using an analytical model based on the public sphere, this article assesses online reporting of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections in Greece, Sweden and the United Kingdom, on three levels: publicization; participation; and public opinion formation. The results show that despite the differences between the selected countries in terms of online communication infrastructure and the maturity of the online public sphere, cross-national patterns of European Parliamentary election coverage emerge. This allows for reserved optimism regarding the role of online journalism in the building of a European public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mini-Europe—a theme park in Brussels morally supported by the European Commission and the European Parliament—consists of around 350 models of different buildings and heritage sites from all the member states of the European Union. In addition the park includes an exhibition named the Spirit of Europe. The article explores how the European cultural identity is constructed and ‘sold’ in Mini-Europe, and how history, geography and local and regional traditions are intertwined into a politics of cultural marking, an ideology of European integration and a creation of shared symbols. European cultural identity has often been generated through appeals to an ancient or classical past, which is produced by stressing certain themes or ‘parts’ of Europe. Representing these ‘parts’ as common European culture is a profoundly exclusive strategy: heritage of a particular temporal or spatial unit is narrated as shared by the contemporary citizens in Europe. Mini-Europe can be interpreted as an indication of this kind of pan-Europeanist ideology. In addition, in Mini-Europe the European culture and identity is represented through signs, which do not refer to Europeanness as such, but function as signifiers of famous tourist attractions of particular member states in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU legislative process is lengthy and fragmented as draft acts are passed from one EU institution to another. The EU institutions rely heavily on manuals to try to ensure that their acts are consistent and of satisfactory quality. Numerous people are involved in the legislative process and they are not all familiar with all the manuals which is why some EU acts are open to criticism. The EU institutions should take more practical steps, such as promoting training in legislative matters and establishing specialist drafting units, to improve the quality of their acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2009 European Parliament election was held in the midst of one of the worst national and global recessions since the 1930s and saw the governing parties, Fianna Fail and the Greens, suffer considerable losses. This report provides a detailed review of the 2009 European elections in Ireland. It begins by outlining two analytical approaches to the election, seeking to tease out where the 2009 election in Ireland fits. It evaluates the political and economic context that the election was fought in showing how the events of the year previous to the election set the tone for its eventual outcome. The report then examines the campaign itself before providing an assessment of some of the factors that determined voters' behaviour in the election before concluding by looking ahead to what the results may tell us about future elections and voting behaviour in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sinn Fein's relationship with the European Union has changed significantly since the late 1990s. The party has moved from a position of outright opposition to European integration to one of 'critical engagement'. This has been embodied most clearly in its campaigning (and growing success) in European Parliament elections and referendums on European treaties. The degree to which this constitutes a process of Europeanization of the party is tempered, however, by the motivations for this shift in policy, which are closely related to the party's electoral and political strategies in both parts of Ireland. Moreover, the party's cautious engagement with the EU is predicated on a careful presentation of itself as a resolutely republican and left-wing party. The role it plays in European elections and referendums, therefore, is a self-consciously independent and oppositional one. The Europeanization of the party is clearly shaped by the motives, context and dynamics of the domestic arena as much as the European one. This is exemplified in the de facto prioritizing of the 'critical' over the 'engaged' elements in Sinn Fein's approach to European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the European Parliament is the EU institution which most resembles national parliaments, party politics here is more complex than in the national context because MEPs are both members of national and transnational parties. In order to increase our understanding of party politics within this body, the article compares the character of the links that MEPs hold to their national parties and EP party groups, and examines whether the type of committee membership that MEPs hold affects the strength of these party links. Based on responses to a recent survey in the European Parliament, it demonstrates that MEPs have strong links to both national and EU-level parties, but that the character of their links to the two differs. Even though transnational party groups regulate MEPs in day-to-day politics, they feel more inclined to represent their national parties. In contrast, MEPs who have served as conciliation delegates do not have stronger party links than standing committee members in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study analyses the efforts of the transnational party groups in controlling the legislative decision-making process inside the European Parliament. The case study focuses on one of the most important and contested pieces of European legislation: the services directive. The study addresses the choice of the rapporteurship for the legislative proposal through comparing the trade-offs between policy preferences, party loyalty and expertise in the nomination process. Further, the study analyses the party group internal conflict patterns, which emerged in the first reading of the proposal. The results show that party group voting loyalty and preference proximity to the party might have been a decisive factor in the nomination of the rapporteur for the services directive. The two largest party groups were also able to secure a compromise solution, which determined the final outcome of the intra-institutional decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first study which provides a strategic view on the empowering of the EP by the member states. Compared to the consultation procedure, in which the Council adopts Commission proposals, the EP has become a co-legislator in the codecision procedure, in which it usually promotes an integrationist position favouring policy change. According to this supranational scenario, most scholars conclude that member states intend to increase the legitimacy of the EU rather than their benefits from legislative outcomes. For some authors the empowering of the EP is even a significant example of the limits and deficits of rational choice theory. From a strategic perspective, however, this study clarifies that member states can benefit from introducing the codecision procedure in the supranational scenario. When the parliament can hardly figure out the complex configuration in the Council, member states can strategically misrepresent their pivotal member's ‘true’ position and present a minority proposal in the conciliation bargains that is more closely located to the status quo. Under these conditions, the introduction of the codecision procedure has several advantages for the member states; in particular it improves the benefits of member states vis-à-vis solutions under the consultation procedure, in which a better informed Commission makes a proposal that must find the support only of a qualified majority of member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the decisions behind group membership in the European Parliament (EP) using a rational-choice institutionalist framework. Following the goals ascribed to them by Strøm (1990) in other settings, national parties should join the largest group that matches their socioeconomic preferences. Yet, whilst explanations taking national parties as the basic unit of analysis might sometimes suffice, we argue that it is often necessary to consider the influence of individual parliamentarians and existing EP groups. The scope open to these various actors to pursue their interests determines the attractiveness of the various options available to a national party. We illustrate our conceptual framework by reference to the attempt by the British Conservative Party to leave the European People's Party-European Democrats (EPP-ED) group, an effort ending in the formation of an extra-parliamentary federation, the Movement for European Reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Treaty of Rome allowed member states to establish policies governing the trade in and production of armaments at the national level, the European Union (EU) has gradually been expanding its influence in defense industry matters. This article traces the history of EU involvement in defense industrial policy, with an emphasis on events over the past decade. One significant finding is that the European Commission and Parliament have played key roles in expanding the EU's policy-making machinery to include defense industrial matters, while the Council of Ministers has tried to resist such actions. A second important conclusion is that the concept of spillover is particularly appropriate in describing how and why the EU's policy-making has expanded to include defense industrial policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]