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Following the agreement on the current multi-annual financial framework, the European Union discusses possibilities of revising the EU budget. This process is supposed to be finished in 2009. This symposium aims at contributing to the debate and to a better understanding of what drives spending and revenue of the EU. It first contains papers that are formulating proposals for a revision of EU finances and second studies that empirically analyze which economic and political factors determine the EU budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project organization is used extensively to promote creativity, innovation and responsiveness to local context, but can lead to precarious employment. This paper compares European Social Fund (ESF)-supported projects supporting 'active inclusion' of disadvantaged clients in Slovenia and France. Despite many similarities between the two social protection fields in task, temporality, teams and socio-economic context, the projects had different dynamics with important implications for workers. In Slovenia project dynamics have been precarious, leading to insecure jobs and reduced status for front-line staff; in France, by contrast, projects and employment have been relatively stable. Our explanation highlights the transaction, more specifically, the capacity of government agencies to function as intermediaries managing the transactions through which ESF money is disbursed to organizations providing services. We find that transnational pressures on the state affect its capacity as a transaction organizer to stabilize the organizational field. In Slovenia, transnational pressures associated with austerity and European Union integration have stripped away this capacity more radically than in France, leading to precarious project dynamics and risk shifting onto project workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, the left has increasingly embraced European integration as a bulwark to globalisation. However, the view that the EU provides the potential for realising a progressive social and economic policy is problematic, since its approach is antithetical to traditional democratic-socialist objectives. Thus, the left either has to redouble its efforts to realise a fundamental reform of the EU's institutions and policy framework, or consider nationally-orientated alternatives which inevitably question the nature of the UK-EU relationship. This paper outlines a number of these policy options and evaluates their potential benefits and costs from within a political-economy framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first section of this paper establishes the rationale for a trans-European labour movement, based on the conditions brought about by global changes in the dominant mode of production, exchange, distribution and social reproduction, and the main specific socioeconomic circumstances in the European Union. In the second section, the main theories on the phenomenon of social solidarity are briefly discussed, as they pertain to the European labour movement. The third section looks at the limitations of the ideology, practice and institutionalised structures of ‘social partnership’, as a starting point for the fourth section, in which an account of the main existing cross-border union strategies is provided. The final section identifies and discusses some of the more democratic and counterhegemonic strategies, and summarises the main findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the relationship between territorial representation and fiscal redistribution in the European Union. Given that small states are over-represented in both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, simple models of legislative vote-buying predict that over-represented member states will be favored in the distribution of EU transfers. We examine this proposition for each manifestation of the EC or EU since 1977 with data on agricultural, regional development, and total net transfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the way socialists have deployed Marxist theories in analysing European integration and Britain's participation in it. The first section shows how theories of the relationship between nation states and global capitalism opened up new perspectives on regional integration in Europe. The second section looks at later debates about 'varieties of capitalism', and argues that these debates have ignored the global constitution of capitalism and exaggerated the range of variation within it. The third section develops this point in relation to the possibility of challenging neoliberalism within the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In current debates on precarization in Europe, a transnational and more class-based perspective is demanded. While fully supporting this request, this article nevertheless notices that, often, when it comes to the economic logic of current Europeanization, scholars have only taken a one-sided look at financial capital and financialization. What is needed is a deeper conceptual understanding of European labour and production processes and how their transnational organization is interwoven with both the European integration project and rising precarization. In an inter-disciplinary approach, combining critical political economy, economic and social geography, and the sociology of work and industry, this article seeks to tackle the problem and develops three main arguments. The first is that, long before the 2008ff. crisis, a mode of Europeanization as multi-scalar competitive integration developed, one that, basically, takes socio-spatial unevenness as a competitive advantage. The second argument is that the backbone of this competitive Europeanization mode is a transnationalized European regime of fragmented and flexible production. This regime particularizes labour and labour processes on all social scales, within and beyond nation-states, by putting them in a competitive relation to each other. The third argument is that due to permanent transnational restructuring and technological (digital) modernization, no stable socio-spatial division of labour within and among the European countries arises. Instead, permanently changing forms of labour's social polarization occur, a finding that questions classic ideas of social development through economic and technological modernization. Precarization, defined as the detachment of dependent labour working conditions from the means of integrative social participation, hereby describes a specific concentration of a nevertheless wider structural uncertainty that is inherent to both the mode of European integration and the regime of European production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit has a habit of rendering research redundant rapidly. Since I wrote 'Brexit and EU Legitimation: Martyr for the EU Cause?' (published in New Perspectives vol. 27 [3]), Boris Johnson has won a large majority on the back of his promise to 'Get Brexit Done' and his ability to pass a withdrawal agreement. As such the chances of a no-deal Brexit have receded (for now). This has not rendered my analysis obsolete, but reflecting upon Johnson's slogan has led me to realise that my analysis could be broadened. In this addendum, I flesh out what is left ambiguous in the article and develop a more holistic framework for analysing the discursive effects of Brexit. In doing so, I make the argument that for the European Union (EU), Brexit will never be 'done', at least for the EU. Instead, Britain's fortunes look set to become a bellwether for soft Eurosceptics considering turning hard. The extent to which Britain is perceived to bask in the 'sunlit uplands' or, conversely, to suffer economic and/or political disaster as a consequence of leaving the EU will inform whether Britain is used as a 'model' or a 'martyr' at any given time. Thus, Britain's fortunes have thus become inextricably linked to the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vote by the electorate of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union in 2016 was one in which the impact of Brexit on the island of Ireland and on UK-Irish relations hardly figured. Within months, however, the 'Irish border problem' was centre stage. The deterioration in UK-Irish relations in the 2 years following the referendum was profound and marked the first stage in the potential unravelling of the deep interdependence which had come to characterise relations between Dublin and London by virtue of their shared membership of the European Union since 1973. A significant 'reverse asymmetry of power' emerged from the United Kingdom's relative isolation in the Brexit negotiations and Ireland's privileged position as an European Union insider. In an increasingly turbulent international arena, the retreat from integration set in train by Brexit also threatened the Good Friday Agreement and the institutions and processes put in place to manage North–South and East–West relations after 1998. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the failure of the effort by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and its national affiliates to obtain a uniform and binding set of regulations for Europeanwide collective bargaining within the European Community's 1989 Charter of Fundamental Social Rights. The trade unions were prompted to act by the program to create a single European market by the end of 1992. The author argues that labor's weak position economically and politically in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly at the national level, prevented the ETUC and its member confederations from winning support for their version of the Social Charter, since they could neither credibly threaten recalcitrant governments with social unrest nor convincingly offer them electoral aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim in this article is to demonstrate that corporate technical activity and corporate political activity can overlap substantially or intertwine in ways quite difficult to tease apart analytically. Theories of corporate political activity must therefore be modified to include technical standardization as potentially part of such activity. The article proposes a conceptual framework for studying such situations and argues for the existence of a “political standardizer,” defined as a company that works for or through technical standardization as a political strategy. Such a firm pursues political objectives in its technical standardization practices. The article illustrates this argument with a case study of the toy producer LEGO®. The case study provides support for existence of a political standardizer and illustrates concretely how technical and political activities are combined by a particular company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages critically with Richard Hyman’s work on union identity and European integration. It includes a sympathetic review of Hyman’s contribution to the debate on these topics over the past two decades, alongside a critique of Hyman’s approach that highlights certain weaknesses and contradictions resulting from his uncritical use of a range of categories and concepts taken from regulation theory. The authors question Hyman’s argument that developments in European unionism can be conceptualised adequately through an analysis of the development and crisis of ‘political economism’: a dominant union identity that Hyman aligns with the development and crisis of Fordism. An alternative model for understanding the reorientation of European unions is presented based on a critical and dialectical conceptualisation of the relationship between unions and capitalist development. This is used to construct a model of contemporary union reorientation along the dimensions of ‘accommodation’ and ‘opposition’ to neoliberalism and to ‘national’ and ‘international’ modes of organisation and mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the relative merits of competing explanations of public support for European Union membership in thirteen Central and Eastern European candidate countries. While noneconomic factors—attitudes toward domestic politics and feelings of social identity—have a consistently strong effect, the impact of human capital is contingent on exposure to the distributive consequences of European integration. The results of an ordered logit analysis of Candidate Country Eurobarometer data are consistent with these predictions. These results suggest a revision of theories of EU support to account for the role of exposure to the consequences of integration in shaping utilitarian judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the roots of European unity and Britain's relationship to it, primarily in terms of foreign policy and the failed alternative political economy of the empire/Commonwealth. Continuity of policy emerges as the dominant theme. The strong Atlanticist orientation of the state and its attempts to maintain a special relationship with the USA were objects of a bipartisan approach, as was the commitment to Britain's world role. Membership of the 'European' club in the 1970s did not constitute a break with this tradition so much as an adaptation in circumstances of prolonged relative decline. The article shows how the British left attempted to comprehend European unity in terms of the prospects for socialism and left reform in Britain itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines attempts by the European Union to promote the convergence of the central and eastern European states, and looks at two instruments used in its pursuit: the conditionality requirements for membership of the EU, and the convergence criteria for membership of economic and monetary union. Using Hungary as an example, it demonstrates that there are times at which these instruments are effective; but at other times, they are undermined by the more pressing need to address domestic political priorities. It concludes that in the longer term, the need to comply with the convergence agenda is likely to take precedence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a military standpoint, the European Union's Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) defies logic. Why would the European allies seek to create a competing military force outside NATO when worried about American isolationism and when unable and unwilling to dedicate the necessary resources? This article suggests an alternative motive behind the European Union's establishment of a defense program—the development and enhancement of a "European identity." In short, the ESDP is designed in no small part to further the project of nation-building in a broadening European Union. This article proposes a social-constructivist framework for analyzing this development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the efforts of European Union members to achieve European unification. Disappointment which arose over the failure of the constitutional Maastricht Treaty signed in 1992 by the European Union; Effects of the launch of the euro currency on the European Union; Changes in the European Union as a result of its enlargement; Treaty that expanded the European Parliamentary beginning in 2004 and instituted a triple majority voting system in the Council of Ministers.

An introduction to the articles published in the current issue of the journal are presented including on European Union (EU) foreign policy and European values.