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In this paper we contribute to the literature on determining the real exchange rate by using models that incorporate structural breaks and nonlinearities. We estimate cointegrated dynamic ordinary least squares regressions and quantile regressions. We find that the estimated coefficients for the EU members from central and eastern Europe are different to those for the other member states. We also find that the models are different before and after the crisis that started in 2008, and this affects the outcome of the long-run equations for the EU15 + Cyprus and Malta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study revisits knowledge about the post-EU accession intra-industry trade development in the Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and the Slovak Republic). These countries--through trade liberalisation, European integration and EU accession--strengthened their position in the global value chains, part of which were located in Western Europe. This paper points out that during the global financial crisis, the changes in intra-industry specialisation were not coherent in the Visegrad countries. Moreover, in some cases, the specialisation even intensified. This paper also applies the Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond estimator to assess whether EU accession and the later global financial crisis were driving forces of the changing trade patterns of these countries. The results of the estimation proved the positive effect of European integration (before and after EU enlargement) and the negative effect of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eastern Partnership (EaP) launched in 2009 as the Eastern dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy introduced the civil society as a new strategic actor in the EU's relations with Eastern Partnership countries. The civil society's role is to participate in policy making, to suggest new initiatives and to promote shared values of partnership, such as: democracy, promoting better governance, state law, sustainable development, respect for human rights and for the fundamental freedoms. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, we analyse the role of the civil society in the EaP and we ask whether the increasing role of the civil society in the EaP will lead to the success of this project. In the second part, we analyse the perceptions and the attitudes of civil society towards European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way in which Cohesion Policy is perceived by citizens is a crucial issue for the process of European identity-building. Based on the idea that citizens' perceptions depend on the local socioeconomic context in which Cohesion Policy is implemented, the paper seeks to define alternative combinations of the economic, social and institutional features of different local policy implementation settings, and to identify them empirically in European NUTS-2 regions. The results highlight a broad variety of policy settings, whose characteristics are relevant to the outcome of Cohesion Policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution introduces a selection of the best papers presented at the 2015 European Union Studies Association’s biennial conference. It uses these papers as a jumping off point to consider whether European Union (EU) studies suffers the same ‘gap’ with real-world problems that is seen to afflict some portions of the academy and to ask whether EU studies is at an inflection point. It argues that EU studies are closely linked to the substance of the European project. It identifies how the contributions to this collection speak to different aspects of the EU: closer co-operation; policy-making within a ‘normal’ political system; the implications of European integration for its member states. Given this link between the substance of the European project and the focus of EU studies, this contribution argues that the challenges currently confronting the EU – the lingering eurozone debt crises; the migrant/refugee crisis; the prospect of a British exit; and recent terrorist attacks – may mark an inflection point in EU studies. The reason is that for the first time ‘less Europe’ has emerged as a serious option in response to crisis. This possibility reignites questions of (dis)integration and calls into question the assumption the EU policy only accumulates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper is concerned with the problem of “society” and in particular with the notion of “European society”. Rather than reject the possibility of society, it draws on theories of the social as networks. The thesis proposed is that the concept of society should rather be understood as a relational field of interconnections. It is argued that this is highly relevant to the analysis of Europe conceived of in terms of a society. This approach can be seen as an alternative to methodological nationalism. The paper applies a network conception of society to Europe with the emphasis on the nineteenth century. In this account, European society is not something that was produced by European integration. Rather than see European society as a recent development, it is argued that the field of tensions between capitalism and democracy constituted the major elements that shaped a European model of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementation of EU law is vital for European integration. The EU implementation record however up until now shows that there are serious implementation deficits. Although the EU in response to these deficits has piled up strategies and instruments to improve the overall implementation, we still do not know how big the compliance problem of the EU is. The nature and seriousness of compliance deficits are until now the 'known unknowns'. This paper looks into two issues that are important if we want to improve implementation and compliance rates of EU law. First of all it addresses the question of how to gather infomation on implementation and compliance as a basis for enforcement policies and secondly is appraises the EU's enforcement policies, set up to improve the implementation of EU Law currently in place. The paper concludes that present EU strategies and tools to promote compliance broadly follow the enforcement-school approach with some management-school elements. It also concludes that the information basis for these strategies is quite weak and that they are not based on a deep understanding of what motives underlie noncompliant behaviour. The strategies and instruments rely strongly on repression by sanctions as well. A better understanding of the how and the why of non-compliance could improve the effectiveness of the present policies in place - more positive and communicative approaches to non-compliance could well complement present strategies and instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using process tracing, this paper charts the history of the changes in the EU's revenue since 1970, including package deals and the unforeseen consequences of change, comparing the positions of the Council to those of the European Commission and European Parliament. Those revenue decisions allowed European integration to proceed though without a fully autonomous budget as Member States became more careful to calculate their net benefits or costs in relation to the budget. In December 2013, the European Union's institutions established a High Level Group to recommend changes to the revenue base of the EU's budget. This reported in January 2017, proposing to resolve the effect of sub-optimal revenue and budget decisions made by the European Union over many years, to reduce direct national contributions, to minimise the risk of unforeseen consequences, and to combine revenue flows with steering effects to discourage certain forms of economic behaviour in line with the wider policy agenda of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the prospect of productive specialization, the degree of potential success of the euro since its inception was seen as closely linked to the development of effective risk-sharing mechanisms across EU members. Without shared fiscal resources, financial integration was expected to play a leading role in this respect. This paper documents the failure in fulfilling this expectation: Along with an analysis of the evolution of specialization and risk-sharing, we present evidence supporting the claim that progress in financial integration has not been conducive to income risk-sharing across euro area members, while it might have favoured a specialization split between countries with low-medium and high technology productive structures. As a result, monetary union members face higher income fluctuation risk without enhanced insurance protection. Additionally, evidence suggests a differential impact of the specialization split on sector productivity, contributing to making the monetary union a club of non equals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Given the increasing use of direct democratic devices on questions of European integration, this paper explores whether or not Member States may have good reason to agree on common regulations for popular votes of this nature. Conceiving of the European Union as a political system designed to serve the interests of states and citizens, it is argued that where direct votes have the potential to undermine the territorial, functional, normative or existential integrity of the EU, then states may have good reason to sacrifice a degree of national autonomy to adopt common regulations for certain uses of direct democracy. This leads to a case for democratic standardization across Member States when it comes to withdrawal, accession, Treaty ratification and opt‐in decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current state of the single European labor market (SELM), its related risks and opportunities, and identify useful measures for reaching the goal of increased European labor mobility.Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an online survey among European labor market experts (IZA research and policy fellows) on the current state of the SELM, its determinants, and the role of the Great Recession. The authors evaluate the data using descriptive and regression-based methods.Findings The experts agree on the SELM’s importance, especially for larger economic welfare, but are not convinced that it has been achieved. To enhance labor mobility across Europe, the respondents identify key factors such as recognizing professional qualifications more efficiently, harmonizing social security systems, and knowing several languages. Moreover, at least 50 percent of the respondents consider positive attitudes – by policy makers and citizens alike – toward free mobility to be important to enhance labor mobility.Originality/value The IZA Expert Opinion Survey presents a unique opportunity to learn how numerous experts think about the important issue of European labor market integration and moreover constitutes a valuable extension to public opinion surveys on related topics. This survey’s findings provide a sophisticated basis for a discussion about policy options regarding the SELM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exclusion of the cultural policy from the process of harmonisation nowadays appears to be the weakest part of European integration. Both authority of institutions and states' soft power has weakened. This paradoxically happened in spite of the fact that the member states' cultural sovereignty itself has strengthened. Hence, in this paper the hypothesis of the extent to which political or cultural EU institutions use soft power as a tool for strengthening supranationality as to a certain extent higher degree of European citizens' identity was examined. Two opposing paradigms of the theory of European integration - institutionalism and intergovernmentalism and their advantages and disadvantages were investigated. At the same time it was dealt with the question of institutional participation at the individual and group European citizens' identity fostering. The results of the analysis were used to show the differences between cultural and civic identity as well as to examine the symptoms of the European cultural identity crisis. The paper proposed conditions which have to be met in order to achieve a basis for multicultural, tolerant European society without xenophobia or ethnocentrism and nationalism in its negative sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013 it was declared that 'the eurozone crisis is over'. However, in fact, the series of financial crises since 2008 may have interrupted the process of EMU enlargement, which in turn triggered a continuing crisis of confidence in the euro. In this paper we extend the sigma-convergence test to provide a more precise understanding of real interest rate parity ( RIP) convergence. On the basis of this, we predict the timing for eliminating the cost of economic asymmetric shocks. Our estimation indicates the RIP among EMU members and accessions were still valid after the disruptions of the 2008 financial crisis. However, the situation has been even worse since the 2010 European sovereign debt crisis, and ceteris paribus, symmetry cannot be achieved without further policy actions. This implies that the EMU authority must do its best to strengthen symmetry and thereby solidify the EMU, at which point it will be better able to re-start the process of enlargement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first introduces 'Europeanisation', a key concept to enable examination of EU influence, policy transfer and convergence. It then outlines the broad parameters of European social policy and historical developments in European social policies, politics and institutions, drawing particular attention to Ireland's contribution to shaping EU social policy. Thereafter, the article takes a chronological approach to focus on how EU policy and practice shaped the Irish welfare state and public administration of Irish social policy. This article examines four phases of Ireland's EU membership, and asks how Irish social policy was influenced in each of these stages and how Ireland influenced EU social policy. Stage one examines the 1970s to mid 1980s, stage two takes in the mid 1980s to the late 1990s, stage three reviews the late 1990s to 2007 and stage four relates to the post-2007 crisis era. The paper concludes that Irish social policy has been significantly influenced by EU social policy, and overall this influence has been largely positive, but also that Ireland has in turn influenced EU social policy, and this influence has been mixed but also largely positive. Over time, through hard law and softer Europeanisation processes, there has arguably been some convergence in social policy across the EU, and the EU has played some part in the modernisation of Irish social policy. The conclusion reflects on the future, suggesting Ireland should seek to once again influence the EU towards a more progressive social direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Română de Drept European is the property of Wolters Kluwer Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The European Union has acquired enforcement competences in areas where it previously only had regulatory authority. This expansion of competences from one step in the policy cycle to another is a blind spot in the works on functional spillover. While the increasing enforcement powers of the EU are mentioned, it is in the context of more competences, not what type. This paper investigates the nature of this 'policy cycle type of functional spillover', argues that this is a new type of functional spillover and discusses the significance of this finding. The paper offers original data concerning the expansion of EU's competences in direct enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of EU enlargement and the global economic crisis on the relative development of the EU countries. This effect is assessed by applying multivariate analysis to the whole set of 28 European countries at three representative points in time. The cluster analysis for the years 2002, 2007, and 2012 grouped the countries according to the range of economic development indicators showing within-EU cohesion before the EU enlargement, after the enlargement wave, and after the crisis. The findings show that a decrease in the development differences after the enlargement was replaced with an increase in these differences after the crisis, thus contributing to the existing debate about the success of cohesion and future of European integration. These results are somewhat worrying for the new member states of the EU as well as for EU membership candidates and their prospective development within the integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current account ( CA) dispersion within European Union ( EU) Member States has been increasing progressively since the 1990s. Interestingly, the persistent deficits in many peripheral countries have not been accompanied by a significant growth process able to stimulate a log run rebalancing as neoclassical theory predicts. To shed light on the issue, this paper investigates the determinants of Eurozone CA imbalances, focusing on the role played by financial integration. The analysis considers two samples of 22 OECD and 15 EU countries, three time horizons corresponding to various steps in European integration, different control variables and several panel econometric methods. The results suggest that within the EU group of countries financial integration contributed to explain the CA deterioration in the peripheral countries especially in the post- EMU period creating an asymmetric behaviour within the EMU. From a financial stability perspective, this 'divergence' could hinder the effectiveness of monetary policy. By reducing the apparent benefits of participating in the monetary union, it also raises the risk of a break-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

European economic integration with a minimalist social policy at EU level was in part made possible by strong domestic labour market and social welfare institutions. The main contention of this paper is that EU market liberalisation was embedded within institutions of social citizenship at domestic level, which served to counter the liberalisation of the internal market. But this settlement has been put under strain. In addition to the challenges posed to the sustainability of European welfare states by the global economic crisis, the internal market jurisprudence of the Court of Justice casts doubt on the sustainability of the 'embedded liberal bargain'. This paper focuses on the role of the Court, in particular in its jurisprudence on the interaction between (EU) market freedoms and (national) labour law, which undermines the ability of states to retain their regulatory autonomy over labour or social welfare law and, arguably, speeds up the unravelling of the 'embedded liberal bargain'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Europeanization literature assumes that European integration affects domestic policies, politics and polities; yet, the impact on domestic corporatist patterns, which characterize policy-making in small European states, has received little attention so far. While contradictory theoretical expectations exist, this paper argues that European market-making policies tend to weaken domestic corporatist policy-making by offering new opportunities to domestic actors, in particular the executive. This allows them to bypass policy concertation. However, the impact depends on the usage domestic actors make of the European policies and is mediated by domestic factors. A comparison across policy sectors in two countries – Belgium and Switzerland – largely confirms these arguments. This means that domestic institutions such as corporatist policy-making are not only mediating factors in the process of Europeanization, but themselves subject to change. This effect even goes beyond the borders of the European Union, affecting policy-making in Switzerland as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes to use the concept of empire for the analysis the European integration process. From a methodological point of view, this concept is an invitation to reintroduce in EU studies the comparative approach as well as long-term history. This paper also leads to a detailed reflection on the concept of empire itself and proposes a modernized definition of it. The use of this concept enables to shed a new light on the EU and some of its policies. If the EU cannot be considered an empire, it can nonetheless be said that it is undergoing a process of imperialization. This raises the question of the transformation of the European project and to the consequences of this transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many programmes of the EU which have the objective of bringing actors from different member states together, forging networks and encouraging collaboration over national boundaries. Some programmes only link people from similar institutions or professions across borders, while others are more ambitious and encourage joint working not only in transnational, but also in inter-institutional, inter-professional and inter-cultural networks. Diversity in such transnational workgroups is usually seen as a resource and added value for collaborative planning. However, it can also be seen as a barrier and an increase of complexity and ambiguity, or else the benefits of transnational working are perceived as outweighed by the costs. That is, heterogeneity in project groups can have both positive and negative effects on group performance. On the one hand, transnational working provides opportunities for innovation and learning, but equally there are dangers of misunderstandings, confusions and communication barriers. Moreover, many actors are inexperienced in working in complex intercultural contexts. Working in transnational networks therefore requires a skilled management role with competences to act in fluid working contexts with heterogeneous actors from diverse institutional and national cultures. To identify the skills profile for the "transnational networker", the paper draws on two formerly discrete fields: planning theory (in particular discussions on skills development for planning in European contexts), and business administration (specifically debates on diversity management). The paper combines these two fields, deriving therefrom a skills agenda for actors participating in and managing cross-border and transnational project groups in social and spatial planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with issues related to the evolution of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union (CAP) and the process of reforms the policy has been undergoing. It also provides a retrospective analysis in order to outline both favourable and adverse aspects of the impact which CAP has had on the development of the agricultural sector in Europe in general and in Bulgaria in particular. It is thus possible to highlight the benefits which our country could gain from those reforms by taking into consideration changes in existing regulations and the implementation of related policy instruments. The paper also reviews what was achieved in our country in the 2007-2013 programme period in result of implementing the CAP. Finally, it outlines expectations related to Bulgarian agriculture for the next programme period in terms of the changes introduced into that policy by the European Commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper identifies a policy inconsistency between the EU's asylum and the EU's labour migration policies and makes a call for stronger convergence. The analysis starts off by setting out the EU's current and future economic challenges with a view to its ageing population and low fertility rates, which displays the EU's need for migrants. Two trends can be observed: The lacking success of Europe's highly-skilled regime, i.e. the Blue Card scheme, casts doubts on the suitability of the EU's labour migration policy and its ability to meet the EU's labour market's needs this way. Labour market access for people that come to the EU to seek asylum on the other hand is subject to quite a number of restrictions. The lack of coordination seems short-sighted. In an attempt to advocate for stronger coherence the paper sets out the rights to access the EU labour market of those who come to the EU as asylum seekers in detail and explores reform potential where these rights can be expanded consistent with the EU's labour market needs. It looks at EU law in general and refers to Germany as an implementation example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous scholars have argued that economic governance in the European Union (EU) has undergone an undemocratic shift as part of the crisis, with accountability moving from parliamentary to executive powers. This paper challenges this view, arguing that the crisis has led to a shift from economic to political accountability. I define economic accountability as the market-led accountability regime enshrined in EU Treaties and contrast it to the current political accountability regime, by which creditor states and monetary institutions have supplanted markets as a forum for rewarding and disciplining market actors. This 'substitution effect' has been sustained by European Court of Justice (CJEU) jurisprudence, with the CJEU positing a functional equivalence between market-driven pressures and political conditionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the problem of the Southern European (SE) capitalism and its difficult path into the EMU (European Monetary Union), looking at the remote causes of the crisis that hit these economies. For this reason, we consider European countries as a set of asymmetrically integrated variety of capitalism. The institutional configuration chosen by Europe to aggregate the many varieties of capitalism not only reduced the political autonomy of the single states, but effectively hindered the specific coordination mechanism of Southern European (SE) capitalism which was importantly based on state intervention as a structural element and on inflationary policies. Despite the deep market-oriented reforms this change caused both structural and macroeconomic unbalances. The aim of the paper is to integrate some principles of the variety of capitalism and the dynamics of institutional change with some insights inspired by the work of Arrighi to supply a synthetic and ‘alternative’ perspective on the difficult role that Southern countries are experiencing in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transformations in Business & Economics is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With the establishment of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), the euro area member states have committed themselves to transferring a considerable part of their national sovereignty with regard to banking supervision to the European Central Bank (ECB). This will have a large impact on the future role of national supervisory authorities, the supervised euro area cross-border banks and, last but not least, the ECB itself. Given the ECB's rather limited experience in the day-to-day supervision of credit institutions at the time the SSM Regulation was adopted, and considering different approaches between monetary policy and banking supervision in terms of transparency and banking industry involvement, at first sight one might be tempted to compare the ECB taking up direct banking supervision in November 2014 with a learner driver. The ECB, however, will not substitute for the supervisory work of the national competent authorities, but is intended to act as a complement to it. Moreover, the legal framework under which the SSM will operate, the envisaged organisation of day-to-day supervision, the swift facilitation of the recruitment of qualified personnel and the first experiences with public consultations do alleviate concerns that the ECB might not be able to do its job with the necessary degree of efficiency, transparency and accountability. The (lack of) incentives for non-euro area member countries to join the SSM and the comprehensive assessment, a preparatory exercise to avoid taking over legacy assets from banks supervised directly by the ECB from November 2014, have been highlighted already in this journal and are consequently not part of this paper (see Dietz, T. (2014) 'Comment on the Single Supervisory Mechanism', Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 220-225). This paper, rather, concentrates on the concrete details of the ECB's future supervisory work and its implications for the national supervisory authorities and the institutions affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze China's strategy in relation to the euro. The first section summarizes China's active support to the single currency since its creation up to the first phase of the current Eurozone debt crisis. It shows how China has used a two-pronged approach. It has developed a public campaign in favor of the euro, especially when the market sentiment has been bearish on the single currency, and it has continued to be an active player in the European sovereign debt markets. The second part explains why China has been so supportive. Beijing wants to move away from dollar hegemony and thus it favors a tripolar monetary system based on the US dollar, the euro and the Chinese renminbi (RMB). With this aim, and despite the crisis, China has continued to diversify its foreign reserves into the euro making it by now ‘too important to fail’, not only because China holds roughly $1 trillion in euro-denominated assets, but also because for China the Eurozone is a crucial market and an important strategic counterweight to US dominance in world affairs. Finally, the third part focuses on how by the end of 2011 China switches to a more cautious approach due to the difficulty involved in rescuing the Eurozone. Domestic pressures, public outcry in Europe against being saved by China, the unwillingness of the European leaders to enter into strategic bargaining and Germany's strategy to use sovereign bond spreads as a market mechanism to create ‘more Europe’ have convinced policy-makers in Beijing to keep a lower profile while making sure the value of the euro remains stable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on theories of European integration and governance and sociological studies on the influence of elite law firms on rule-setting, this paper shows that law firms (a) operate in the area of data protection that is of extreme complexity and requires expert knowledge; and (b) display characteristics similar to other actors who succeeded in influencing agenda-setting and the results of policy-making despite having no formal competence to do so. This article proposes a hypothesis of the influence of elite law firms in EU data protection rule-setting. It argues that the EU data protection sector is prone to such influence as it is by definition transnational and, at some technical and some core points, inadequate to reflect the real data processing practices and therefore is entrenched with uncertainty. Therefore, the research into politics of data protection in Europe cannot disregard the role of these actors in shaping the European data protection regime. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the relationship between European integration and ethnonational demands with the example of selected regions in the European Union (EU). It follows the theoretical premises of new regionalism and explores the ways in which ethnonational groups use the opportunities and resources of European governance to express their identities, material interests, and political demands. Methodologically, it conducts a plausibility probe of the potential effects of European integration on ethnonationalism by testing for regional differences in identities, interests, and political attitudes. The case studies are drawn from the UK (Wales and Scotland), Belgium (Flanders), Austria (Carinthia and Burgenland), Romania (Northwest and Center regions), and Bulgaria (South-Central and South-Eastern regions) as a representative selection of regional interests in the EU. The paper finds that European integration affects ethnonational groups by reinforcing identity construction in the direction of inclusiveness and diversity. Although regional actors are more supportive of the EU than the European publics in general, they also seek access to representation in the authority structures of the state. Based on these findings, the paper concludes that European integration facilitates a growing public acceptance of its resources, in parallel with persisting allegiances to the nation-state, the community, and ethnoregional distinctiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 purpose of this paper is to map the structure of preferences concerning the European Union held by parliamentarians of the member states. The opinions of national politicians are relevant as they influence the governments which participate in the institutions and the decision making processes of the Union. Do they evaluate the European integration process according to a single independence-integration dimension? Or do they acknowledge the existence of multiple lines of conflict? Is the structure of preferences stable? Finally, how are national parliamentarians grouped according to their preferences and what this can tell about the future of European Integration? This paper, based on a two waves survey of national parliamentarians belonging to 16 member states, analyses their views about the governance system and the policy goals of the EU. The findings of this paper shed some new light on several old questions. Firstly, while several studies assume that the preferences about European Integration can be ordered in a one-dimensional continuum that has the status quo and complete integration as the two opposite poles, this paper shows that the preferences of national parliamentarians have a multi-dimensional structure. Secondly it moves to analyse the four main clusters of national parliamentarians which these preferences generate. And thirdly it discusses how these clusters react to different problems and challenges the EU faces today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the opportunity, importance, implications and chances of success of one of the leading initiatives of the European Union, namely the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). The conclusion is that, because of a number of economic, political and social phenomena manifested in the European Union among 2007 - 2018, such an initiative is highly opportune and may even represent the key factor in relaunching the European project. The analysis reveals that, due to the legal and financial limitations of the current format of the EPSR, this initiative may represent too little for achieving substantial and sustainable results. At the same time, due to reduced chances of securing tangible results in a reasonably short time, the initiative may come too late for re-connecting the European citizens to the European Union project and for counter-acting the trends towards national and local approaches that have already manifested in some of the member countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does EU funding to European regions affect sub-national parties’ support for European integration? This paper aims at analysing whether the EU regional development policy contributes to setting up support for EU institutions and European integration and thus strengthens the whole ‘European idea’ among political parties. To answer this research question, the article analyses election manifestos of parties acting on the regional level in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK for two EU programming periods: 2007─2013 and 2014─2020. The results show that sub-national parties are more supportive of European integration if regions receive more EU funding and if the parties represent regions that are dependent on EU funding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the determinants of people’s support for European institutions, mainly focusing on the impact of European identity, after the economic crisis and in a moment in which – after profound uncertainty for its immediate future – there is a new feeling toward European integration. Previous research on support for European institutions, before the economic and financial crisis which had hit Europe since 2008, found that people’s evaluations followed mainly an instrumental logic – support being contingent on a perception of personal or national benefit accruing for EU membership – with an additional role played by European identification. This contribution expands the analysis after the beginning of the economic crisis, so to assess whether the former has affected the structure of such support, and deepens the analysis of the impact of EU identity on European institutional confidence. Using a recent Eurobarometer survey (86.2, 2016) and combining both individual and contextual data, the paper shows that European identity plays a crucial role in explaining European support also after the crisis. [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 investigates the Maltese labour market within the context of the Europeanisation process. It explains the EU's labour market policies and presents studies in the field. The main focus is the case study of Malta, which evaluates formal and informal structures of the economy and uses the dynamics of the interaction of ideas, interests and institutions to analyse whether and how Europeanisation of the Maltese labour market has occurred. The findings indicate that different changes have occurred in the legislative framework, language and values about work, but resistance and continuity are evident in other areas such as flexicurity, undeclared work and a high level of female labour market inactivity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper analyses the consequences of European integration processes upon the judicial systems of the so-called 'parliamentary sovereignty regimes', focusing on the British and Swedish judiciaries. The aim is to understand if the influences coming from European integration, favouring the expansion of domestic judicial power, have prevailed, or the traditional distrust of such countries in judicial power has prevented the empowerment of the domestic courts. The influences on the judicial systems are evaluated distinguishing judicial capacity, judicial attitudes and judicial independence. The paper argues that the political relevance of judges has strongly increased. However, while European integration has deeply transformed the formal means at disposal of judges, because of political and judicial culture the changes in actual judges' behaviour have been much more limited. Moreover, the paper highlights some unexpected ways in which European integration can affect the domestic political systems (eg favouring certain legislative reforms or legal principles). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on fiscal consolidation and the questionable effectiveness of the Stability and Growth Pact by addressing the problem of economic governance in the EMU with a game-theoretic principal-agent approach. Following the theory of delegation, we develop a principal-multi agent model where the EMU authorities act as a collective principal that designs contracts for each of two agents that reflect Europe's "South" and "North". We investigate what happens when agents face hidden-information moral hazard problem and when they are able to coordinate their actions. Bearing in mind the applicability of incentive mechanisms, we discuss the optimal contracts for the principal and each of the agents. We prove that the most efficient solution consists of tailor-made contracts, according to which highly indebted countries must be offered strong incentive mechanisms in the form of substantial penalties but also rewards (e.g., preferential loans). We also stress the importance of taking into account positive spillover effects, which could be facilitated by economic integration and fiscal policy coordination between the EMU Members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]