Reflections on European Integration: 50 Years of the Treaty of Rome (Palgrave studies in European Union Politics)

Reflections on European Integration 50 Years of the Treaty of Rome

Edited by

David Phinnemore and Alex Warleigh-Lack

Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics Edited by: Michelle Egan, American University USA, Neill Nugent, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, William Paterson, University of Birmingham, UK Editorial Board: Christopher Hill, Cambridge, UK, Simon Hix, London School of Economics, UK, Mark Pollack, Temple University, USA, Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Oxford UK, Morten Egeberg, University of Oslo, Norway, Amy Verdun, University of Victoria, Canada, Claudio M. Radaelli, University of Exeter, UK, Frank Schimmelfennig, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland Following on the sustained success of the acclaimed European Union Series, which essentially publishes research-based textbooks, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics publishes cutting edge research-driven monographs. The remit of the series is broadly defined, both in terms of subject and academic discipline. All topics of significance concerning the nature and operation of the European Union potentially fall within the scope of the series. The series is multidisciplinary to reflect the growing importance of the EU as a political, economic and social phenomenon. We will welcome submissions from the areas of political studies, international relations, political economy, public and social policy, economics, law and sociology. Submissions should be sent to Amy Lankester-Owen, Politics Publisher, ‘[email protected]’. Titles include: Ian Bache and Andrew Jordan (editors) THE EUROPEANIZATION OF BRITISH POLITICS Richard Balme and Brian Bridges (editors) EUROPE-ASIA RELATIONS Building Multilateralisms Michael Baun and Dan Marek (editors) EU COHESION POLICY AFTER ENLARGEMENT Derek Beach and Colette Mazzucelli (editors) LEADERSHIP IN THE BIG BANGS OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION Milena Büchs NEW GOVERNANCE IN EUROPEAN SOCIAL POLICY The Open Method of Coordination Dario Castiglione, Justus Schönlau, Chris Longman, Emanuela Lombardo, Nieves Pérez-Solórzano Borragán and Mirim Aziz CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION The Convention Moment and its Aftermath Morten Egeberg (editor) MULTILEVEL UNION ADMINISTRATION The Transformation of Executive Politics in Europe Kevin Featherstone and Dimitris Papadimitriou THE LIMITS OF EUROPEANIZATION Reform Capacity and Policy Conflict in Greece Stefan Gänzle and Allen G. Sens (editors) THE CHANGING POLITICS OF EUROPEAN SECURITY Europe Alone? Isabelle Garzon REFORMING THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY History of a Paradigm Change Heather Grabbe THE EU’S TRANSFORMATIVE POWER Sebastian Krapohl

RISK REGULATION IN THE SINGLE MARKET The Governance of Pharmaceuticals and Foodstuffs in the European Union Katie Verlin Laatikainen and Karen E. Smith (editors) THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE UNITED NATIONS Intersecting Multilateralisms Esra LaGro and Knud Erik Jorgensen (editors) TURKEY AND THE EUROPEAN UNION Prospects for a Difficult Encounter Paul G. Lewis and Zdenka Mansfeldová (editors) THE EUROPEAN UNION AND PARTY POLITICS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE Ingo Linsenmann, Christoph O. Meyer and Wolfgang T. Wessels (editors) ECONOMIC GOVERNMENT OF THE EU A Balance Sheet of New Modes of Policy Coordination Hartmut Mayer and Henri Vogt (editors) A RESPONSIBLE EUROPE? Ethical Foundations of EU External Affairs Lauren M. McLaren IDENTITY, INTERESTS AND ATTITUDES TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION Christoph O. Meyer, Ingo Linsenmann and Wolfgang Wessels (editors) ECONOMIC GOVERNMENT OF THE EU A Balance Sheet of New Modes of Policy Coordination Philomena Murray (editor) EUROPE AND ASIA Regions in Flux Daniel Naurin and Helen Wallace (editors) UNVEILING THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Games Governments Play in Brussels David Phinnemore and Alex Warleigh-Lack (editors) REFLECTIONS ON EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 50 Years of the Treaty of Rome Frank Schimmelfennig, Stefan Engert and Heiko Knobel INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIZATION IN EUROPE European Organizations, Political Conditionality and Democratic Change Justus Schönlau DRAFTING THE EU CHARTER Angelos Sepos THE EUROPEANIZATION OF CYPRUS Polity, Policies and Politics Marc Weller, Denika Blacklock and Katherine Nobbs (editors) THE PROTECTION OF THE MINORITIES IN THE WIDER EUROPE

Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–4039–9511–7 (hardback) and ISBN 978–1–4039–9512–4 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Reflections on European Integration 50 Years of the Treaty of Rome Edited by

David Phinnemore Queen’s University Belfast, UK

and

Alex Warleigh-Lack Brunel University, UK

Selection and editorial matter © David Phinnemore and Alex Warleigh-Lack 2009 Individual chapters © their respective authors 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–20253–5 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–20253–5 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Phinnemore, David. Reflections on European integration : 50 years of the treaty of Rome / David Phinnemore. p. cm. — (Palgrave studies in European Union politics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–20253–5 1. European federation. 2. Europe—Economic integration. 3. European Union. 4. European Union countries—Politics and government. 5. Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community (1957) I. Title. JN15.P45 2009 2008037739 341.24 2—dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Tables and Figures

vii

Acknowledgements

viii

Notes on Contributors

ix

List of Abbreviations

xi

1 Introduction David Phinnemore and Alex Warleigh-Lack

1

Part I European Integration from the EEC’s Founding to the Present 2 Some Reflections on 50 Years of Experience since the Signature of the Treaties of Rome Helen Wallace

11

3 Bringing People and Ideas Back in: Historical Research on the European Union Wolfram Kaiser

22

Part II Institutional and Policy Developments 4 The Heroic Age of European Integration is Over: Institutional and Policy Developments, 1957–2007 Mark A. Pollack and Molly A. Ruhlman 5 The Role of the European Council in Institutional and Policy Developments in the European Union Poul S. Christoffersen

43

74

6 Fairy Tale of Luxembourg? Reflections on Law and Legal Scholarship in European Integration Jo Hunt and Jo Shaw

93

7 Institutional and Policy Analysis in the European Union: From the Treaty of Rome to the Present Simon Bulmer

109

v

vi

Contents

Part III

Tough and Challenging Journeys

8 The International Impact of European Integration: Key Events, Players and Trends Jolyon Howorth

127

9 Fifty Years of Economic and Monetary Union: A Hard and Thorny Journey Kenneth Dyson

143

Part IV European Integration and the Member States 10 One Union, One Story? In Praise of Europe’s Narrative Diversity Kalypso Nicolaïdis and Janie Pélabay

175

11 The EU and its Member States: From Bottom Up to Top Down Vivien A. Schmidt

194

12 Conclusion: Reflections on the Past and Future of European Union Studies Alex Warleigh-Lack and David Phinnemore

212

Bibliography

224

Index

248

List of Tables and Figures Tables 4.1 Formal Extensions of EU Competence, 1957 – Present, by Issue-Area 4.2 National and EU Policy-Making, by Issue-Area, 1957–2004 (with United States Comparison) 4.3 Council Voting Rules, Definitive Legislative Acts Adopted by Council, January 2003–May 2007 4.4 Legislative Procedures, Definitive Legislative Acts Adopted by Council, January 2003–May 2007 4.5 Powers of the European Parliament, Major Developments, 1957–2007 4.6 Annual Growth Rates (in per cent) of EU Regulation by Issue-Area, 2001–2006 5.1 Conclusion of Major Negotiations at the Level of the European Council 1985–2006

45 47 50 52 53 64 78

Figures 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8

European Court of Justice, Judgements, 1957–2005 Court of First Instance, Cases Lodged, 1989–2005 EU Legislation in Force, 1952–2006 EU Directives in Force, 1952–2006 EU Legislation in Force, by Issue-Area, 1952–2006 EU Directives in Force, by Issue-Area, 1952–2006 Annual Growth Rate of the Acquis, by Decade EU Budgetary Expenditures, by Issue-Area, 1958–2005

vii

57 58 60 60 62 63 64 67

Acknowledgements The contributions in this volume were first presented at a conference entitled Reflections on European Integration: 50 Years of the Treaty of Rome held in London on 23–24 March 2007. The conference was organized by the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) and kindly hosted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). We wish to acknowledge the support provided by UACES and the FCO. We also wish to acknowledge the funding for the conference provided by the European Commission under the Jean Monnet Programme. David Phinnemore and Alex Warleigh-Lack

viii

Notes on Contributors Simon Bulmer is Professor of European Politics at the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield. Poul S. Christoffersen is Chef de Cabinet of Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, European Commission, Brussels. Kenneth Dyson is Research Professor at the School of European Studies, Cardiff University. Jolyon Howorth is Jean Monnet Professor of European Politics at Department of European Studies, University of Bath and Visiting Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Science, Yale University. Jo Hunt is Lecturer in Law at the Cardiff Law School, Cardiff University. Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies at the School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, University of Portsmouth. Kalypso Nicolaïdis is Director of the European Studies Centre, St Antony’s College, Oxford and University Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. Janie Pélabay is a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at the Centre de Théorie Politique of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. David Phinnemore, is Senior Lecturer in European Integration and Jean Monnet Professor in European Political Science at the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast. Mark A. Pollack is Associate Professor at Department of Political Science, Temple University. Molly A. Ruhlman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Temple University. ix

x Notes on Contributors

Vivien A. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration and Professor of International Relations at the Department of International Relations, Boston University and Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, Paris. Jo Shaw holds the Salvesen Chair of European Institutions at the School of Law and is Co-Director of the Europa Institute, University of Edinburgh. Helen Wallace is Centennial Professor at the European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. Alex Warleigh-Lack is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the School of Social Sciences, Brunel University.

List of Abbreviations APEC ASEAN AU BRICs CAP CEE CFI CFSP COREPER EC ECB ECJ ECSC EDC EEC EFTA EMI EMS EMU EP ERM ESDI ESDP EU FCO GNI ICG IEP IGC JHA MLG NAFTA NATO OMC QMV SACN

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Association of South East Asian Nations African Union Brazil, Russia, India and China Common Agricultural Policy Central and Eastern European Court of First Instance Common Foreign and Security Policy Committee of Permanent Representatives European Community European Central Bank European Court of Justice European Coal and Steel Community European Defence Community European Economic Community European Free Trade Association European Monetary Institute European Monetary System Economic and Monetary Union European Parliament Exchange Rate Mechanism European Security and Defence Identity European Security and Defence Policy European Union Foreign and Commonwealth Office Gross National Income Institut Charles de Gaulle Institut für Europäische Politik Intergovernmental Conference Justice and Home Affairs Multi-Level Governance North American Free Trade Agreement North Atlantic Treaty Organization Open Method of Coordination Qualified Majority Voting South American Community of Nations xi

xii List of Abbreviations

SEA TEC TECSC TEU UACES UK US

Single European Act Treaty Establishing the European Community Treaty Establishing the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty on European Union University Association for Contemporary European Studies United Kingdom United States

1 Introduction David Phinnemore and Alex Warleigh-Lack

The last two decades have seen many significant events in the development of the European Union (EU) that have provided various opportunities to ponder its future and that of the European integration process more generally. An almost continuous process of treaty and institutional reform has encouraged ideas of how the EU should and might look in the future; enlargement has provoked thoughts about the challenges and opportunities of a much larger membership and also on how far the EU could and should expand. In 2007 – a tumultuous year in which the EU enlarged to include Bulgaria and Romania and entered its latest round of ‘constitutional’ reform producing the Treaty of Lisbon – this trend continued. As the saying goes, in EU matters, change has been the only constant in recent times. Yet 2007, with the fiftieth anniversary of the signing in Rome on 25 March 1957 of the Treaty Establishing a European Economic Community, was notable in a different way too. This ‘birthday’ provided an opportunity to reflect on the history of the EU and, in particular, of its supranational core, the European Community; to reflect on its successes and failures, its strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities taken and those missed, and on the forces and figures that have helped shape what is now a prominent feature of contemporary European and, increasingly, more broadly international affairs. That such an anniversary was actually taking place would come as a surprise to the cartoonist who provided the cover drawing for The Economist of 20 March 1982 that marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. It depicted a tombstone dedicated to the EEC with the inscription ‘born March 25, 1957, moribund March 25, 1982’ and the epitaph ‘Capax imperii nisi imperasset’ – ‘It seemed capable of power until it tried to wield it’. By contrast, the EU today certainly has power – economic, legal, and 1

2

Introduction

political – and does wield it, albeit not always successfully and effectively and as widely as some of its advocates might wish. Its opponents, by contrast, may long for its demise, but despite all manner of supposed ‘crises’, it continues to exist, to expand what it does and to enlarge its membership. It is far from moribund; it is a live entity, settled for some, contested for others. With the EU therefore a well-established, if not universally loved, fixture of the European political scene the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of what is more commonly referred to as the ‘Treaty of Rome’ was something that deserved to be noted, for some even celebrated.1 Certainly celebration was in the minds of many of the heads of government and of state and others who attended the high profile, but informal, gathering of EU leaders in Berlin on 25 March 2007 and oversaw the adoption of the so-called Berlin Declaration. Not that there was a willingness on the part of all the participants to sign the declaration. This was left to the presidents of the Commission, Council and European Parliament. But few if any could deny at least a certain sense of achievement. According to the declaration, ‘European unification’ had brought peace and prosperity to Europe. It had also brought about ‘a sense of community’ and allowed member states to ‘overcome differences’ and to help ‘unite Europe and to strengthen democracy and the rule of law’.2 EU leaders were not alone in using the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome to reflect on what had been achieved since 1957. Euro-enthusiasts held commemorative events, as did the EU’s own institutions and some of its various other bodies. An EU-sponsored logo – together@50 – was adopted. In France a dedicated website (www.traitederome.fr) on the events of 50 years ago was established. In London, Chatham House commissioned a celebratory etching. There was some media interest too with various radio and TV channels broadcasting dedicated programmes and some newspapers and news magazines setting aside space to record the events of 50 years ago. Academics and practitioners also got involved, some contributing to special issues of journals, books or other commemorative publications. Others gathered to discuss the merits and lessons of the last 50 years of European integration. Indeed, the current volume has its origins in one such gathering: a conference on Reflections on European Integration: 50 Years of the Treaty of Rome, which was held in London on 23–24 March 2007. Organised by the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES), and hosted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO),

David Phinnemore and Alex Warleigh-Lack

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the event brought together established academic experts on the EU and European integration, some respected media commentators and a number of highly experienced practitioners who had spent much of their careers working either for EU institutions or on European issues for their respective national governments. All the contributions to this volume are revised versions of papers first presented at the conference. Reflecting the conference themes, the contributions each cover one of six broad areas: the political progress of European integration since the 1950s; institutional and policy developments; the international impact of European integration; economic and monetary union; judicialisation and the role of the Courts in European integration; European integration and its impact on the member states. Moreover, the chapters are of two particular types. On the one hand, we have a number of essentially personal reflections, whether from academics or practitioners, on the key events, players and trends in their respective areas of EU activity. On the other hand, we have academic reflections on the scholarly contribution to our understanding of integration in the relevant area. These are designed to provide more than simply a critical review of the academic literature. Authors were asked to assess how scholarship has developed, what it has and has not explained, how the relevant discipline has benefitted from this scholarship and to identify what the contribution of this scholarship might be beyond European and EU studies. We return to these issues in our concluding chapter. The volume opens with a personal reflection from Helen Wallace on the key people involved in the political development of the EU, on the tools they used, on their symbols and culture and on the connections with the wider world. In her excavation in ‘political archaeology’, Wallace underlines the importance of the actions of certain ‘gifted’ policy entrepreneurs in pushing the process of European integration forward and of the increasing difficulties they now face, particularly with the EU’s larger and more heterogeneous membership. She draws attention too to the shifting appropriateness of the tools used for promoting integration and notes the EU’s need for ‘new unifying symbols’. Wolfram Kaiser’s chapter switches the focus to the scholarly contribution of history and political science to the historiography of European integration, in his words, a still ‘marginal’, ‘under-conceptualised’, but growing, and ‘increasingly diverse’ sub-field of the contemporary history of Europe and international relations. Before suggesting how this situation may be remedied, Kaiser assesses the value and limitations of existing scholarship and notes various shifts over time in the

4

Introduction

assumptions underpinning research on the history of European integration. While it may now be more widely accepted that not only do material interests matter but so do ideas, there is, in Kaiser’s views, still considerable scope for bringing people ‘back in’. Political science approaches to understanding the EU could also benefit from greater consideration of the longue durée. The volume’s second part examines institutional and policy developments. Mark Pollack and Molly Ruhlman begin with an empirically rich assessment of basic long-term trends between 1957 and 2007, arguing that although the process of integration has by no means come to a conclusive halt, ‘the pioneering or “heroic” age of European integration is drawing to a close’, as the EU today constitutes a mature and relatively stable polity in which many of the major systemic features appear to have been established. Providing a practitioner perspective on institutional developments, and focusing on the European Council, we then have Poul Skytte Christoffersen, whose past experiences either working for or as the Danish Permanent Representative to the EU or holding the post of Head of Cabinet to the Secretary-General of the Council, provide him with almost unparalleled insights into the way in which this important political body has evolved. Having recalled changes in the agendas of the European Council, and the important roles played behind-the-scenes by key officials in the Commission and the Council, he identifies some of the major decisions of the European Council, notably concerning treaty revision, enlargement and the financing of the EU, but also on more quotidian policy matters and appointments. In his concluding remarks, Christoffersen questions whether the European Council – the institution ‘most affected by enlargement’ – can continue to play its established determining role in the EU’s institutional and policy development and whether it will remain the ultimate guarantee for the continued progress of the European project. The second part’s remaining two chapters shift the focus of the volume back to scholarly activity. First, Jo Hunt and Jo Shaw, drawing primarily on the work of academic lawyers, reflect on the development of legal scholarship and its contribution to our understanding of the EU’s legal order and the European Court of Justice and their roles in European integration. In doing so, they first question both the received ‘heroic’ vision of the Court and the existence of ‘an inherently integrative constitutionalisation process’ before concluding with their suggestions for how legal scholarship – whether on the EU or more generally – might develop in the light of existing work.

David Phinnemore and Alex Warleigh-Lack

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Second Simon Bulmer provides his assessment of how our knowledge of the EU’s institutions and policies has developed during the 50 years since the Treaty of Rome was signed and of what the key contributions to institutional and policy analysis over this period have been. He asks a simple question: what have we learnt? The short answer is – ‘a lot’. The chapter draws attention to the considerable growth in both the empirical literature on the EU’s institutions and policies and the analytical toolkit available for ‘processing’ the increasing and ever more readily available raw empirical data. Scholarly activity has revealed much about the importance of inter alia preferences, institutions, identity, and discourse. However, concern is expressed at the opening up of intellectual divisions over the study of the EU, hence the call, echoed in our own conclusions and by others, for maintaining intellectual openness. The third part focuses on two tough and challenging journeys that the EU has undertaken – establishing itself on the international scene and creating and implementing economic and monetary union. On the first, Jolyon Howarth identifies what for him have been the key events, trends, and players. He suggests four – possibly five – evenemential midwives, some familiar and some less obvious key players as well as a range of powerful underlying and ongoing forces significantly influencing the EU’s international impact. Although the chapter emphasises the increasing role of the EU in international affairs, it stresses the ‘very real and very tight limits’ to what the EU can hope to achieve in terms of influencing the nature and direction of international relations given its limited military resources. This is not, however, to say that it lacks influence. It has an important power of attraction and has emerged as an important model of integration and of what Howorth refers to as ‘post-Westphalianism’. For some at least, it is worth emulating. Kenneth Dyson then examines the ‘hard and thorny paths’ trodden by the EU in pursuit of and in implementing economic and monetary union (EMU). In doing so, he identifies not only key events, people and trends but also provides an assessment of the scholarly literature and lessons learnt. On the path to EMU, Dyson highlights a range of structural factors and the importance of political leadership in ‘bold history-making decisions’. On the path since EMU was created, the analysis focuses on factors such as the nature of the world political economy, the timing, sequencing, and size of monetary union, and the realities of ceded and shared sovereignty for the purpose of economic policy coordination. As for the scholarly contribution to understanding EMU, political science approaches are criticised for understating the role of markets.

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Introduction

The fourth and final part examines the impact of the EU on its member states and how some of the resulting challenges can be addressed. The first contribution comes from Kalypso Nicolaïdis and Janie Pélabay. They reflect on how the elusive permissive consensus concerning European integration can be overcome through an accepted justification for and the increased democratisation of the EU. They discuss what they refer to as the ‘reasonable pluralism’ of visions about Europe and argue that Europeans must live with ‘reasonable disagreements and conflicts of interpretation on the meaning and ends of the EU’. The second contribution is from Vivien Schmidt, who addresses the interrelationship of the EU and its member states at both the EU and national levels by analysing scholarly debates over the drivers of European integration, the design of the EU, and the impact it has, through Europeanisation, on national polities and policies. Four key questions and some of their implications for democracy are addressed: how did the member states build cooperation through the process of European integration; how can (or should) the EU’s supranational institutions and their relationship to the member states be characterised; how have these EU institutions affected member states’ institutions; and how did (and do) EU policies alter member states’ policies? Schmidt’s analysis highlights the increasing interdependence between the national and regional EU levels but notes the limitations of such two-level analysis in the face of increasing interdependence between the national, regional, and global levels. As many of the contributors pointed out to us, in asking for reflections on 50 years of the Treaty of Rome and of scholarship, ours was a tall order. Had they been asked to undertake the task on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, their job would certainly have been much easier. As several note, many of the key events in the development of the EU have been during the last 25 years, and this has spurred unprecedented academic interest in the EU and the publication of vast numbers of papers, journal articles, and books on the EU. Today’s students of the EU run the risk of being swamped by analysis and comment. In reflecting on the first 50 years of the Treaty of Rome, this volume provides real evidence of the wealth of scholarship in EU/European integration studies and testifies to the fascination exerted by the intricate and often tortuous path to polity-hood that the EU has taken. The volume closes with our own concluding chapter, which lays out a set of suggestions about how scholarly work in this area might build effectively on its successes to date by engaging with a wider

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range of disciplines and issues, and by re-imagining itself as a crucial link between (multi-)disciplinary studies of ‘the international’ and ‘the domestic’. We hope that this chapter will spark others to reflect upon European integration and its study. If so, both it and its companion chapters will have served their purpose.

Notes 1. There were, of course two treaties signed in Rome on 25 March 1957. The second ‘Treaty of Rome’ was the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community. 2. Declaration on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the signature of the Treaties of Rome.

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Part I European Integration from the EEC’s Founding to the Present

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2 Some Reflections on 50 Years of Experience since the Signature of the Treaties of Rome Helen Wallace

This chapter reflects on some striking features of the European Union (EU) and its various predecessors as they have developed over the past 50 years. It is derived from personal memories and experience, as well as professional observations accumulated over that 50-year period. I write as someone who has to own up to not being able to remember much of the 1950s as regards the signature of the two Treaties of Rome, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). From that period I can, however, remember the Franco-British intervention in Suez, the Soviet occupation of Budapest and the collapse of the French Fourth Republic – all events that were highly pertinent parts of the political context in which the European integration project was developed. My own more vivid memories of ‘the project’ start in 1967, when I first studied European integration at the College of Europe in Bruges. There, I had the good fortune to be taught by a number of practitioners, including Emile Noël, Secretary General of the European Commission – I still possess my first copy of ‘la Bible’, a still unofficial English translation of the Treaty of Rome (EEC), annotated from his lectures. My fellow students and I watched in November 1967 the press conference of General Charles de Gaulle, then French President, when for the second time he vetoed UK accession to the European Communities. In subsequent years, I had the good fortune to listen in person to many others from that early period: Pierre Uri recalling the drafting work of the Spaak Committee, including the ‘alternative version’ of the Treaty of Rome (EEC), widely regarded to be too ambitious; Jean-François Deniau reminiscing on the final stages of drafting, including the almost forgotten preamble that had to be drafted in a rush; Russell Bretherton, a fine public servant from the British Board of Trade, who did not go to the 11

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Messina Conference in 1955 (the British were not invited), but who did take part in meetings of the Spaak Committee until he was withdrawn by ministers, rather against his own preferences (Young 1998: 86–98). These opportunities to listen to participants had an enormous impact on me, both generating a lasting fascination with the insider stories and teaching me early on to be careful to balance written and oral sources. The sections that follow consist of a kind of ‘political archaeology’, which takes samples from the history of the EU at roughly 10-year intervals with four questions in mind. What can we discern about the people involved? What tools did they use? What can we see of their symbols and culture? What can be seen by way of connections between this excavation site and the wider world of the period?

The mid-1950s: The foundational period The people of the foundational period of the mid-1950s were pioneers and there were not many of them. A remarkable core group of politicians, public officials and the occasional entrepreneur acquired the determination and the capabilities to craft a shared project. In the politics of the period, still in the shadow of post-war reconstruction, they were able to deliver consent to participate from six countries, and they benefited from the oft-remarked ‘permissive consensus’ of those countries’ populations. Some ambitions were, however, suppressed. Euratom did not flourish, despite being the preferred project of Jean Monnet. Some topics were off limits, in the wake of the collapse of the European Defence Community in 1954. The commitment of the Six could not be extended to other West European countries, and notably not to the United Kingdom, where the counterparts of the pioneers were even fewer and much weaker. The tools these pioneers developed were few but very sharp. Typically, these tools were functionally specific, famously so for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the customs union and the rules of competition. Across the policy areas identified for collective action there was a cleverly devised mix of protectionism and economic liberalism. The social model issues (which Pierre Uri had wanted to include) were shortcircuited and left mostly to member states. Above all, perhaps, there was the stunning invention of what we now know as European law, with the ingenious characteristics, which enabled the new legal system to become the anchor of the European integration process.

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As regards the symbolism of the period, those pioneers benefited from a special window of opportunity created by the temporary absence of plausible nationalist symbols in the six founder countries. This did not give rise to unconditional supranationalism, but it did allow for modest and practical forms of supranationalism. Thus the idea of a European army became out of bounds as too supranational, but the Treaty of Rome (EEC) gave the Commission extraordinarily strong legal powers for dealing with anti-trust and cartels on the grounds of practical need. More broadly post-war reconciliation and reconstruction, as well as the Cold War, could be prayed in aid of the case for concerted action. On the canvas of the wider world, elements of tension could already be seen in the Treaty of Rome (EEC), in particular between the internal preoccupations of the Six and their external responsibilities to both the developed and the developing world. However, some at least of the potential introversion was tempered by the transatlantic relationship, the US military guarantee and the role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), of which all Six were by then full members.

The mid-1960s: Testing the model During the 1960s, the people involved became more diverse. The pioneers were joined by priests, Walter Hallstein being perhaps an outstanding example, and also by apostates, as de Gaulle made clear his reservations about a good many elements of the Community-building model. So the project came to be characterised by a three-way split among the priests, the pragmatists and the apostates. Typically the priests were the advocates of a more explicitly federal structure for the Community, often Belgians, Germans or Italians. The pragmatists focused on demonstrating the practical achievements of intensive collaboration and were typically technocratic officials, many in the Commission, but others also scattered across the administrations of the member states. The apostates were those who were reluctant to accept explicit or irreversible supranationalism, including many Gaullists in France and their counterparts in other countries such as the United Kingdom. In the mid-1960s there was little trace of a Franco-German axis despite the evident need to get both the French and the Germans onside in order to develop policy initiatives. All six member governments found opportunities to invest in the model, as was clear in the testing moment of the empty-chair crisis in 1965, resolved because of mediation from

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all sides. Generally speaking the moments of confrontation in the mid1960s were much less polarised than commentators are often inclined to portray. Recent historical scholarship shows, for example, that the empty chair crisis of 1965 erupted partly in response to a series of misjudgements by Hallstein, not endorsed by all of his colleagues in the Commission, and also that there were some sympathies in other member states for de Gaulle’s reaction, albeit not for his tactics (Palayret et al. 2006). Typical of the period was the emergence of contestation about which tools to use and how to develop them. This was clear in two policy domains in particular. One was the agriculture-budget interface which erupted as a major issue in 1965 and has remained amongst the most contentious subjects across subsequent EU history. The other area was foreign policy, where it became clear during the decade that here was a policy domain that ought to have been ripe for collective action, yet one where at least some member governments were disinclined to cede national sovereignty. De Gaulle’s policy illustrated this vividly, in his efforts to promote the Fouchet Plans in the early 1960s and later in his partial withdrawal of France from NATO. Interestingly, however, it proved possible to insulate some policy areas from acrimonious contestation, as became evident in the way that the EEC played a successful part in the Kennedy Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. It is to the mid-1960s that the classic apparent polarisation between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism belongs, exemplified in the empty-chair crisis of 1965–6. Yet then, as now, this was an oversimplistic view, given the persistent presence of a third group of pragmatists acting as intermediators. So there was a disjunction between the public symbolism of confrontation and the practice of problem-solving, with those in this latter camp never quite able to develop a compelling vocabulary of symbolism, despite their effectiveness in solving disputes. It is worth recalling that the arguments that lay behind the 1965–6 dispute were all resolved within a few years; the CAP came into being, with collective financing; and by 1970 the European Parliament (EP) gained its first budgetary powers. In relation to the wider world, it became quite evident by the mid1960s that the issue of the wider Western Europe would have to be resolved and that the EEC would have to face up to the challenge of enlargement. Yet this was a very West European question against the backcloth of the ever more rigid Cold War division of Europe. The EEC became rather firmly established as an international economic power

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as a result of its successes in the Kennedy Round, a factor that gave added confidence to those involved. However, the transatlantic political relationship started to become more contentious.

The mid-1970s: Stretching the model By the mid-1970s the pioneer generation was starting to disappear, and thus the protagonists of the project became more dispersed. The priests, on the other hand, became more consolidated, and in particular gathered their forces in and around the European Commission. In a Community enlarged to nine members, the apostates had also been reinforced, especially with the United Kingdom joining, and became more vocal within the Community. The creation of the European Council in 1974 also gave more opportunities for more explicitly politicised public debates on European issues. It also provided a platform for the Franco-German duo (see Bulmer in this volume). The practitioners of the period did a great deal more to develop new tools than they are generally credited with. New spending programmes were introduced, notably the European Regional Development Fund. There was some consolidation of microeconomic and sectoral policies. Some new policy areas, notably regarding the environment, were adroitly opened up. There was a good deal of policy experimentation in apparently intergovernmental domains, notably monetary policy and foreign policy. What was rather less clear was which tools were fit for which purpose. The period is also one marked by the emergence of symbols with negative resonance. Despite modest policy advances, Eurosclerosis became one of the headline images, and the modest and incremental advances being made in some policy domains were not accompanied by the proclamation of new symbolic ambitions. Distributional issues became common, propelled partly by the British with their persistent protestations about the need for budgetary equity. Actually the inter-institutional relationships within the Community began to change quite significantly, as the EP won a succession of enhanced powers and status from treaty changes in 1970, 1975 and 1978, but this was barely recognised in the public commentary and symbolic discussions. The wider context was one of problems and stresses. Two oil crises in the decade, with concomitant recession trends, put the Community model under severe challenge. Economic relations with the United States also generated further strains. Enlargement emerged again as an

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issue of confrontation around the acceptability of Greece, Portugal and Spain as plausible members of the club.

The mid-1980s: Revival and refocusing The mid-1980s have been widely seen as a period of impressive revival in the European integration process, although the step-change was not so obvious at the time. Yet more variation emerged in the mid-1980s in terms of who the people were who became intimately involved in the European integration process. One important group was that of the new policy entrepreneurs, who worked especially within the European Commission to steer forward in a highly focused way particular policy initiatives. In this context, Jacques Delors and Arthur Cockfield and their immediate advisers and teams stand out, especially in relation to the Single Market programme, but there were others as well in other policy domains. With hindsight, history may judge this period to have constituted the high point of Commission entrepreneurship. Another striking phenomenon of the 1980s was the proliferation of camp followers mostly based in Brussels. The corporate sector reinforced its presence close to the European institutions and was joined by growing numbers of lobbyists and consultants. Their presence started to have appreciable impacts on the way the policy process worked. The third group that became more active came from both members and staffers of the EP; in reaction to their increasing powers, their presence switched in emphasis from Luxembourg to Brussels. Thus the political environment of decision-making became diverse and process-tracing became a more testing task for both would-be policy influencers and outside analysts. The period was marked by the adaptation of old tools for new purposes. The development of the Single Market process is the locus classicus. Yet, with hindsight, it is perhaps more interesting for the way in which it stimulated the development of EU legislative politics than for the explicit exploitation of qualified majority voting in the Council as a tool of majoritarian decision-making. This was also the period in which sustained efforts began to make linkages between policy development and treaty reform as a method in its own right, most evidently in the Single European Act, and also in the preparation of what became the Treaty on European Union – the Maastricht Treaty. In the budgetary field, this was a period of encouraging clientelism as an instrument for building explicit constituencies of support for particular Community programmes. Less visibly, coordination and socialisation became tools

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for building agreements to extend policy commitments, features which were later revealed in fields such as monetary policy and environmental policy. The self-conscious invention of new symbols became one of the striking features of the period. A headline goal of completion of the Single Market by the end of 1992 was declared with considerable success by the European Commission and then the European Council and the Council, surrounded by razzmatazz and inducing a sense of opportunities to be seized to promote positive public relations. Similar efforts were made as regards the economic and monetary union. This was also the period of flags, no – sorry – logos (the reformulation was done to avoid recriminations from Margaret Thatcher), and the playing of Schiller’s Ode to Joy with the music of Beethoven, an invention which somewhat bemused the same Margaret Thatcher after her delivery of the famous Bruges speech of 1988. The Adonnino Committee made an attempt to translate these hard goals into softer symbols for the wider public, which proved a harder task. On the wider world stage the period was marked by the triangular forces of international economic competition among the EEC, the United States and Japan. It seems hard now to convey just how sharp that competition seemed at the time, as Japanese technology and entrepreneurship blossomed, and both Americans and Europeans sought to equip themselves to respond. In defence and security terms, the world was a relatively quiet place, breeding perhaps a sense of complacency among Europeans about the international challenges they needed to be equipped to face – concerns over economic competition predominated.

The mid-1990s: Efforts to reframe By the mid-1990s a great deal had changed, with the end of the Soviet imperium and the outbreak of wars in the former Yugoslavia. European policy-making was marked by a series of rather distinct circles of policymaking and influence, which varied according to the issues at stake. The ground seemed to be more fertile for the pragmatists than for the priests, as it became much more difficult to identify who were the main movers and shakers, since different policy communities were rather heterogeneously composed. The European Council was becoming rather more important as a venue, and the European Commission was becoming less central. The banking and finance circle was able to consolidate

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around the EMU project, helpfully confined to a mainly single currency project, stripped of the broader ambitions to produce a collective macroeconomic policy. The policy community engaged in foreign and security policy gained importance and took on its own dynamic, with mixed success in responding to emerging security challenges and the wars in the rapidly disintegrating ‘Yugoslavia’. A different policy circle started to develop around the issues of justice and home affairs (JHA), pushed forwards by the terms of the Treaty of Amsterdam and boosted by the smaller Schengen and Nordic cooperation circles. New institutions, notably the European Central Bank, became prominent in their own policy domains, another instance of segmented policy-making. Gradually, but only gradually, the circle of involvement in post-Cold War Europe started to include people from Central and Eastern Europe, engaged both in their own domestic transformation processes and in the quest for EU membership. Increasingly, the search was focused on finding new toolkits rather than finding new uses for old tools. Increasingly the EU started to mobilise soft tools of coordination instead of the harder law-based tools that belonged to the old ‘Community method’. This occurred both in internal policy areas (social and employment policies) and in the more intergovernmental areas of JHA and foreign, security and defence policies. Experimentation became common, as confidence declined in the notion that the traditional ‘Community method’ was the appropriate eventual ambition. On the one hand, some policy sectors lent themselves to what was increasingly recognised as ‘legislative’ politics (involving the EP as well as the Council and the Commission). On the other hand, newer and trickier policy domains were addressed by smaller and more enclosed circles of policy-makers, seeking to develop initiatives in a much less public way. Also absent was a sense of aggregate political and strategic direction. Symbols proliferated, but they appealed to different and segmented constituencies. One symbolic strand was developed around the creation of the single currency – the euro. This was not ‘constitutional patriotism’ in the making but an effort at European currency patriotism, a mixed blessing given that at the outset it was not such a popular project. The positive experience of West Germany – from where the phrase ‘constitutional patriotism’ is borrowed – in building a sense of collective pride in its new democratic institutional settlement was unlikely to be emulated. West Germany had, however, also developed a sense of collective pride in the establishment of a strong national currency, the Deutschmark. It was here that the priests hoped to recover an

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opportunity to achieve another burst of intensified supranationalism. It was the period also of the shift of language from European Community to European Union, with the notion that this would mark a shift towards higher political ground. Yet, this turned out to lack popular resonance in a decade, which included difficult referenda for incumbents – Denmark, France and Ireland – on treaty reform (the Maastricht Treaty and the Treaty of Nice) and for several other West European countries – Finland, Norway and Sweden – seeking to join the EU. The contestation found itself refracted in the new forms of argument between Europhiles and Eurosceptics in a number of actual or would-be member states, as the ranks of the apostates seemed to grow stronger. This controversy was curiously at odds with the other European story of the decade, namely the escape of Central and Eastern Europe from the Soviet imperium to be followed by deep transformation inside those countries and sustained efforts to move from being clients of the EU to inside participants. The big story of the decade was the collapse of the Cold War and Soviet power. On the one hand, the Western model of democracy and market economy had won and with it the ambitions of the Community and then the EU on the European continent. On the other hand, all of a sudden there was a queue of new candidates for EU membership, and the hard border of the Cold War had been replaced by porous borders and new migrants and refugees. Symbolically the EU was in disarray, caught in the paradox of the new context. The consequent and persistent confusion made it increasingly difficult to determine which symbolic values to assign to the European project and generated a much greater disparity than hitherto among different European countries in terms of the core European values that resonated for their citizens and denizens. One by-product was a kind of creeping introversion as Europeans became more self-preoccupied and less attentive to the wider global context in either political or economic terms.

Into the new millennium Recent years have witnessed prolonged and tense debates over how to adapt the EU model to new circumstances and new members, against a backcloth of declining public confidence. In the current period, we can observe the continued variety of competing circles, variegated among policy domains, characterised by inter-institutional competition in the EU system and inter-country competition, and bifurcated between those inside the Brussels beltway and those in the wider European political

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arena. In a larger and much more heterogeneous EU, it has become much harder for either the pioneers or the priests to be influential. More broad-based coalitions have to be created and sustained, and increasingly they have to find support in the wider political space beyond the beltway. In addition, there is an incomplete socialisation process now that the EU consists of so many new member states with backgrounds very different from those of the old and very West European club. The EU finds itself with a plethora of old tools, some blunt or rusty, and a few new tools, which have not yet been honed into efficient service. Debates and contestation about the Constitutional Treaty have absorbed large amounts of political energy and have distracted attention from the practicalities of which tool is fit for which purpose. The prospect that the Treaty of Lisbon of 2007 would lay to rest for a while the meta-debate about institutional architecture looks dim in the light of the Irish ‘no’ of June 2008. Pragmatists will still be needed to till the ground. In the meantime, in one policy domain after another, there is a need for focused and grounded reflection on the nuts and bolts that are needed not only to deliver the old policy agenda but also to address newer policy challenges such as climate change or energy security. The search is also on for new unifying symbols for the enlarged EU facing testing internal and external agendas. The securitisation of the EU, facing the double challenges of societal security and defence concerns (both in the neighbourhood and further afield), seems to be a spreading phenomenon and seems also to rest on high levels of public expectation. Another temptation is to close ranks against the ‘others’ in the rest of the world, whether in the immediate neighbourhood or further afield, with religious symbolism increasingly present in the discussion. The rising economic challenge of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) makes the old concerns of the 1980s about Japanese competition look like the problems of a kindergarten. What we seem fairly clearly to have learned from recent efforts is that there seems to be little chance of developing European symbolism around the notion of constitutional patriotism. On the contrary, resonant symbolism seems to need to be tied to the results of successful joint policy regimes. Results matter, not only aspirations. These challenges for Europeans have to be set in the wider context of enlargement fatigue, testing responsibilities to be undertaken vis-à-vis the neighbourhood (not least in relation to Russia), contested globalisation, and considerable insecurity across the globe, compounded by disagreements between Americans and Europeans. This is not an easy period in which to be attempting to steer the EU ship.

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Conclusions What broad lessons can we derive from this overview of past decades? First, the EU has flourished more easily in those periods in which gifted policy entrepreneurs had been able to exploit opportunities, but this has become harder with a more prolix policy agenda, more contestation among institutions and among member states, and a more heterogeneous membership. Second, tools need to be ‘fit for purpose’ if they are to deal with the tasks of the day. More attention needs to be focused on the practicalities of which tools are appropriate for which purposes, and then the hard work needs to be done in deploying those tools effectively – policy delivery has become one of the new mantras. Success obviously depends partly on contingency, since timeliness is always an asset. However, increasingly policy-makers have these days to rally broader constituencies of support and cannot rely on advocates within the Brussels beltway. Electoral evidence also seems to suggest that a good deal of effort needs to be put into winning the support of the successor generations and from younger citizens. It is in this context that the symbolic dimension of European transnational politics needs to be revisited.

3 Bringing People and Ideas Back in: Historical Research on the European Union Wolfram Kaiser

Anniversaries remind social scientists, who are preoccupied with explaining the present and looking into the future, that history matters. In the case of the European Union (EU) it would be a fallacy to assume that only its own very short institutional history since the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957–8 is relevant. The formation of ‘core Europe’ in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) already created corridors for European integration through the introduction of the supranational principle and the (self-) exclusion of the United Kingdom, which to many had seemed the obvious leader of (Western) Europe’s economic and political reconstruction for a short time after the end of the Second World War. Moreover, in a longterm perspective which many contemporary historians of European integration neglect at their peril, patterns of economic exchange, social interaction and identities and political conflicts and integration within and across borders from before 1945 have influenced, and are continuing to influence, European politics to the present day. The politics of subsidiarity, for example, may in part be explained by globalisation pressures that have perhaps ‘hollowed out’ the nation state and created incentives for the assertion of regional identities and political claims. However, centre – periphery conflicts were already prominent dimensions of national integration with strong transnational connotations in the nineteenth century. As a political concept, moreover, subsidiarity was progressively appropriated from the social teaching of the Catholic Church at that time, which was closely affiliated in countries like France, with regional politics in opposition to predominately liberal and socialist policies for national centralisation. In the last two decades, the historiography of European integration has grown into an increasingly diverse, albeit marginal sub-field of 22

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the contemporary history of Europe and international relations (Kaiser 2006). The origins of this historiography were characterised by a normative overdrive of historians like Lipgens and others, who were often as keen to construct a united Europe as to reconstruct early European integration history (Kaiser 2002; Loth 2006). Most of the historical literature until well into the 1990s was either steeped in an older history of ideas or ‘realist’ diplomatic history. Both approaches were conceptually and methodologically unsophisticated and empirically unconvincing. The first approach failed to reconstruct ideas as embedded in societal relations and contested in political competition or to show beyond reasonable doubt causal links between such ideas and political decisionmaking processes after 1945. The second approach was, and still is to the present day, a strikingly unreflective continuation of the ‘realist’ analysis of great power politics until the Second World War. It does not consider sufficiently the new context of the domestic fragmentation of foreign and European policy-making in pluralistic democracies, the high degree of institutionalisation within the EU, and the role of multiple state and non-state actors in European policy-making – a failure that can be explained in part with the an obsession with detailed description of national executive policy-making processes, over-reliance on member-state government sources and the uncritical adoption of habitual ‘national interest’ rhetoric. However, lack of knowledge of relevant social science theoretical and conceptual tools, and even of the legal and institutional complexities of the EU, are also part of the explanation. For social scientists to largely ignore this mediocre early historical research was perhaps understandable. At the same time, the character of political science research on the EU underwent important change, which alienated it from historical perspectives whatever the quality of historical research on the EU’s origins and evolution. In Britain, in particular, political science research on Europe initially overlapped with journalistic analysis and policy advice. The works of authors like Camps (1967), Kitzinger (1973) and others were not theory-driven but still had a historical foundation and a primarily empirical orientation. Originating in the United States, and at first spreading to countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, however, political science research became at the same time much more theory-focussed and often totally disconnected from public debates. More recently, two factors appear to have enhanced the opportunities for greater interdisciplinary cooperation in understanding the EU past and present, however, especially between history and political science (Kaiser 2008). As I have

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sought to demonstrate with a team of younger historians (Kaiser et al. 2009), historical research has become more conceptually and methodologically sophisticated while vigorously defending the advantages of fine-grained historical narrative. At the same time, recent theoretical developments in the social sciences like historical and sociological institutionalism have re-legitimised a more history-sensitive treatment of EU politics. Against this background, this chapter sketches what leading political scientists have recently had to say about the history of the EU, and its relevance for understanding its present-day politics, and what appears problematic about their approaches from the perspective of a contemporary historian. It then outlines what historians have emphasised in their treatment of more than 50 years of European integration going back to the formation of the ECSC in 1950–2 and how this may be relevant for analysing the contemporary EU. Finally, some reasons why the historiography of the EU has so far remained marginal within the discipline of modern history, and even to the study of the contemporary history of Europe since the Second World War, are suggested.

Shooting ducks: Political scientists and EU history Recent political science studies that deal with EU history and make ambitious explanatory claims about it fall into three broad theoretical categories: rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism and works influenced to some extent by sociological institutionalism which emphasise the role of political leadership in advancing constitutional ideas and integration preferences. Arguably, the new interest in EU history was spurred by Moravcsik (1998) in his book-length exposition of Liberal Intergovernmentalism. In The Choice for Europe, he took several so-called ‘grand bargains’ from EU history to argue that member states have always controlled the integration process, that their policies have been driven by rationally formulated (and mainly material) interests derived from domestic political interest group competition and pressures and that they tightly monitor and control the discretion of supranational institutions like the European Commission which mainly have facilitating functions. Also from a rational choice vantage point, yet using comparative politics, not international relations approaches, Pollack (2003) has developed a more sophisticated principal-agent-based understanding of institutional delegation which is tested in different case studies, with variations across institutions and policy fields.

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The member-state-centric perspective on institutional delegation has not produced convincing explanations either for the delegation of powers to the European Parliament (EP), with both Moravcsik and Pollack admitting that long-term federalist institutional preferences must have played a role, or the failure to reign in the powerful federalist-inclined judicial policy of the European Court of Justice since its first landmark rulings of 1963–4. Largely staying within a rational choice framework, Pierson (2004) has thus developed a historical institutionalist framework that can also be applied to analysing EU politics (Pierson 1996). In essence, he argues that once created, institutions develop a life of their own and sometimes fundamentally change the political game. He points to three gaps in member-state control over supranational institutions: the restricted time horizons of national decision-makers, unanticipated outcomes resulting from the complexity of issues and institutional designs and shifts in member-state preferences, for example after a change in government. Pierson has applied the idea to the EU in an historical perspective through what he calls the sunk costs of initial institutional and policy choices which are self-reinforcing over time and limit future options. This latter idea is theoretically intriguing, although not empirically surprising for contemporary historians. The historical institutionalist approach has also been adopted in a modified form by Rittberger (2005) in his recent study of the constitutional evolution of the powers and role of the EP. He claims that form has generally followed function. In this view, EP powers have been increased over time to enhance the parliamentary legitimacy of policymaking based on member states’ institutional experiences of national integration and models, while ideas-based federalist initiatives like the European Political Community of 1953 have invariably failed. Finally, some scholars have also stressed the importance of constitutional ideas and political leadership for the origins and evolution of the EU. Thus, Jachtenfuchs (2002) has made a strong case for the influence of culturally embedded world views and ideological preferences for supranationalism for the constitutional evolution of the EU from the ECSC Treaty through to the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty of Amsterdam. This contradicts rational choice-based explanations of the origins and reform of the EU’s institutional set-up. Moreover, focussing on domestic French debates and European policymaking in long-term perspective since the Schuman Plan, Parsons (2003) has argued that French politics, across the political spectrum, has been deeply divided over contradictory preferences for supranational or intergovernmental constitutional solutions for European integration.

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From his perspective, the entrepreneurial leadership of politicians like Robert Schuman and François Mitterrand has guaranteed that (with the exception of the period from 1958 to 1969) French governments have generally supported more supranational solutions. From a contemporary historical disciplinary perspective, these competing political science approaches are largely united by two main characteristics that limit their explanatory value – at least concerning the history of the EU. Firstly, they are too theory-driven. They share a largely instrumental approach to integration history as a source for the selective empirical documentation of theoretical claims about the present-day EU. Operating on the heuristic assumption that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, chances are it is a duck, theory-driven studies of EU history concentrate on shooting ducks while ignoring all other species or sources of contradictory empirical evidence which does not conform to their preconceived expectations and documentary methodological requirements. Moravcsik’s detailed explanation (2000a, b) of Charles de Gaulle’s EEC policy in the 1960s is an excellent case in point. He has argued that the French President’s behaviour in 1961–6 during the negotiations on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), UK accession and the ‘empty chair’ crisis was almost exclusively driven by domestic agricultural interest group pressures, with farmers as an important domestic electoral constituency and concern, and French budgetary interests. While historians have re-evaluated the importance of the agricultural issue in 1965–6, for example, they have also demonstrated in archive-based studies that de Gaulle’s intergovernmental ideological preferences overrode a strong interest in the economic and budgetary benefits for France from the package deal that the European Commission proposed in the Spring of 1965 (Ludlow 2006: 52–8; Palayret et al. 2006). Most historians have not bothered to engage with Moravcsik’s book as a historical study. Even Milward (2000), who shares fundamental assumptions about the interest-based formation of member-state preferences and their control of the integration process, was unconvinced by Moravcsik’s eccentric revisionist account of de Gaulle’s European policies. It was actually left to a group of political scientists (Lieshout et al. 2004) to document in great detail what was immediately obvious to contemporary historians of the EEC in the 1960s, namely that Moravcsik’s study hardly refers to, and in some cases misrepresents, historical literature and that his explanation also hinges on an arbitrary selection of sources that are often taken out of context. He follows a determined policy of ignoring all contradictory evidence that de Gaulle had a long-standing culturally embedded preference for

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a ‘Europe des patries’, as well as geopolitical interests in the continued exclusion of Britain from the EEC. Secondly, and linked to the problem of largely context-independent theory of such an instrumental approach to history, political science studies of EU history are generally badly documented. Even conceptually underdeveloped, but well-documented historical narratives of EU history could at least serve as a rich source base. Yet, most theory-driven political science studies reflect limited familiarity with the state of the art of the historiography, especially of early ‘core Europe’ integration until the 1970s. Thus, in his discussion of the domestic politics of ‘Europe’ of the Fourth Republic at the time of the ECSC and the European Defence Community (EDC), which is a cornerstone of his argument about the importance of domestic cross-party entrepreneurial leadership, Parsons (2003) ignores important historical research from the last 15 years. Crucially, this research (Soutou 1993; Hüser 1996; Kaiser 2007) demonstrates conclusively how united the centrist Mouvement Républicain Populaire was over its strong preference for supranational integration within a ‘core Europe’ geographical space, which suggests the need to emphasise the transnational, not just domestic, dimension of political conflict and leadership in European integration. In many cases, bad documentation of far-reaching theoretical claims is also aggravated by over-reliance on sources and literature in English at a time when most historical works are still published in other European languages.

Bringing common sense back in: Historians and EU history Against this background, from the perspective of a contemporary historian, three general pleas about EU history can be made: to reconsider the importance of ideas for the integration process; to bring people back into the study of the EU; and to take historical conditions seriously to avoid hysterical excitement about the novelty of contemporary developments. In doing so, it should be borne in mind that most contemporary historical research is conceptually underdeveloped and excessively descriptive. In fact, recent social science concepts and approaches could allow contemporary historians to strengthen their analytical grip on EU history to make sure that social scientists cannot easily ignore them and their works in the future. A first plea is that ideas do matter. For some time from the 1960s through to the 1980s contemporary historians like Lipgens (1982)

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analysed political groups which articulated federalist ideas in the Resistance and the European Movement. In their traditional history of ideas approach, they took it for granted that if ideas circulate, they must matter. Initially, without access to government sources, they failed to establish causal links between federalist ideas and national policies and bargaining after 1945. This fundamental flaw, combined with these historians’ normative federalist overdrive and new access to government sources in state archives, led most contemporary historians from the 1980s to the early 2000s to study EU history almost exclusively as national European policy-making and multilateral bargaining of interests. Most diplomatic historians assumed that states have given national interests articulated by cohesive foreign policy-making elites in integration politics. This totally fails to conceptualise national policy-making in the new domestic political context after 1945. In contrast, Milward (1984, 1992) proposed a more sophisticated rational choice framework for interpreting the origins of the EU. Without reconstructing domestic political processes convincingly, he emphasised domestically articulated economic interests as ‘national interests’ informing governmental strategies for integration or interdependence as alternative institutional frameworks after 1945. In The European Rescue of the NationState, Milward (1992) attacks what he calls the myth of the ‘founding fathers’ Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Alcide De Gasperi and Paul-Henri Spaak. He ridiculed the suggestion that their political decision-making should have been informed by federalist ideas they articulated, which he sees as ex post attempts by elder statesmen at rationalising interest-based decision-making. More recently, however, a new generation of contemporary historians have re-emphasised ideas (not idealism) and their importance for the origins and evolution of the EU. In the seemingly straightforward case of Denmark, for example, conventional wisdom would have it that its policy towards European integration before accession in 1973 was almost exclusively driven by the need to secure access to the EEC’s agricultural market and profit from the CAP (cf. Laursen 2004). In a recent in-depth study of Danish European policy up to 1972–3, Rasmussen (2004, 2005) has, however, demonstrated convincingly how both ideational and material motivations informed the integration preferences of domestic political and interest group actors, which in turn shaped government policy. His findings reinforce Gstöhl’s (2002) comparative political science study of integration ‘laggards’ like Norway and Switzerland. She has argued that although as highly trade-dependent countries, they were exposed to similar economic incentives for full

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participation in European integration as Belgium and the Netherlands, ideational factors and their importance for domestic political fault-lines largely account for these countries’ continued non-membership. While Gstöhl’s findings are exclusively based on published sources, contemporary historians have access to a variety of other sources. They are often more telling about ideational motivations for policy-making of national governmental, supranational, institutional or transnational societal actors, allowing for fine-grained narrative which brings out the complexities of actor constellations and different motivations in specific historical contexts. Like many rational choice political science studies, historical studies like Milward’s suffer from their over-reliance on state archives and government sources, with a bias towards interest-based arguments which bureaucracies overwhelmingly use, especially in their contacts with domestic pressure groups. Yet, a recent study of transnational networks of Christian democratic party elites and their European policy-making (Kaiser 2007) has found that politicians were much more forthcoming about their ideational motives for integration and particular institutional and policy preferences in private informal settings compared to governmental coalition deliberations or interest group contacts. This was especially the case when they wanted to override particular organised interests such as the preference of steel producers for a cartel solution to Western European market integration in 1950–2. These elites’ combined advocacy in their informal meetings of supranational institutional solutions, and the initial exclusion of Britain from such ‘core Europe’ integration, flatly contradicts Milward’s claim that federalist rhetoric was mainly for domestic consumption. It also reinforces arguments by Johansson (2002), van Hecke (2009) and others who have discussed the contemporary role of political party elite cooperation, for example in the TEU negotiations or the Convention on the Future of Europe (2002–3). The emerging consensus on the importance of both ideational factors and (material) interests for integration preferences and policies in historical perspective mirrors recent debates in International Relations theory (e.g., Risse 2003a; Wiener 2003a), as well as integration theory, about combining rational choice with constructivist approaches. Constructivist and sociological institutionalist scholars of the EU agree that ideas are culturally embedded in informal institutions and change slowly over time. Importantly, historians have the means to actually trace the origins and evolution of norms and world views in a long-term perspective. In the case of the transnational Christian democratic networks, for example, their general preference for a supranational Europe

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was informed by their transnationally shared experience of the supranational organisation of the Catholic Church, the regional anchoring of political Catholicism, and their collective memory of the overbearing centralised nation state of the nineteenth century culture wars. At the same time, historians do not have to be as hapless as Lipgens when it comes to making plausible claims that ideas can have causal effects on policy-making, at the very least by determining corridors of acceptable policy solutions which are broadly compatible with their ideational preferences. Ongoing historical research has begun to utilise political science concepts such as policy networks and entrepreneurial leadership, for example, to show how collective actors have succeeded in advancing and implementing particular ideas-driven policies. Thus, Seidel (2009) has brought out how the German Commissioner Hans von der Groeben managed with the help of a small cohesive expert network of mostly German and Dutch competition lawyers and economists and member-state officials from economic ministries to implant Freiburg School ordo-liberal economic ideas at EU level. Secondly, ideas matter in part because they shape the mindsets of individual actors and are shared by particular political and societal groups that influence debates and policy-making in member states and within the EU. From the perspective of a contemporary historian, however, what might be called the human dimension of politics and policymaking is often strangely absent from political science works on the EU. Earlier neo-functionalist studies of integration, and those in this broad tradition, do ascribe agency to supranational institutions and societal actors. Although steeped in a behavioural tradition, they seem to suggest that such agency is largely informed by structural requirements and interests, for example in the transfer of powers from national to EU level. At the same time, institutionalist studies, especially rational choice varieties, play down individual and collective agency in favour of interest-based explanations of member-state and institutional preferences and decision-making. On the whole, the leeway for EU decision-makers seems narrowly circumscribed by complex institutional set-ups and issues. Historical institutionalist path dependency is also in latent danger of taking on a determinist character, whereby policy change or reform appears nearly impossible in these circumstances. Against this background, I would recommend bringing people back into the study of the EU. This plea concerns, first, the individual agency of decision-makers. It may well be the case that the scope for such agency is much reduced in the EU of 27 member states and in an age when globalisation pressures and national and European-level business

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interests appear to dictate policy solutions; such rhetorical strategies are, however, often used by politicians to camouflage hidden agendas or policy failures. At the very least, however, early European integration until at least the 1970s offered much more scope for individual agency. Without the political leadership, risk-taking and control by Schuman, Adenauer and others over Franco-German relations and European policy-making around 1950, for example, it is unlikely that this form of functional core Europe integration with a supranational institutional design inviting Britain to exclude itself would have materialised. Likewise, the coordinated push by a very small group of UK, Swedish and Swiss business leaders, with support from the UK Board of Trade and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, led to the creation of the European Free Trade Association in 1959–60 (Kaiser 1999: 88–107). Had de Gaulle not come back to power over the totally unrelated domestic French political issue of the Algerian war, the institutional conflict of the 1960s might never have happened. In 1954, a slight majority even of Gaullist voters actually favoured the ratification of the EDC Treaty, and in January 1956, the party did disastrously in national elections which led to the temporary recreation of a broad centrist ‘pro-European’ political majority. Internal and external shocks like the Algerian war have at times drastically changed the political game within the EU. In such situations in particular, individual policy entrepreneurs – to use the political science term – have managed to exercise strong leadership. Without the liberalisation in Poland and the collapse of the GDR in 1989, for example, Oskar Lafontaine might well have become West German chancellor. Given that he was opposed to monetary union, it would not seem plausible at all to assume that he would have overruled the strong institutional reticence of the Bundesbank and majority opposition of West German public opinion to achieve this objective. This was precisely what Helmut Kohl, the Christian democrat leader, did because it was in line with his strong ideological integrationist preferences, which were fully in line with those of Adenauer, and facilitated by the structural transformations at the end of the Cold War and his enormous, albeit temporary, prestige as the ‘Chancellor of German unity’. Contemporary (social) historians are slowly discovering the need to bring people back into the study of the EU in another sense, namely not just small decision-making elites, but also European citizens affected by EU politics and involved to differing degrees in the process of the slow formation of a European society. Sociologists too often treat citizens as statistical units in their analysis of the European society. At this

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abstract level of analysis, social science studies certainly provide important insights into changing norms and patterns of social behaviour under the impact of EU governance. At the same time, however, this approach is sterile in its impersonal treatment of what have been actual individual and collective experiences by people of integration in the form of new economic opportunities and threats, transnational social contacts and changing cultural attitudes within the present-day EU as a social and communicative space. The transformation of the lives of EU citizens could thus emerge as a research field where historians develop more vivid narratives of social change under the impact of integration than the reductionist statistical approach of tables and graphs. Thirdly, time is not only money. The nature of their discipline requires contemporary historians to focus on the temporal dimension of socioeconomic, political and institutional continuity and change. As a result, they tend to emphasise the contingency – or context dependence – of historical events and developments. Internal or external shocks have at times fundamentally impacted on the process of integration. Social scientists tend to agree, for example, that integration in defence as a core dimension of national sovereignty has been, and continues to be, most difficult to achieve. Their contemporary experiences lead them, however, to exaggerate the barriers to defence integration in the 1950s. Just as the 1950 Pleven Plan in its form and timing was a French reaction to the external shock of demands by the United States for West German rearmament after the outbreak of the Korean War, so the failure of the EDC was largely circumstantial too. It resulted mainly from the collapse of the centrist ‘Third Force’ majority in France, and a combination of external shocks like Stalin’s death and the prospect of détente, and the French defeat in Indochina. In fact, all public opinion polls with the exception of the week before the vote in the French Assemblée Nationale actually showed substantial popular majorities in favour of EDC ratification. The successful ratification of the EDC would have fundamentally changed the political game, not least by erecting supranational institutional and defence policy-related barriers to the mad rush for EEC accession, which the UK government started in 1961. Moreover, whereas social scientists often take ‘snapshots’ of current events, sometimes getting overexcited by the novelty of it all, historians have the opposite, but healthier bias towards emphasising what the French annales school first called the longue durée: slow change over long-time spans. Looking at the current EU from such a vantage point could at times be useful even for social scientists who do

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not share a strong theoretical interest in history. One tendency of social science research is its inclination to define recent starting points for apparently totally new socio-economic, political and institutional phenomena. Thus, most radical advocates of the globalisation thesis were surprised when reminded by historians of the nineteenth century (Osterhammel and Petersson 2005) that despite other differences, the communication revolution and growth of a world economy were very similar features of what contemporaries described as internationalisation at the time. Similarly, scholars of EU (network) governance tend to assume that it replaced state-centric government from the 1980s onwards. Hirst (2000: 19) has claimed, for example, that the ‘practice of coordinating activities through networks, partnerships and deliberative forums (. . . ) have grown up on the ruins of the 1970s’. Recent historical research on political party and expert networks (Kaiser and Leucht 2008) has found, however, that they already exercised enormous influence on the geographical scope, the institutional shape and the policy orientation of the ECSC and the EEC of the 1950s, with important long-term effects. Closer cooperation between social scientists and historians could make it easier to define more precisely what is really novel in EU institutional and policy developments and patterns. In the case of governance, this may well be the growth of deliberative forums nurtured in particular by the Commission. However, contemporary historians can show that the Commission started this practice of advocacy building with the CAP and competition policy in the 1960s. The growth of (network) governance may also be the effect of the structural economic crisis in the 1970s in energising business interests into intervening much more vigorously in European politics and the growth of the new social movements and their progressive co-opting into supranational deliberation and policy-making (Gehler et al. 2009). Finally, EU politics has long-term dimensions going back before 1945 – not in the sense of ideas about Europe since Thomas of Aquinas but of the influence of culturally embedded norms, behavioural patterns and political language and discourses. These days, to emphasise such long-term cultural dimensions of EU politics probably makes a political scientist a sociological institutionalist or constructivist, but a historian, someone with common sense. It would seem futile to analyse EU attitudes to the Turkish membership question without an appreciation of the historical relations of Europe with Islam. As explained above, it is impossible to understand the political connotations of the principle of subsidiarity without grasping its intellectual and social origins in Catholic social teaching and regional politics across continental Western

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Europe, and why a socialist with Left-Catholic political socialisation like Jacques Delors fell for this image and model for an institutionalised Europe so quickly.1

Marginal: EU historians and the historical discipline Despite recent attempts to develop a conceptually and methodologically more sophisticated approach, and also to enhance interdisciplinary communication with the social sciences, the historiography of the EU is still very marginal within the larger field of modern history and even to the study of the contemporary history of Europe since 1945. The reasons for this sober state of the art are threefold. They have to do with the weaknesses of the historiography of the EU, the subject matter itself and the refusal of many contemporary historians to engage seriously with the integration process as a new highly institutionalised framework for the economic, social and political development of Europe. The predominant traditional ‘realist’ diplomatic history of European integration has confined this literature to the small disciplinary subfield of international relations history. For a long time, historians of European integration (and of British policy towards Europe) analysed integration in the larger context of the Western world and the Atlantic Alliance (e.g., Deighton 1997, 1993; Young 2000, 1996). This was perhaps more appropriate for the early post-war period than for the phase of increasing Europeanisation of integration in the form of horizontal economic integration and the formation of common policies like the CAP, competition and external trade policy. With a high point in the 1970s, many continental European academic systems experienced heated debates over the pre-eminence of domestic or foreign policy priorities for political processes and decision-making and over the related issue of the relative importance of what social scientists would call structure versus agency. One excellent example of this cleavage is the sharp controversy between the German historians Wehler (1975) and Hillgruber (1973). These debates with their national subtexts largely set social and diplomatic historians against one another and contributed to the development of traditionalist fortress mentalities. Later on, historians of international relations began to respond to challenges emanating mainly from the United States and partly from France, to modernise their sub-field (e.g., Loth and Osterhammel 2000; Conze et al. 2004). For example, they started to assimilate innovations from cultural history (Gienow-Hecht and Schumacher 2003) and the history of collective identities (Frank 2004). Especially historians

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of international relations of the nineteenth century, which was previously studied almost exclusively as a period of national conflict and integration, developed a more pluralistic conceptual and methodological arsenal for reconstructing transnational and cultural dimensions of ‘international’ European and world history (e.g., Herren 2000; Geyer and Paulmann 2001; Kaiser 2005). In contrast, most historians of the EU remained largely cut off from the reform of international history, sticking to their heavily state-centric ‘realist’ analysis of what was clearly a process of intensive institutionalisation and transnational integration. With the partial exception of a volume edited by Varsori (2006), most contributions to books published by the so-called Liaison Committee of Historians have analysed national policy ‘towards’ European integration as foreign policy. Broadly speaking, the same applies to the early years of the Journal of European Integration History published biannually by the same Liaison Committee since 1995. This diplomatic history of the EU became more and more marginal even within the sub-field of international relations history. Overcoming the methodological traditionalism of the ‘realist’ diplomatic history of interstate negotiations could allow historians of the EU to shed their self-inflicted stigma. Moreover, the development of new research fields, like Europeanisation as the impact of EU policy-making on the member states and transnational dimensions of the integration process, could provide opportunities for greater integration of the historiography of the EU with that of modern Europe more generally. At the same time, the subject matter of European integration is not easily accessible without a multilateral and transnational, not comparative, comprehension and substantial knowledge of the EU’s constitutionalisation and operation as a legal and institutional system. The enormous penetrating power of European-level policy-making largely escapes many contemporary historians who often have no more knowledge of the EU than the average reader of quality newspapers. The lack of intelligent advanced introductions to the history of the EU aggravates the resulting widespread sense that the study of the politics and history of the EU is a secluded sub-field without obvious relevance to the study of modern Europe more generally. Accompanied by US-style hype from his publisher, Gillingham (2003) has claimed to have written the first general history of the EU, but his book is in the main a eurosceptic Hayekian political pamphlet which contributes little to our understanding of EU history. At the same time, the existing textbooks on EU history (e.g., Urwin 1995; Bitsch 2003; Dinan 2004) geared towards the undergraduate market are heavily descriptive and provide

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no advanced introduction at all to relevant academic debates on the EU in history or the social sciences. Whatever the quality of historical scholarship on EU history, and the difficulties of understanding its complexities, historians of modern Europe are also to blame for their negligent treatment of European integration as not the only, but clearly the, most crucial political and economic framework for understanding contemporary European history since 1945. History as an academic discipline was closely associated in the nineteenth century with nation-state formation and national integration. Although many historians had wider interests, many more were closely involved with ‘inventing tradition’ (Hobsbawm 1983) for particular nationalist causes. The focus of this historiography was nationally introspective with long-term repercussions for the still much stronger national fragmentation of the discipline, employment opportunities and scholarly traditions than in the more international social sciences. Where historians superficially appeared to have overcome this national fragmentation, as in comparative social history influenced by modernisation theory, their approach actually strengthened the reconstruction of European history not as common experience, but as the sum of nationally distinctive ‘special paths’: notably the Prussian–German Sonderweg to Hitler with allegedly long-term continuities in the Federal Republic until the ‘student revolution’ of 1968, the evolution of Sweden into a neutral Nordic welfare state as a superior example of a democratic polity focussed on increasing equality between its citizens and the apparently eternal British ‘decline’ manufactured by incompetent imperial elites. Whether critical or affirmative, much of this national ‘special path’ historiography as embedded in broadly social democratic and left-liberal traditions largely externalised and neglected international relations and European integration after 1945. Incredibly, this failure is still reflected in the first sophisticated general histories of Europe since 1945. In one particularly striking example, Judt (2005) has written a contemporary history of Europe with a short superficial discussion of the origins of European integration after 1945 and without any substantial reference to the present-day EU thereafter, with the partial exception of the Maastricht Treaty.

Conclusion The historiography of the EU is in a sorry state of affairs. It is generally under-conceptualised and, so far, has especially failed to address the impact of institutionalisation and transnational network dimensions of

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integration on the emergence of a European supranational polity. It has only very occasionally related to the growing and voluminous social science research on the EU since the 1960s. When Milward (1993) advocated developing a ‘historical theory’ of European integration in delimitation from social science theories, his understanding of the state of the art of theory formation and debate was still informed by the cruder versions of neofunctionalism from the 1960s, which Hoffmann (1966) had already criticised almost 30 years earlier. At the same time, those political scientists, who have taken a largely instrumental interest in the history of the EU as empirical evidence for particular theoretical approaches, often fail minimum requirements for documentation on the basis of sources and source-based historical literature. Lastly, the contemporary history of the EU has been very marginal to the modern history of Europe and even its contemporary history since the Second World War. Inherent in such a situation is great potential for younger researchers to make their mark. What is needed is a conceptually and methodologically more sophisticated historiography to develop a much more analytical narrative of the EU as an emerging polity. It would also be helpful if more social science research were not only more historysensitive again, but also less rigidly theory-driven, and more competent in utilising often contradictory empirical evidence. As Warleigh-Lack (2009) has argued, moreover, it would be preferable if cooperation between contemporary historians and social scientists could extend beyond the greater mutual perception of their research. While other interesting fields of enquiry with potential for collaboration clearly exist, interdisciplinary research with political science could especially fruitfully focus on three core dimensions: patterns of institutional persistence and change over time within the EU; the role of informal networks in governance, which started long before the 1980s, although it might not have amounted to networks as a new form of governance; and the evolution of institutional and public debates about the ‘democratic deficit’, grassroots mobilisation for and against membership or further integration and institutional strategies to overcome (perceived) legitimacy deficits and to develop informal and formalised consultative mechanisms with ‘civil society’. In all three fields, contemporary historical research is still rudimentary, but has great potential. At the same time, from a historical perspective, most institutionalist research still appears too narrowly based on rational choice assumptions and research on networks and democracy legitimacy concerns and strategies prone to overemphasise their apparent novelty.

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EU historians could also develop interdisciplinary collaboration with sociological research on European integration. Sociology, like social history, has for too long confined itself to the at times comparative study of national societies and is only beginning to address integration as a social process of transnationalisation including the growth of crossborder networks, socialisation and transfers which may amount to the incipient formation of a European society (Rumford 2002; Müller H.-P. 2007). Social historians are beginning to question their established national paradigm and to conceptualise the social history of Europe as ‘overlapping’ history (Werner and Zimmermann 2002), utilising innovative approaches originally developed by cultural and international relations historians such as transnational history and cultural transfer. Crucially, however, they often have only rudimentary knowledge of political and institutional dimensions of European integration. Broadly speaking, it is in new research fields like transnational networks and Europeanisation in historical perspective, which overcome the exclusive focus on ‘Brussels’, that EU history, social history and sociological research could be fruitfully integrated in the analysis of European society formation. For EU historians, finally, it would also be crucial to integrate themselves better in the historical discipline more generally, especially in the history of modern and contemporary Europe. Provided that EU history succeeds in transforming itself into a modern innovative political history, which analyses supranational integration and politics as responding to, and impacting on, broader social developments and political contestation of a national and transnational character, it has great potential to influence the broader discipline. Thus, it would be extremely interesting, for example, to compare the history of the EU as the formation of a highly institutionalised polity and transnational society of sorts with national integration and nation-state formation in the nineteenth century. Newly created institutions and ‘supranational’ elites then as now (as well as historians funded by nationalists then and supranationalists now) adopted strategies of ‘inventing tradition’ to overcome ethnic and linguistic fragmentation and ideological conflicts. The EU is also a very interesting laboratory for growing cross-border and intercultural contacts and exchange under changing conditions from growing welfare to greater social strains under the impact of liberalisation, immigration and other factors. Moreover, without adopting blue-eyed Commission rhetoric about the EU as a model for regional integration and global governance, historians could and should address its perception, and that of Europe more generally, in other areas of

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the world as part of a new history of inter-regional relations, globalisation and world politics, which overcomes Eurocentrism and avoids the danger of EU-centrism. These may be ambitious objectives, but we need to set them out clearly to develop a sophisticated understanding of the history of the EU embedded in an interdisciplinary academic culture.

Note 1. Yet, an Oxford-educated British political scientist, who later became the director of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s policy unit at Number 10 Downing Street and received a peerage, excitedly claimed at the time of the Maastricht Treaty that he had found out (Adonis and Tyrie, 1992) that the subsidiarity idea was in essence a papal plot.

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Part II Institutional and Policy Developments

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4 The Heroic Age of European Integration is Over: Institutional and Policy Developments, 1957–2007 Mark A. Pollack and Molly A. Ruhlman∗

The premise of this volume, and of the elaborate festivities surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Rome,1 is that five decades of European integration provides an appropriate occasion and an excellent vantage point to reflect on the long-term process of European integration and to place today’s European Union (EU) in its historical context. This chapter attempts to do precisely that, by analyzing the basic long-term trends in both institutional and policy developments between 1957 and 2007 using the best and most comprehensive empirical indicators available. The chapter is arranged in three parts. In the first, we examine data relating to the institutional development of the European Communities (EC), and later the EU, examining developments in both the vertical separation of powers between the EU and its member states as well as the horizontal separation of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the EU over time. In the second part, we turn from institutions to policies and trace the development of EU regulatory policies and the establishment of what has been called an EU ‘regulatory state’, as well as the creation and expansion of the EU’s modest budget for distributive and redistributive spending. Third, and finally, we assess the state of EU institutional and policy development after five decades, including the potential impacts of the abandoned Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (the ‘Constitutional Treaty’) and its successor, the Treaty of Lisbon. Our aim throughout the chapter is primarily empirical rather than theoretical, and we make no effort to review or test competing theories of European integration. Nevertheless, the trends do suggest that, while 43

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the process of integration has by no means come to a conclusive halt, the pioneering or ‘heroic’ age of European integration is drawing to a close and that the EU now constitutes a mature polity or ‘stable constitutional compromise’ (Moravcsik 2005a, b). More concretely, we find that the EU’s institutional structure, having undergone major changes in the direction of greater supranationalism over the past two decades, is now fairly stable, with recent treaties representing only incremental changes towards greater use of majority voting and European Parliament (EP) empowerment. On the policy side, we find that today’s EU closely approximates the image of a ‘regulatory state’ with a steadily increasing acquis of EU regulations; but we also find that EU regulations are increasingly amendments or elaborations of previous policies, and – with a few exceptions – no longer represent new EU incursions into previously national policy areas. With regard to budgetary or expenditure policies, finally, we find considerable stability, with at best modest growth in EU spending, which remains concentrated in the same issue areas that have dominated EU spending since the 1970s.

Institutional developments The institutions established by the 1957 Treaty establishing the European Economic Community – the Treaty of Rome – were remarkable by the standards of their time for their ‘supranational’ character, including the delegation of specific powers and competences to the then European Economic Community (EEC), the possibility of qualified majority voting (QMV) among member states, the creation of supranational legislative, executive and judicial bodies (i.e. the EP, Commission, and Court of Justice), and the ability of those bodies to adopt and enforce ‘secondary legislation’ such as directives and regulations. All this was unusual, if not unique, among international organizations of the time. Moreover, the five intervening decades have witnessed a substantial deepening of all these institutions. The vertical division of powers: EU and national competences One obvious measure of European institutional development is the vertical separation of powers between the central, ‘federal’, or EU level in Brussels, on the one hand, and the various member states on the other. The EU, as is well known, is an ‘attributed powers’ system, in which the EU enjoys only such powers as have been delegated to it by the member states in the EU’s constitutive treaties. As a first measure, therefore, we can examine the conferral or delegation of powers to the EU level over

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the years, as in Table 4.1, which offers a checklist of conferred powers from the Treaties of Rome in 1957 through to the failed Constitutional Treaty, whose core provisions were, in turn, incorporated into the Treaty of Lisbon. Table 4.1 Formal Extensions of EU Competence, 1957 – Present, by Issue-Area Policy Area

Administrative cooperation Agriculture and fisheries Area of freedom, security, and justice Citizenship Civil protection Common commercial policy Common fisheries policy Common foreign and security policy Competition Consumer protection Culture Customs union Development cooperation Economic and social cohesion Economic policy Education Employment Energy Environment Humanitarian aid Industry Internal market International agreements Monetary policy Public health Research and technological development

TEC 1958

SEA 1987

TEU 1993

TA 1999

TN 2003

CT/TL (proposed) N

N

A

N

N

A

A

A

N

A

A

A

A

A

A N A

N

A

N

N

A

A N N

A

A

A A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A A

N N

N

N

A

A

A N

A

N N

N N

A A N N

A N A A A N

A A

A A

A A

A A

N A N A A A A A A

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Institutional and Policy Developments

Table 4.1 (Continued) Policy Area

Social policy Space Sport Taxation Territorial cohesion Tourism Trans-European networks Transport Vocational training Youth

TEC 1958

SEA 1987

TEU 1993

TA 1999

TN 2003

N

A

A

A

A

N

N N

A

N

A

A A N

A A

A

CT/TL (proposed) A N N A N N

A A A

Note: N – new competence; A – amended competence. Source: Adapted from Church and Phinnemore (2006: 95).

At first blush, Table 4.1 tells a clear story about the step-wise and inexorable expansion of EU competence from a relatively narrow set of issues (concentrated around the internal market, competition, agriculture, and transport) in the Treaty of Rome, expanding to a new set of issues (such as the environment, consumer protection, and research and development) in the 1987 Single European Act (SEA), and a dramatic expansion with the 1992 Treaty on European Union (Maastricht), the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam and the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. Indeed, one obvious conclusion to be drawn from this table is that the EU now enjoys the power to act in virtually every conceivable area of public policy. As the reader may have guessed, however, formal conferral of powers in the Treaties tells only part of the story, both understating the de facto extension of EU powers between treaties and overstating the EU’s actual impact in all these issue areas. The EU, like the United States and other federal or quasi-federal systems, relies not only on explicit conferral of powers to the central government but also on ‘flexible’ or ‘necessary and proper’ clauses, which authorize the central government to act where necessary to facilitate inter-state commerce or otherwise achieve its aims. In the Treaty of Rome, for example, Article 100 (now Articles 94 and 95, as amended) authorized the EEC to adopt harmonized regulations in areas related to the proper functioning of the internal market, and Article 235 (now Article 308) cast an even wider net, allowing the Council to adopt policies related to the core objectives of the EEC. These articles were actively used by the Council from the 1960s

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onwards, serving, for example, as the basis for the adoption of the first EC directives on environmental and consumer protection policy, as well as the establishment of the first EC spending policies for regional development (in the 1970s) and scientific research and development (in the 1980s) (Pollack 1994). As a result, the de facto division of competences between the EC and its member states developed gradually but inexorably over time. Table 4.2, which summarizes the development of EU policies over time, and in comparison with the US federal system, reveals both an impressive temporal development, as well as continuing variation across issue areas in today’s EU. On the one hand, the five decades since the Treaty of Rome have once again seen the EU establish at least a minor presence (1), and in many cases a leading role (4), in nearly every conceivable issue area, including issues such as foreign policy that are far Table 4.2 National and EU Policy-Making, by Issue-Area, 1957–2004 (with United States Comparison) Policy Area

Regulatory Policies Movement of goods and services Movement of capital Movement of persons Competition rules Product standards Environmental standards Industrial health and safety standards Labour market standards Financial services regulation Energy production and distribution Expenditure Policies Agricultural price support Regional development Research and development Social welfare and pensions Public health care Public education Public transport Public housing

EU

US

1957

1968

1993

2004

2004

2 1 2 2 2 2 2

3 1 3 3 3 2 2

4 4 4 4 4 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 3 3

4 4 4 4 4 3 3

1 1 2

1 1 2

3 3 3

3 4 3

2 3 3

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

4 1 2 1 1 1 1 1

4 3 2 2 2 1 1 1

4 3 2 2 2 2 1 1

4 3 2 3 3 3 2 2

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Institutional and Policy Developments

Table 4.2 (Continued) Policy Area

EU

US

1957

1968

1993

2004

2004

Monetary and Tax Policies Setting of interest rates/credit Issue of currency Setting of sales and excise taxes Setting of income tax levels

1 1 1 1

2 1 1 1

3 1 4 1

4 4 4 1

4 4 2 1

Citizen Policies Immigration and asylum Civil rights protection Policing and public order Criminal justice

1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

2 2 2 1

3 2 2 1

4 4 3 3

1 1 1 1 1

3 1 1 1 1

4 2 2 1 3

4 3 3 2 3

4 4 4 4 4

Foreign Policies Trade negotiations Diplomacy and IGO membership Economic-military assistance Defence and war Humanitarian and development aid Source: Adapted from Hix (2005: 20–21).

removed from the EEC’s original aim of fostering intra-European trade. On the other hand, Table 4.2 also reveals the significant variation across issue areas into the current decade, with the EU continuing to play at best a supporting role in many of the core areas of national sovereignty, including a panoply of welfare state issues (health care, education, and transport), taxation, and criminal justice. This patchwork of EU competences is particularly striking in comparison with the vertical division of powers in the United States and other federal systems, where the federal government takes on a far stronger role in many of these issue areas. Focusing on the development of EU policy over time also illustrates another central feature of the EU’s institutional development, namely, that the formal conferral of ‘new’ competences in the Treaties often follows an extended period of de facto policy-making in a given issue area, codifying rather than creating the EU’s role in that area. Indeed, as legal scholars have noted, the formal establishment of EU competence is often designed to limit and to forestall the ‘creeping’ expansion of EU competences to new issue areas.

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The result of these developments in the vertical separation of powers in the EU is two-fold. On the one hand, the various European treaties, as amended, now constitute a de facto federal system, if by federalism we mean ‘an institutional arrangement in which (a) public authority is divided between state governments and a central government, (b) each level of government has some issues on which it makes final decisions, and (c) a federal high court adjudicates disputes concerning federalism’ (Kelemen 2003: 185). On the other hand, however, it must be admitted that, particularly by comparison with other federal systems such as that of the United States or Germany, the EU’s ‘federal’ centre is weak – or rather its strength varies across issue areas with strong legal competences and a strong regulatory presence in core areas such as the internal market and competition policy and a relatively weak coordinating role in other areas, particularly those surrounding the core functions of modern welfare states (Moravcsik 2001: 163–164.) The horizontal division of powers: Legislative, executive, and judicial politics Unlike the parliamentary states of Western Europe, but like the United States, the EU can also be characterized by a horizontal separation of powers in which three distinct branches of government take the leading role in the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government, respectively. This does not mean, of course, that any one institution enjoys sole control of any of these three functions; indeed, as Kreppel (2002: 5) points out, the Madisonian conception of separation of powers ‘requires to a certain extent a co-mingling of powers in all three arenas (executive, legislative, and judicial)’. In the case of the EU, the legislative function is today shared by the Council and the EP, with an agenda-setting role for the Commission; the executive function is shared by the Commission, the member states, and (in some areas) European regulatory agencies; and the judicial function is shared by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the Court of First Instance (CFI), and a wide array of national courts bound directly to the ECJ through the preliminary reference procedure (Alter 2001). Legislative politics: The Council and the European Parliament One of the remarkable elements of the Treaties of Rome was the explicit provision for a legislative process, whereby the Council could (either alone or after consulting the EP) adopt binding legislation across a range of issue areas. The list of issue areas in which the EU is explicitly authorized to legislate has grown over time. In addition, however, the

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Institutional and Policy Developments

legislative process itself has been repeatedly reformed, in particular by the SEA, the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the Treaty of Amsterdam, and the Treaty of Nice. A thorough discussion of the EU legislative process is beyond the scope of this chapter, but simplifying only slightly, we can say that the two key developments have been (a) the extension of QMV within the Council and (b) the increased legislative role of the EP. With regard to the first, it is worth noting that the original Treaty of Rome, like the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (TECSC) before it, established different voting rules in the Council for different issues, each of which had a distinct ‘legal base’ in the Treaties. Over time, Wessels and his colleagues have demonstrated that the EC and EU have gained an ever-growing set of legal competences to legislate across a growing range of issue-areas (Wessels et al. 2003: 35). Perhaps the best known development in terms of institutional decisionmaking rules is the steady and spectacular increase in the number of legal bases allowing for QMV in the Council, with each new treaty amendment from the SEA through Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Nice, increasing the number of legal bases allowing for QMV. By the same token, however, member states have retained unanimous voting for a large number of legal bases covering, inter alia, sensitive issues such as taxation, police, and judicial cooperation and foreign policy. Furthermore, as Table 4.3 demonstrates, this growing number of QMV legal bases has translated into a growing number of actual pieces of EU legislation adopted through QMV. Indeed, while the precise numbers

Table 4.3 Council Voting Rules, Definitive Legislative Acts Adopted by Council, January 2003–May 2007 Council Voting Rule

Year 2003

2004

2005

2006

Jan–May 2007

Total

Simple Majority

Number % in Year

3 2

2 1

0 0

1 1

0 0

6 1

Unanimity

Number % in Year

57 29

69 30

33 25

31 15

8 23

198 25

QMV

Number % in Year

136 69

159 69

97 75

172 84

27 77

591 74

Total

Number % in Year

196 100

230 100

130 100

204 100

35 100

795 100

Source: Observatory of European Institutions database, Sciences Po Paris.

Mark A. Pollack and Molly A. Ruhlman

51

have fluctuated year by year, it is clear that approximately three-quarters of all legislation adopted by the EU in the 5 years prior to the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaties of Rome was adopted using a QMV legal base, with a smaller – but still sizable – number of Council decisions continuing to be adopted by unanimity. The significance of the QMV legal base is difficult to interpret since Council decision-making appears to be shaped by a well-documented if informal consensus norm (Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace 2006). Nevertheless, as a matter of institutional development, it is clear that the EU’s member states have been willing to subject the bulk of their joint decisions to QMV, while retaining unanimity (with its risk of non-decision and stalemate) for a smaller but still substantial subset of sensitive issues. A similar trend characterizes the participation of the EP in the EU legislative process. More precisely, the step-wise amendment of the Treaties has had two primary effects on the EP’s legislative role. First, beginning with the SEA, recent treaties have created an expanded range of legislative procedures. The original Treaty of Rome included only three legislative procedures: Council acts alone; EP is informed; and the ‘consultation’ procedure in which the EP was consulted on a decision and offered an opinion, which was, however, non-binding on the Council. Later treaties created a new assent procedure in which the EP was allowed to cast a straight up-or-down vote on the Council’s draft legislation: a cooperation procedure in which the EP could propose amendments that would, if adopted by the Commission, be easier for the Council to adopt than to reject; and two versions of a co-decision procedure in which the EP finally enjoyed co-equal status with the Council in a fully bicameral legislative procedure.2 This diversification of EU legislative procedures has led, over time and multiple treaties, to a hodgepodge of legislative procedures with the EP enjoying different degrees of influence in the legislative process, depending on the legal basis of the legislation and the decision-making procedure specified therein (Wessels et al. 2003: 37). Without doubt the most significant of these developments is the impressive growth, but also the limits, of the EP’s legislative power under the co-decision procedure. Created in 1993, the co-decision procedure was subsequently reformed and expanded by Amsterdam and Nice so that the EP now enjoys genuine bicameral status with the Council across a broad range of issue areas. Indeed, as Table 4.4 illustrates, the codecision procedure now governs approximately two-fifths of all binding EU legislation, including vital areas such as the internal market, environmental protection, and social policy. Nevertheless, as Table 4.4 also

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Institutional and Policy Developments

Table 4.4 Legislative Procedures, Definitive Legislative Acts Adopted by Council, January 2003–May 2007 Year 2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

Accord

Number % in Year

3 2

2 1

3 2

2 1

1 3

Assent

Number % in Year

0 0

1 0

2 2

0 0

0 0

Consultation

Number % in Year

70 36

85 37

45 35

69 34

10 29

Co-decision

Number % in Year

80 41

90 39

47 36

77 38

15 43

Others

Number % in Year

43 22

52 23

33 25

56 28

9 26

Total

Number % in Year

196 100

230 100

130 100

204 100

35 100

Source: Observatory of European Institutions database, Sciences Po Paris.

demonstrates, the co-decision procedure is not yet the general rule for the adoption of EU legislation, much of which continues to be adopted by the Council acting alone or subject to the non-binding consultation of the EP. Here again, then, we have a mixed picture, with a genuinely impressive growth in the legislative power of the EP over five decades but also with a system in which the Council remains dominant for much legislation, and in which the EU legislative process overall is not – or at least not yet – fully bicameral. Finally, it is worth noting that the growth of the EP’s legislative powers over the past five decades has been accompanied by growth in its other key functions, which include its powers in deciding the annual EU budget alongside the Council, as well as its supervisory powers over the Commission. As Table 4.5 demonstrates, the original Treaty of Rome provided the EP with no significant budgetary power and with only the ability to sack the Commission as a body. With the 1970 and 1975 budget treaties, however, the EP gained a significant role in the annual budgetary process (albeit hedged in by a ‘maximum rate of increase’ and by a distinction between ‘compulsory’ and ‘non-compulsory’ expenditures set by the member states), while the SEA and subsequent treaties increased the EP’s role in the nomination

Table 4.5 Powers of the European Parliament, Major Developments, 1957–2007 Treaty

Legislative Powers

Supervisory Powers

Budgetary Powers

Treaty of Rome (1957)

Consultation procedure for 22 Treaty articles.

Right to poset questions to and censure Commission.

None

Right to be consulted on nomination of members of the Court of Auditors.

EP serves, along with the Council, as part of the “Budgetary Authority,” with power to amend Council’s draft budget and provide discharge of budget.

Budget Treaties (1970, 1975)

Single European Act (1985)

Cooperation procedure established for internal market legislation. Assent procedure for accession and association agreements.

Treaty on European Union (1992)

Creation of co-decision procedure (I) for 15 treaty articles. Cooperation procedure extended. Assent procedure extended. Consultation procedure extended. EP excluded from second and third pillars.

Right to consultation on nomination of Commission President, ECB members. Right of assent to nomination of full Commission. Standing to bring cases before ECJ to protect its own prerogatives.

53

54

Table 4.5 (Continued) Treaty

Legislative Powers

Supervisory Powers

Budgetary Powers

Treaty of Amsterdam (1997)

Reform of co-decision to make EP an equal partner of Council (removal of third reading). Co-decision extended to new treaty articles. Near-elimination of cooperation procedure. Assent procedure extended. Consultation procedure extended. EP entitled to consultation or information in second and third pillars. Still no EP participation for 92 (72 EC and 20 EU) treaty articles.

Second- and third-pillar expenditures to be charged to EU budget (with exception of military expenditures or if Council decides otherwise by unanimity).

Right of assent in nomination of the Commission President.

Treaty of Nice (2001)

Modest extension of co-decision procedure (areas previously decided by unanimity in Council), assent for enhanced cooperation.

Investiture process amended, Council now votes by QMV, increasing EP influence.

Source: EU Treaties, Hix et al. 2007: 14–15.

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and approval of the Commission President, as well as the College of Commissioners as a group. For these reasons, it is often said that, of all the EU’s supranational institutions, the EP has been a ‘big winner’ from the periodic institutional reforms of the past five decades (Dehousse 1998a: 603; Benedetto and Hix 2007). The same has not been true for all the EU’s supranational institutions. Executive powers: The Commission The executive powers of the EU are shared by a number of actors, at both the EU and national levels (Tallberg 2007). At the EU level, the Commission is frequently depicted as the executive branch of the EU, with the following: significant powers to adopt and implement regulations in areas such as competition policy; powers to implement spending programmes such as the EU Structural Funds, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and research and development policy; powers to monitor and enforce the implementation of laws by member state governments (the ‘guardian of the Treaties’ role); the exclusive right to negotiate on behalf of the EU in the area of international trade in goods and services; and the sole right of legislative initiative for a wide range of issues (Pollack 2003: 75–154). In practice, however, the Commission shares some of these EU-level executive functions with the member governments acting in the European Council, the Council, and various ‘comitology’ or oversight committees, as well as with a growing body of ‘independent regulatory agencies’ such as the European Medicines Agency and the European Food Safety Authority. Furthermore, as a relatively small executive body based primarily in Brussels, the Commission relies almost exclusively on member state bureaucracies to implement EU policies ‘on the ground’. If we look at trends over time, we see that many of the Commission’s core executive functions were delegated relatively early in the life of the EU, most notably in the Treaty of Rome, which included the Commission’s ‘guardian of the treaties’ functions, its roles as competition policy regulator and trade negotiator, and its powerful agenda-setting role, with the sole right of initiative for all EEC legislation (Pollack 2003: 91–101). These powers were extended in practice between treaties by the delegation, in secondary legislation, of additional responsibilities for regulation and for management of EU spending programs. These new responsibilities were, however, also subject to various control mechanisms, including most notably comitology committees, as well as administrative-law provisions that allow actors to challenge the legality

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Institutional and Policy Developments

of Commission decisions (Franchino 2007). The SEA further increased the powers of the Commission by extending QMV in the Council and implementing the cooperation procedure, both of which enhanced the Commission’s agenda-setting role. With the adoption of the TEU, however, the Commission was notably excluded from any significant role in the second and third pillars of the EU, demonstrating some member state distrust of potential independent Commission action in the sensitive issue areas of justice and home affairs (JHA) and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The Commission’s agenda-setting powers, moreover, were weakened by the introduction of a new co-decision procedure in which the Council and the EP could, acting by their respective majorities and without the Commission’s agreement, freely amend the Commission’s proposed legislation; and the Commission was either excluded from or shared agenda-setting powers with other institutions in the new pillars and in the new treaty provisions on economic and monetary union (EMU). The Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice subsequently gave the Commission a greater role in second and third pillar decisions. Nevertheless, the weakness of the Commission in these new areas, together with its weakened agenda-setting role in co-decision, and its increasing responsibility to the EP, as well as to the member states, have led many analysts to conclude that the Commission has become weaker as an institution over time, with the EP most notably gaining power at the Commission’s expense (Moravcsik 1998; Tsebelis and Garrett 2000). Judicial politics: The European Court of Justice The judicial function in the European Communities has been played, from the Treaties of Rome onwards, primarily by the ECJ, in cooperation with national courts with which it is linked through a ‘preliminary reference’ procedure. Like the Commission, but unlike the EP, the ECJ was granted extensive powers and jurisdiction at a relatively early stage. More specifically, in the Treaty of Rome, the ECJ was granted the power to hear enforcement actions against the member states, the power of judicial review of Community acts or failures to act, and the ability to accept ‘preliminary references’ from national courts within the various member states. These impressive powers have also grown modestly over the years in subsequent treaty revisions, which gave the ECJ the power to fine member states for persistent non-compliance with EU law and created the CFI and other secondary courts to hear the growing number of cases brought under EU law. These new powers were, however, also subject to new and Byzantine restrictions in the second and third pillars,

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where ECJ jurisdiction is restricted in practice by provisions limiting access to the ECJ from member state courts. As is well documented, however, the ECJ’s important role in the integration process – often characterized as a quiet legal revolution which ‘constitutionalized’ the treaties and proclaimed core constitutional principles such as the supremacy and direct effect of Community law – arose not from any treaty amendments but rather from the ECJ’s own jurisprudence and from its long-standing alliance with national courts, which provided a growing number of cases for its consideration (for good discussions, see Weiler 1991; Alter 2001; Conant 2007a). Evidence of this quiet revolution can be seen in the steady and impressive increase in the number of ECJ judgments over five decades (Figure 4.1), and this increase is more impressive when placed alongside the large number of cases now heard by the CFI, created in 1989 (Figure 4.2). While the implementation of EU law remains imperfect (Falkner et al. 2005), there is no doubt that today’s EU is a system governed by a rule of law that penetrates deeply into the legal orders of the EU’s member states. More generally, we have seen an impressive pattern of institutional development and deepening over the past five decades, with growing EU competences vis-à-vis the member states and increasing legislative, judicial and (to a lesser extent) executive powers for the EU’s supranational institutions. Nevertheless, as we have also seen, the institutional

400

ECJ Judgments

350 300 250 200 150 100 50

19

53 19 56 19 59 19 62 19 65 19 68 19 71 19 74 19 77 19 80 19 83 19 86 19 89 19 92 19 95 19 98 20 01 20 04

0

Year Figure 4.1

European Court of Justice, Judgments, 1957–2005

Source: European Court of Justice 2005.

58

Institutional and Policy Developments

700 600

Cases

500 400 300 200 100

19 89 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05

0

Year Figure 4.2 Court of First Instance, Cases Lodged, 1989–2005 Source: European Court of Justice 2005.

development of the EU remains highly uneven, with the EU’s competences and capacities resembling a strong and centralized state in some areas and a much weaker international organization in others.

Policy developments What then of policy? What have EU institutions actually done with their delegated powers and how have EU policies developed over the five decades since the Treaties of Rome were signed? Here again, space precludes a full discussion of the range of EU policies and policy-making procedures (but see Wallace et al. 2005 for such a review). We, therefore, restrict ourselves here to a broad brush survey of EU policy developments, which we divide (following common practice) into regulatory and budgetary spending policies. Regulatory policies: Towards a regulatory state? The Treaty of Rome, like the TECSC before it, was unusual in that it created an international organization with the ability to adopt regulations

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which would be binding upon its member states and enforceable before the ECJ. From the beginning, the drafters of the Treaty of Rome understood that the creation of a common market would require the adoption of ‘harmonized’ or ‘approximated’ EU regulations, and the Treaty included a number of provisions allowing for the Council to adopt Directives (broad framework legislation that sets general goals and leaves implementation to member states) and Regulations (more detailed and directly effective) to this end. The harmonization process proved initially slow and ungainly, hampered by a diverse set of regulatory preferences and a de facto unanimous decision rule (Dashwood 1983). Nevertheless, over the course of decades, the Commission proposed, and the Council adopted, a growing number of Directives and Regulations setting Community-wide standards ranging from product safety to environmental and consumer protection, workplace health and safety, and many other areas. This regulatory project was accelerated by the adoption of the ‘1992’ internal market programme, the SEA, and the subsequent extension of QMV to a growing number of issue areas. By the early 1990s, scholars like Majone (1996) were referring to the EU as a ‘regulatory state’, in which the internal market project created a demand for EU regulations, while an entrepreneurial Commission provided a steady supply of legislative initiatives. Some, like former Commission President, Jacques Delors, predicted that the EU might eventually emerge as the source of 80 per cent of economic regulations in the EU, although others suggested that the EU’s regulatory project and output might have peaked with the adoption of the 1992 internal market programme (Pollack 2000). How accurate is this depiction of the EU as a regulatory state? How have EU regulatory policies developed over time? At what rates have those policies developed and in which issue areas? Does the EU continue to regulate at the feverish pace of the 1980s and early 1990s, or has EU regulation peaked? In order to get at these questions, we consulted the EU’s Eur-Lex database, tracing the growth and development of the so-called acquis communautaire – EU legislative instruments in force – over time and across issue areas. As a first approximation, we collected data, on an annual basis, of the total number of legislative instruments in force in each year from 1952 [the first year of operation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)] to 2006. The results, shown in Figure 4.3, demonstrate a steady and continuing increase in the size of the acquis, which has continued to grow incrementally each year for decades, including in the period since the ‘completion’ of the 1992 internal market programme and the 1995 and 2004 enlargements of

60

Institutional and Policy Developments

the EU. Since this figure includes a range of regulatory instruments, including Directives, Regulations, and Decisions, we double-checked these findings by calculating the size of the acquis on an annual basis, looking only at Directives, which have been the preferred method for laying out the regulatory frameworks for the internal market. While the numbers are smaller (approximately 2000 Directives in force in 2006 compared with more than 25,000 total pieces of legislation in force that same year), the pattern of steady and continuing growth in Figure 4.4 is similar to that of Figure 4.3.

25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0

19 5 19 2 55 19 58 19 61 19 64 19 67 19 70 19 73 19 76 19 79 19 82 19 85 19 88 19 91 19 94 19 97 20 00 20 03 20 06

Total Legislation in Force

30000

Year Figure 4.3 EU Legislation in Force, 1952–2006

2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0

19 5 19 2 55 19 58 19 61 19 64 19 67 19 70 19 73 19 76 19 79 19 82 19 85 19 88 19 91 19 94 19 97 20 00 20 03 20 06

Total Directives in Force

Source: Eur-Lex database.

Year Figure 4.4 EU Directives in Force, 1952–2006 Source: Eur-Lex database.

Mark A. Pollack and Molly A. Ruhlman

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Exploring the data in more detail, we then broke down both totals by issue area; the results are reported in Figures 4.5 and 4.6, which give a better sense of the core areas of EU regulation, as well as the different uses of Directives compared with other types of legislative instruments. Figure 4.5, which shows issue-specific totals for each of the categories in the Eur-Lex database, illustrates the importance of the CAP (which although primarily a spending policy generates a huge number of Regulations and Decisions governing the markets for various products), as well as the large number of legal instruments associated with the EU’s external economic policies, and the much smaller number of Regulations associated with other issue areas. By contrast, as we had expected, the largest number of EU Directives depicted in Figure 4.6 have focused on the EU’s internal market, with a smaller but still sizable acquis for agriculture and for environment, consumer protection, and health policy. One significant question posed in the literature is whether the EU’s regulatory activity has decreased since the heyday of the 1992 programme and/or whether specific issue areas have decreased or increased in importance over time in EU regulation. Figure 4.7 speaks to this first question, showing the average annual rates of growth of the acquis for each of the six decades since the establishment of the ECSC. Here, we find that, whether we measure in terms of all binding legislation or restrict our analysis to Directives, the story is the same: after growing quickly from a very low base in the early years, the acquis has continued to grow, albeit at a slightly declining rate, during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. While these figures list total regulations in force rather than annual output of legislation, they suggest that the EU remains an active regulator, with a body of regulation that continues to grow by approximately 5 per cent per year into the current decade. Nevertheless, we were interested to see whether some areas of regulation had matured and cease to grow, while others perhaps demonstrate greater dynamism in the current decade. Table 4.6, accordingly, shows the average annual rates of growth in EU regulation during 2000–06 by issue area. The results show great sensitivity to the choice of legislative instrument, with Directives showing either faster growth rates (energy, JHA) or slower growth rates (e.g. 0 per cent for the CFSP) than the more inclusive measure of all legislation. Looking across both columns and both measures, we see that certain issue areas are indeed growing far more rapidly than others in the current decade, with the second and third pillars of CFSP and JHA, the relatively new area of EMU, and several other issue areas such as energy growing relatively quickly, while

62

9000 Agriculture External relations Industrial policy/Internal market Customs union/free movement of goods Environment, consumers and health General, financial and Institutional matters Fisheries Transport CFSP Area of freedom, security and justice Freedom of movement for workers/social policy EMU/free movement of capital Science, Information, education and culture Energy Regional/structural policy Right of establishment/freedom to provide service Taxation Laws relating to undertakings Competition People’s Europe

Total Legislation in Force

8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000

year Figure 4.5

EU Legislation in Force, by Issue-Area, 1952–2006

Source: Eur-Lex database.

2006

2003

2000

1997

1994

1991

1988

1985

1982

1979

1976

1973

1970

1967

1964

1961

1958

1955

1952

0

900 800 Industrial policy/internal market Agriculture Environment, consumers and health Transport Right of establishment/freedom to provide sevices Freedom of movement for workers/social policy Taxation Laws relating to undertakings Energy Science, information, education and culture General financial and institutional matters Customs union/free movemet of goods Area of freedom. security and justice External relations EMU/free movement of capital Competition policy Regional/structural policy People’s Europe Fisheries CFSP

Directives in Force

700 600 500 400 300 200 100

55 19 58 19 61 19 6 19 4 67 19 70 19 73 19 76 19 79 19 82 19 85 19 88 19 91 19 94 19 97 20 00 20 03 20 06

19

19

52

0

Year Figure 4.6 EU Directives in Force, by Issue-Area, 1952–2006 Source: Eur-Lex database.

63

Annual Growth Rate

64

30 25 20 15 10 5 0

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

00–06

Decade Average annual growth rate all legislation Average annual growth rate directives

Figure 4.7 Annual Growth Rate of the Acquis, by Decade Source: Eur-Lex database.

Table 4.6 Annual Growth Rates (in per cent) of EU Regulation by Issue-Area, 2001–2006 Issue-Area

All Legislation

Directives

Common foreign and security policy Economic and monetary policy/free movement of capital Fisheries Competition policy Area of freedom, security, and justice Laws relating to undertakings Environment, consumers, and health General, financial, and institutional matters External relations Agriculture Taxation Industrial policy and internal market Science, information, education, and culture People’s Europe Transport Freedom of movement for workers/social policy Energy Right to establishment/freedom to provide services Customs union/free movement of goods Regional/structural policy

27.25 16.34

0.00 11.88

14.05 13.53 12.92 12.26 11.35 11.15 11.09 9.95 9.84 7.99 7.99 7.82 7.71 6.80

10.28 9.09 27.99 10.43 9.09 18.93 2.30 6.81 5.76 6.06 3.26 10.28 10.15 7.66

6.42 6.25

15.31 7.34

5.00 4.58

6.89 3.94

Total

10.42

7.13

Source: Eur-Lex database.

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many of the more mature areas associated with the internal market show single-digit – but still uniformly positive – rates of growth. In sum, our data suggest that the popular image of the EU as a regulatory state is broadly correct, and the body of EU regulation continues to grow, albeit at a slightly diminished rate in recent years, with pockets of real dynamism in selected areas. Nevertheless, we suggest four notes of caution in interpreting these data as evidence for the EU as an increasingly active regulatory state. First, as we have seen, the regulatory activity and reach of the EU varies widely by issue area with a concentration in the EU’s core functions of the internal market, agriculture, and external economic relations, while in other areas the EU remains a less active regulator, and some areas such as education and culture are explicitly closed to regulatory harmonization under treaty rules. Second, the figures measure only the quantity of regulations adopted, not the stringency or quality of those regulations. Some scholars have expressed concern that recent enlargements may produce a reduction in the ambition or protection afforded by EU regulations (see Wallace 2007). In addition, it may be that the pioneering, ground-breaking legislation of earlier periods – which established, for example, the basic frameworks for environmental or sex equality law in the EU – are now largely behind us and that contemporary Directives and Regulations are what one might describe as ‘tertiary legislation’, i.e. amending legislation that refines core regulatory provisions adopted in the past. Our data, like similar data collected by the Observatory of European Institutions at Sciences Po (Dehousse et al. 2007), do not speak to this question of regulatory quality, which remains as a vital, if difficult, subject for future study. Third, while the EU is indeed an important and active regulatory body, it has stopped well short of the widely cited prediction that 80 per cent of all European economic regulation would begin in Brussels. Rather, estimates for Germany by Moravcsik and Töller (2007) suggest that the actual percentage of national regulations that trace their roots to EU regulation is closer to 30 per cent. Once again, moreover, these figures demonstrate wide variation by issue area (with high EU influence in agriculture and the environment and low or negligible influence in areas such as education and social security), as well as a declining influence of the EU on national regulation since the 1990s. While Moravcsik and Töller report findings for only a single member state, these figures are highly suggestive and point to the need for further comparative research.

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Institutional and Policy Developments

Fourth, the continuing growth of the regulatory acquis should not distract us from another major development in which the EU has opted increasingly to eschew binding regulations in sensitive issue areas, opting instead for an Open Method of Coordination (employment, pensions, social inclusion) of unproven efficacy (Rhodes and Citi 2007), as well as the creation of European networks of regulators that seek to coordinate national regulations in an informal, non-binding fashion (Coen and Thatcher 2008). We find no evidence that these new types of ‘soft’ regulation have replaced legally binding regulation at the EU level, but these examples do suggest that the nature of EU regulation may be changing substantially, with a ‘Cambrian explosion’ of institutional forms featuring soft law provisions alongside traditional regulations, as well as an increasing incidence of ‘hybrid’ regulations combining elements of both (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008).

Budgetary policies By contrast with the early development and steady rise of the EU’s regulatory capacity and policies, the EU’s budgetary policies developed more slowly, linked closely to the establishment of a CAP in the 1960s. The 1970 and 1975 Budgetary Treaties established the basic budgetary rules for the Community, creating a small but dedicated set of ‘own resources’ and establishing a budget process in which the Council would take the lead in establishing overall budgetary spending limits and ‘compulsory expenditures’ (particularly on agriculture), while allowing the EP to offer amendments to and increase of the Council’s budgetary allotments by a small amount each year (Lindner 2006). The result, into the 1980s, was an EU budget that was tiny in comparison to national budgets and devoted almost exclusively to agriculture with a small but growing allocation of funds to the redistributive Structural Funds and to pilot programmes of distributive policies in areas such as research and technological development and the environment (Pollack 1994). With the internal market initiative in the mid-1980s, however, and the subsequent establishment of EMU in the 1990s, came a dramatic expansion in the EU budget, and a reallocation of funds away from agriculture (the growth of which began to slow, if not reverse, in a series of reforms) and towards the Structural Funds, research, and other new spending programmes. By contrast with the year-on-year budgets of the 1970s and early 1980s, the so-called Delors I and II packages of 1988 and 1993 established new multi-annual ‘financial perspectives’ in which

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member governments set budgetary ceilings and spending priorities for longer periods of 5 or 7 years. More concretely, the Delors I and II packages increased the EU’s budgetary ceiling to 1.27 per cent of EU gross national income (GNI) and dramatically increased the size of the Structural Funds, which now joined the CAP in comprising the vast bulk of EU budgetary spending. The results of these decisions, in terms of both the size and the allocation of EU expenditures, can be seen in Figure 4.8. By the end of the 1990s, however, the tide in EU budgetary policies seemed to have turned, for various reasons. The high cost of German unification had weakened support in that country, which had previously acted as the largest net contributor and ‘paymaster’ to the EU budget, for any further increases in spending. At the same time, the imminent prospect of enlargement changed member states’ calculations of their net contributions to the EU budget, making previous net recipients of EU funds like France into net contributors. Finally, efforts by member states to satisfy the ‘convergence criteria’ for EMU created a push for fiscal austerity that once again limited the willingness of member states to 120000

100000

Billions of Euros

80000 ECSC EDF Other Pre-accession Administration External action Research Structural Funds EAGGF Guarantee Section

60000

40000

20000

19 5 19 8 6 19 0 6 19 2 6 19 4 6 19 6 6 19 8 7 19 0 7 19 2 7 19 4 7 19 6 7 19 8 8 19 0 8 19 2 8 19 4 8 19 6 8 19 8 9 19 0 9 19 2 9 19 4 9 19 6 9 20 8 0 20 0 0 20 2 04

0

Year

Figure 4.8

EU Budgetary Expenditures, by Issue-Area, 1958–2005

Source: European Commission 2005: 148–152.

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Institutional and Policy Developments

consider any further increase in EU spending (Pollack 2000: 527–529). As a result, the 2000–06 budgetary perspective held the EU’s financial ceiling constant, and the most recent financial perspective, adopted in December 2005, also bears the marks of fiscal austerity. Despite the enlargement to 12 new and generally relatively poor states in 2004 and 2007, the EU’s budgetary ceiling for 2007–13 has been set at 1.045 per cent of EU GNI. This new budgetary framework allows for incremental increases in EU spending in line with economic growth but projects a slight decrease in agricultural spending and only modest increases in spending on the Structural Funds and other categories of expenditure (European Union 2006). Hence, by contrast with the EU’s regulatory acquis, which continues to grow and shows selected areas of real dynamism, the long-term trend in EU budgetary spending appears to have stabilized, with a budget of around 1 per cent of EU GNI devoted primarily to the Structural Funds and agriculture, with much smaller amounts available for other priorities such as research and development and external affairs. The EU will continue to face demands for new spending, particularly from farmers and from the new member states seeking greater redistribution of funds from wealthier members, but the entrenched resistance from net-contributing countries, together with the general climate of fiscal austerity and the unanimity rules for the setting of the EU’s budgetary ceiling, are likely to restrict any dramatic increase in EU spending, which will remain both tiny and specialized by comparison with the national welfare states of its members.

The state of the Union Thus far in the chapter we have looked at various long-term trends in the institutional and policy development. In terms of institutions, we have noted in the vertical separation of powers EU institutions gaining increasing competences and the development of a de facto federal system. By the same token, however, we have noted that the EU’s ‘federal’ powers are weak and highly uneven across issue areas and that many recent treaty revisions have actually proven to be conservative in orientation, limiting, as well as empowering, EU institutions in sensitive issue areas. Looking at the horizontal separation of powers, we have again seen the increase of the EU’s legislative powers, with an ever increasing set of legislative competences combined with the growing use of QMV and the growing legislative power of the EP. We have also seen a steadily increasing role for the EU judiciary, whose jurisprudence continues to

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grow in an EU characterized by the rule of law. Once again, however, we also note limits to the EU’s institutional development, including the not-yet-equal status of the EP in the legislative process, the retention of unanimity for sensitive decisions in the Council, and the declining position of the Commission, particularly in the legislative process. In this concluding section, we place the current state of the EU in context, assessing recent claims that the EU is a ‘mature polity’ characterized by a stable ‘constitutional compromise’, placing the Constitutional Treaty and its successor, the Treaty of Lisbon, in long-term context.

A mature polity? The process of European integration over the past five decades has been real and impressive, taking place in some cases gradually (as in the growth of EU legislation and de facto competences) and in some cases through ‘history-making’ decisions by the member states (mostly institutional developments and budgetary spending). In some areas, moreover, the evidence we have surveyed points to continuing dynamism in the integration process, most notably in the continued growth of EP power, the continued development of European jurisprudence, and the continued growth of the EU’s regulatory acquis, especially in ‘young’ areas such as EMU and the second and third pillars. Nevertheless, we propose another complementary reading of the evidence presented above, which suggests that, in both institutional and policy terms, the heroic age of European integration is over, with the EU developing into a ‘mature’ and relatively stable political system, albeit one with some peculiar characteristics. If we look at the vertical separation of powers between the member states and the EU, for example, we see that the landmark creation of new EU competences – for the internal market and for areas such as the environment, EMU, and the second and third pillars – were nearly all undertaken between the Treaties of Rome in 1957 and the TEU in 1992. By contrast, most of the EU’s ‘new competences’ since the TEU have either been weak competences (as with the non-binding employment policy established with the Treaty of Amsterdam) or have in fact restricted the further development of EU competences by, for example, ruling out EU harmonization (e.g. for education, culture, and public health). Barring any major exogenous shocks, the EU’s policy competences – strong in some areas, skeletal in others – appear to be well established and essentially stable. Much the same can be said of the development of the EU’s horizontal separation of powers. Recent treaties have continued a gradual increase

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in the use of QMV, as well as the legislative powers of the EP, essentially continuing a process that had begun with the SEA and the TEU and inching the EU closer to a bicameral legislative system. By contrast, the executive powers of the Commission have proven remarkably stable over time, while its legislative powers have withered, and the European Court system, while enhanced through the creation of new and specialized courts and tribunals, retains a jurisdiction that has changed only marginally since the Treaties of Rome. In terms of policy development, the EU remains an active regulator, with an acquis growing at a modest rate, but the pioneering days of EU regulation – establishing the basic regulations of the internal market, and moving into new policy areas – appear to be largely in the past. Indeed, as Hix (2007: 149–52) has pointed out, the primary regulatory debates of the 1970s and 1980s, which centred around the question of whether the EU should regulate in areas like the environment, have largely been settled, replaced by questions of how it should regulate in areas where its competences, and their limits, are now well established. In the area of EU budgetary policies, finally, we find a levelling off of EU spending over the past two financial perspectives. While we have not attempted, in this chapter, to falsify or support any particular theory of European integration, the decreasing rate of institutional and policy change that we observe is broadly consistent with the otherwise diverse views of scholars like Hix (2005, 2007), who views the EU as a mature political system in which left-right contestation has replaced the integration dimension of contestation in earlier periods, and Moravcsik (2005a, b), who sees the ‘European Constitutional Compromise’ as a stable equilibrium. In Moravcsik’s view, the EU’s current constitutional order draws its fundamental stability from three key factors. First, in functional terms, the EU is pursuing no grand projet comparable to the internal market or EMU, each of which previously motivated major institutional reforms, and current policy priorities, such as CFSP and JHA, are attainable within the current constitutional order.3 Second, in institutional terms, existing treaties establish high thresholds for basic constitutional change, particularly in an enlarged EU in which member states face pressures to hold plebiscites on major integrative decisions.4 Third and finally, in ideological terms, Moravcsik argues that the current framework enjoys broad popular consent, with no popular mandate for a deeper union in the foreseeable future. The evidence examined so far is broadly consistent with Hix’s and Moravcsik’s views of the EU as a mature and relatively stable polity, whose basic institutional structure has changed primarily at the margins since the 1993 TEU and whose regulatory and especially budgetary

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policies are well established and likely to change only incrementally in response to changing policy challenges and public preferences. Nevertheless, following the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaties of Rome and the ‘constitutional crisis’ engendered by the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty, the member states in December 2007 did sign the Treaty of Lisbon, which adopted the core institutional reforms of the Constitutional Treaty without its symbolic and constitutional features. How does the Treaty of Lisbon, which awaits ratification, fit into the long-term institutional trends recounted in this chapter?

The Treaty of Lisbon A thorough analysis of the Treaty of Lisbon is, of course, well beyond the scope of this brief chapter (but see: Duff 2007; Europolitics 2007; Tobler and Beglinger 2007). Nevertheless, if we focus on our core institutional categories of the vertical and horizontal separation of powers, a familiar picture emerges. With regard to the former, the new Treaty is more explicit than previous treaties in specifying the competences of the EU and the principles underlying those competences. Three formal categories of competences (exclusive, shared, and supporting) are created, reflecting existing ECJ jurisprudence and practice, and the principle of conferral (that the EU enjoys only such powers as are conferred upon it in the treaties) is reaffirmed. As with the Constitutional Treaty (see Table 4.1), the Treaty of Lisbon lists a number of new legal bases, including intellectual property rights, sport, space, tourism, civil protection, and administrative cooperation. Once again, however, most of these new competences simply codify existing activity under other legal bases, and several of them spell out the EU’s competences in a restrictive manner, for example, by ruling out regulatory harmonization. In addition, national parliaments are given a formal role in policing the federal/state boundary through a new ‘yellow card’ procedure, placing a potential obstacle in the way of further centralization of power in Brussels. In short, when it comes to the vertical or federal division of powers between the EU and the member states, the Treaty of Lisbon is not a major step forward but a rather conservative codification of current practice. Further, in terms of the horizontal separation the EU’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers, the Treaty of Lisbon constitutes a modest continuation of previous trends. In the legislative realm, the new Treaty revises and simplifies the Council voting system, extending QMV to some 40 new legal bases, most notably in JHA, while retaining unanimity for sensitive issues such as taxation, social security, common foreign

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and security policy, and institutional issues. As in previous treaties, the EP gains new legislative powers, with the extension of co-decision (now the ‘ordinary legislative procedure’) into areas such as agriculture, fisheries, transport, the Structural Funds, and JHA. In addition, the budgetary powers of the EP are increased to parity vis-à-vis the Council, with the abolition of the old distinction of compulsory and non-compulsory expenditure, as well as a formal role for the EP in the setting of the multiannual financial perspectives (Duff 2007: 5–6). As in previous treaties, the EP emerges once again as the ‘big winner’. By contrast, only modest changes are made to the workings and jurisdiction of EU courts, which will now extend to third pillar issues. The executive powers of the Commission will remain largely unchanged, the primary institutional innovations being in the reduced size of the Commission and the new procedure for installing its President and the College of Commissioners. None of this is to suggest that the Treaty of Lisbon is unimportant or flawed, and indeed, we have not mentioned other significant institutional innovations such as the creation of a new President of the European Council, a double-hatted High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who will chair the Foreign Affairs Council, be a Vice-President of the Commission, and oversee a new External Action Service, or a legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights. Nor is it to suggest that the EU’s institutional architecture is entirely static, since the new Treaty will introduce real (and, in our view, mostly desirable) changes. Nevertheless, in the longue durée of the European integration process that we have examined in this chapter, the Treaty of Lisbon appears as an incremental step that locks into place the essential features, not of a pioneering integrative process but of a more or less efficient process of governance within mature and stable political institutions.

Notes ∗

The authors are grateful to the Observatory of European Institutions at SciencesPo, and especially to Florence Deloche-Gaudez, for the data reproduced in Tables 4.3 and 4.4.

1. There were two Treaties of Rome signed in on 25 March 1957: the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community; and the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community. Unless otherwise stated, reference to the ‘Treaty of Rome’ in this chapter is to the former. 2. The nature of these legislative procedures and the EP’s power under the various procedures is the subject of a huge literature. For excellent reviews, see: Tsebelis and Garrett 2000, Hix et al. 2007, McElroy 2007.

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3. Enlargement, often cited as a major impetus to further reform, did motivate some institutional changes such as the expansion of QMV and the size and organization of the Commission, EP, and EU courts, particularly in the 2001 Treaty of Nice. Perhaps because of these changes, however, there is little evidence that enlargement has placed unbearable strains on the working of current EU institutions (see Dehousse et al. 2007), and enlargement is thus unlikely to motivate any major constitutional reform in the years to come. 4. The rise of plebiscitary democracy on EU constitutional issues is, of course, widely cited as bringing about the demise of the Constitutional Treaty, rejected in referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005. Strikingly, however, all EU member states except Ireland have indicated their intention to eschew referenda for ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, suggesting that the plebiscitary obstacle may not be as insurmountable as some critics had believed.

5 The Role of the European Council in Institutional and Policy Developments in the European Union Poul S. Christoffersen∗

The institutional and policy development of the European Union (EU) since the Treaty of Rome is a vast topic to cover in a short essay. There is an obvious need to be selective. This chapter, therefore, focuses on the role of the European Council. By so doing, it cuts out the first 18 years of the history of the European Communities since the European Council only entered onto the scene in 1975. The argument – which certainly is not new – is that the European Council has had an enormous influence on the EU’s institutional and policy development over the past 30–35 years. In fact, it has been the most important actor in this period of the history of European Integration – more important than the ‘real’ institutions, that is, the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament (EP). The chapter describes how the work of the European Council has evolved since its creation, in particular from the start of its ‘Golden Age’ in the beginning of the 1980s. It concludes with some reflections on whether the European Council is likely to maintain its dominant role in the life of the EU in the future. Let me start with a quote from Jacques Delors reacting in 1989 to EP critics who chided him and the Commission for their lack of ‘leadership’: The Commission has a right of initiative. But the position is different according to whether this right is exercised within a specific institutional framework or at a more general political level. When we are operating within a specified institutional framework, our duty is to apply whatever has been decided upon solemnly by the European Council or in a modification to the treaty . . . It is all very well 74

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to dream about greater powers for the Commission, but that is the framework in which we have to work. (Delors 1989: 267) There have been times in the history of European integration when the Heads of State and Government have exerted considerably less influence. Before 1975, seven European ‘summits’ of Heads of State and Government were held, with patchy results. The Hague Summit in 1969 launched the first project for an economic and monetary union (EMU) (which was never realised), laid the foundation for political cooperation (the Davignon report) and opened the door to the accession of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark in 1973. The Paris Summits in 1972 and in 1974 were important in creating the European Council and paving the way for direct elections to the EP. But apart form these events there was little collective input from the Heads of State and Government to the development of the Communities in the beginning of their history. It was a period where European policy was still considered basically ‘foreign policy’ and where the regular Council of Ministers was the real decision-making body. Valérie Giscard d’Estaing at the Paris Summit in 1974 declared the European Summits dead and proclaimed ‘Vive le Conseil Européen’ (Giscard d’Estaing 1974). The initial impact was limited, however. In the first 8–9 years of the history of the European Council the successes were few and far between. Meetings were focused on long discussions on ‘the economic and social situation in the Community’ – and from time to time on energy – but without any significant operational conclusions or influence on the life of the Communities. However, on three topics, the European Council did make a difference during this period: the creation of the European Monetary System (inspired by Helmut Schmidt and Giscard d’Estaing); establishing the premises for future rounds of institutional change but without actually launching the process (e.g. through the Wise Men’s Report, Tindemans Report, Solemn Declaration on European Union); and the resolution of the UK budgetary contribution crisis, which was settled at Fontainebleau in 1984 but had occupied a substantial part of the meetings of the European Council in the first 5 years after its entry on the European scene in 1979.

The golden age of the European Council From the beginning of the 1980s a substantial change took place. First, the working methods of the European Council were altered. Until 1981,

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the conclusions of the European Council were very much a product of meetings of officials, which took place in the margins of the European Council. Often there was little resemblance between what went into the conclusions and what had actually happened in the European Council. The change came at a disastrous European Council at Lancaster House in London where the UK budgetary problem was once more on the agenda. It started even before the meeting. A group of officials – Sherpas – had elaborated a long text (50–60 pages, internally in the Council Secretariat named ‘the monster’) where differences of views by delegations were expressed in the classical way through square brackets in the text. The problem was that just about everything was in square brackets. The text was therefore completely useless to the Heads of State and Government. The disaster continued during the meeting of the European Council. After the closure of the first day’s session – where as usual only the Heads of State and Government, the Commission President and the Foreign Ministers were present, plus a few officials from the Presidency and the Council Secretariat – the Sherpas continued their efforts in an all-night session. The result was a new paper placed on the table of the European Council at the start of next morning’s session. However, the European Council simply refused to work on the basis of it. When Helmut Schmidt saw the text he exploded: ‘I don’t recognise myself at all in what is set out as the German position in this paper’. That was the last time Sherpa meetings or similar parallel activities took place in the European Council (except for European Political Cooperation/Common Foreign and Security Policy texts – where meetings of political directors continued). From then on, draft European Council conclusions were prepared overnight between the first and the second day of the meeting by a small group of officials from the Presidency, the Council Secretariat and the Commission and reflected much more faithfully what had actually happened during the meeting. Of course, pieces of texts were prepared beforehand (normally by the same group) and used in prior consultation with individual, particularly affected delegations (for instance on the tour of national capitals by the Head of State or Government chairing the European Council). Until after the Seville European Council in 2002, the texts were, as a general rule, not submitted to any form of collective discussion between member states before the meeting of the European Council. There were exceptions to this practice when the European Council was dealing with broad and complex issues like financial packages or treaty changes. Texts

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then were negotiated beforehand and submitted to the European Council. These were, however, not ‘monster texts’ full of square brackets, but the best estimate by the Presidency, in close cooperation with the Council Secretariat and the Commission, of what the traffic could bear. The onus was, therefore, placed on those delegations that demanded changes. The quote from Jacques Delors set out above alludes to the European Council conclusions in almost sacred terms. The texts, however, do not fall from heaven. Delors himself, through the normally close cooperation which existed at the time between the Council Secretariat, the Commission and the Presidency, ensured that his ideas were well placed in the draft conclusions. Successive Secretary-Generals of the Commission – Emile Noel, David Williamson, Carlo Trojan – and Delors’ Chef de Cabinet, Pascal Lamy, were safe pairs of hands in ensuring that this happened both in the initial drafting of the texts and during the nightly drafting session in the margins of the European Council itself. The Secretary General of the Council – for the best part of this period Niels Ersbøll – also exerted considerable influence as the original drafter of texts, and as an ‘honest broker’, ensuring during the night sessions that the text which was prepared had a reasonable chance of being acceptable to all when presented to the European Council for scrutiny the next morning. This group of Eurocrats was by no means the most important player. After all, the Heads of State and Government had the decisive influence. But the catalysing work of these officials was essential in achieving agreement. A second change is to be found regarding the substance of the issues addressed by the European Council, Since the mid-1980s, it has been the leader on three important issues that shaped institutional and policy developments in the EU – treaty revisions, financial packages (Delors I and II, Agenda 2000 etc.) and enlargement (see Table 5.1).

Treaty revisions For most people engaged in European integration in the 1970s and early 1980s, a revision of the Communities’ treaty base seemed a distant utopia. There was a widespread fear that if this Pandora’s Box was opened, everything risked falling apart. Nor was it a happy period in European integration. The dreams of grand projects like EMU had crumbled in the wake of the oil crisis in the 1970s. The Communities had failed in their endeavours to respond to the various economic and

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Table 5.1 Conclusion of Major Negotiations at the Level of the European Council 1985–2006 Treaty Change

Overall Financial and Community Policy Issue

Enlargement

Single European Act Luxembourg, December 1985

Delors I Brussels, February 1988

Spain/Portugal Brussels, March 1985

Treaty on European Union Maastricht, December 1991

Delors II Edinburgh, December 1992

German unification 1990 and alternatives to enlargement for Central and Eastern Europe Dublin, April and June, 1990 Austria, Sweden, Finland (Norway) Corfu, June 1994

Treaty of Amsterdam Amsterdam, June 1997 Treaty of Nice Nice, December 2002

Agenda 2000 Berlin, March 1999

Copenhagen criteria Copenhagen, June 1993 Launch of negotiations with six Luxembourg, December 1997 Launch of negotiations with further six Helsinki, December 1999 Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia Copenhagen, December 2002

Constitutional Treaty Brussels, June 2004

Financial perspective 2007–13 Brussels, December 2005

Romania and Bulgaria Brussels, December 2004 and June 2006

political challenges, which the member states and their populations faced in the years of the oil crisis and stagflation. The accession of the United Kingdom and Denmark – with different aspirations for the Communities – had not been easy. Ireland was less problematic. But Italian skill and ingenuity, reinforced by UK stubbornness, changed the picture. Only a handful of the delegations that went to Milan for the European Council in June 1985 had any idea that it would conclude with a decision – taken by majority – to convene

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an intergovernmental conference (IGC) with a view to revising the Treaty of Rome. What had seemed impossible over many years now suddenly came within reach. The atmosphere was right: two longstanding and controversial issues within the European Community (EC) had been brought to a conclusion in the recent past, namely, the saga of the UK budgetary problem and the recent conclusion of enlargement negotiations with Spain and Portugal after more than 6 years. In Milan, the European Council took the decision to convene an IGC to revise the Treaty of Rome against the opposition of Denmark, Greece and the United Kingdom. It was to be the shortest – but maybe one of the most significant – IGCs in the EU’s history. In the course of 4 months (from September to December 1985), the Single European Act (SEA) was conceived, negotiated and concluded. Texts were prepared in close collaboration between the Commission, Council Secretariat and Presidency with Noel, Ersbøll and Jean Dondelinger, the Luxembourg permanent representative, doing the basic work. Negotiations were conducted by a group of personal representatives, mostly from the member states, and primarily the Permanent Representatives, and the final compromise was thrashed out at a lively European Council in Luxembourg in December. There were repeated interruptions of the session and heated drafting discussions in the corners of the room between the Heads of State and Government themselves, but the process was brought to a successful conclusion. A first major revision of the Treaty of Rome addressing institutional reform and providing for new policy competences and objectives had been agreed. Following the conclusion of the SEA treaty revision would remain a major aspect of the work of the European Council for the next 20 years. There were two other major issues – finances and associated policy issues, and enlargement. And all three were linked. Normally, the successful conclusion of a treaty negotiation would be followed by financial/policy negotiations, which then in turn would be followed by decisions on enlargement. The SEA was no exception for following its conclusion negotiations began on the first overall multi-annual financial framework for the EC (see below). Like the Fontainebleau settlement of the UK budget rebate problem 4 years earlier, the successful conclusion of the difficult negotiations on the financial framework in Brussels, in 1988, gave a boost to further progress towards European Integration, resulting in further treaty revision through the Treaty on European Union (TEU).

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The whole process leading to the TEU was masterminded by the European Council from the launching of the process on EMU by setting up the Delors Committee at the European Council in Hanover in June 1988 to the conclusion of the negotiations on the TEU in Maastricht in December 2001. Several European Councils in this period were almost entirely devoted to this topic (Madrid in June 1989, Strasbourg in December 1989, Dublin in June 1990 which added political union to the agenda for treaty revision, Rome in October and December 1990, and Luxembourg in June 1991). The Heads of Government and State went into the details and drafting in particular on political union, while most issues relating to EMU in practice were settled by Finance Ministers. The fact that Finance Ministers were so deeply involved in drafting the TEU gave them ownership of the final product which was of great importance when some years later they had to overcome many practical difficulties in order to turn the treaty provisions into reality on the ground. The attitude might have been different, if the construction had been imposed by somebody outside their circle. The European Council was also very much in the driving seat in the two treaty revisions – the Treaty of Amsterdam and the Treaty of Nice. The 4 days and 3 nights spent in Nice in December 2000 will go down in history as the longest European Council but hardly as its finest hour. Many who left the meeting room during the early Sunday morning of 10 December 2000 were convinced that the EU could not go on changing its institutional/constitutional base in this way. As it turned out, these predictions were correct. The whole procedure for preparing the 2004 Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe – the Constitutional Treaty – took place without much direct involvement of the European Council as a collective body. The various meetings held with Giscard d’Estaing in the Convention phase were ceremonial in character and never provoked a real debate. The Heads of State and Government as individuals did, however, have an important role to play in defining national positions regarding issues under discussion in the Convention. But their collective body – the European Council – was hardly involved. Even at the last and decisive meeting of the European Council in June 2004, under the Irish Presidency, the real negotiations on the last outstanding questions took place in bilateral contacts between the Presidency and individual delegations. This trend was confirmed during the successful rescue operation conducted by the German Presidency in 2007 after the French and the Dutch ‘no’ votes on the Constitutional Treaty 2 years earlier. The bulk of the negotiations were handled bilaterally between the Presidency and individual delegations.1

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Financial packages The work of the European Council on the various financial packages should be noted too. It has had a determining role in policy developments in the EU over the past 25 years. It can be said that these negotiations had their roots in the debate on the UK budgetary problem (so something good has after all developed out of this often very destructive issue). For Mrs Thatcher it was a question of ‘getting her money back’; for the others – at least in the beginning – it was considered a possible problem to be addressed through policy developments. Even though the United Kingdom in the end obtained a cash settlement at Fontainebleau in 1984, this was agreed in the context of an overall package of policy measures. Further inspiration came from the various financial and policy issues linked to enlargement (starting with the launching of the Integrated Mediterranean Programmes before the Portuguese and Spanish accession in 1986). After the SEA, Delors launched a proposal for the first overall financial and policy package entitled Making a success of the Single European Act. The proposal covered the financing of the EC (own resources, multi-annual financial framework, financial discipline and settling of budgetary imbalances), reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), development of the EC’s structural policies, development of new policies (in particular research and development and environmental policy) and promotion of the EC’s external policies. This Delors I package, agreed in 1989, was followed by a Delors II package settled by the European Council at the end of 1992. Next in line was ‘Agenda 2000’, published in July 1997, which set out the financial framework for the eastern enlargement. Finally the Financial Perspective for 2007–2013 was agreed at the European Council in December 2005. These financial and policy packages established the overall framework for developing EC/EU policies and had a central role in framing EC/EU policy over the period. They were the fruit of a successful interaction mainly between the Commission President and the European Council. They relegated to second place normal EC procedures. As an example, the annual budget procedure became mostly a technical exercise once the European Council had established the financial framework. It is actually surprising how easily the EP acquiesced in playing second fiddle to the European Council in one of the areas where it had real competence. But the political thrust of the European Council was simply too great for it to be challenged by the EP. Where the CAP was concerned, the Council of Ministers was also turned into an implementing body, executing the often very detailed conclusions of the European Council

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relating to reform and price-fixing. The Agricultural Council’s marathon meeting over days and nights became a thing of the past.2

Enlargement With regard to enlargement, the European Council’s role has changed considerably. It was only marginally involved in the Greek, Spanish and Portuguese enlargements and played only a peripheral role regarding the accession of the EFTA countries; its main function was to give the formal go-ahead. In contrast, with regard to the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, the European Council was in the driving seat from the start. This reflected both the central role which the European Council played during this period and the scale of the enterprise. It started with the adoption of the ‘Copenhagen criteria’ at the Copenhagen European Council in June 1993 and ended in the same city with the conclusion of accession negotiations in December 2002, hence ‘from Copenhagen to Copenhagen’. At the start of this process – dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – the question addressed by the European Council was basically whether the new-born democracies should be offered the perspective of membership. In the CEE countries themselves there was no doubt. From the very start they placed the objective of becoming part of the transatlantic partnership – meaning the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – at the top of their foreign policy agendas. The EU was less enthusiastic. However, the EU in general and the European Council in particular were from the beginning at the forefront in providing economic assistance to the CEE countries and opened up markets for their exports. The PHARE programme adopted in 1989 became the world’s largest assistance programme to these countries, and trade and cooperation agreements were rapidly concluded. Openness on trade and financial help were on the agenda of the European Council, but considerations of accession were definitively not in the early 1990s. For most EU member states, the perspective of enlargement belonged to a distant future. Most considered that it would take many years – if not decades – to bring the political and economic situation in the CEE countries up to a level where membership could be considered a realistic possibility. Delors’ vision of a European Village with many houses, one of which would be the EU with other houses being occupied by the CEE countries, was shared by many. The rapid economic and political developments in the CEE countries changed the picture. Once the Delors II financial package was

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agreed and a solution found to the difficulties in the ratification of the TEU caused by the Danish ‘No’ in 1992, the attention of the European Council turned towards enlargement. First came the launching of enlargement negotiations with the EFTA countries (Austria, Finland, Norway and Sweden). Second, in Copenhagen in June 1993, the European Council crossed the Rubicon by clearly spelling out that the CEE countries would become members of the EU once a certain number of conditions – the Copenhagen criteria – had been fulfilled.3 During subsequent years, enlargement became a central issue for the European Council: the crucial decisions on timing for opening or closing negotiations, the countries involved (‘waves’ or ‘regatta’) and the financial conditions were main issues discussed at the level of the European Council. The overall guidance of the enlargement process has continued to remain very much a Chefssache (a matter for the bosses), as the discussion on Turkey over the past 3 years has clearly shown. The Commission, however, has remained an important player, even in the absence of an exclusive right of initiative. This was clearly illustrated when the European Council adopted in December 2006, without any change, the Commission’s compromise proposal on the partial freezing of the negotiations with Turkey, while at the same time preserving (and even reinforcing) the possibility of making discreet progress in the negotiations on less controversial matters (Council of the European Union 2007: point 10).

Further activities of the European Council Additional functions have also been added to the European Council’s preserve over time, as the institution has become a permanent, more institutionalised fixture of the EU’s decision-making framework. This include, most notably, making key appointments; agenda-setting; coordinating economic and social policies and promoting structural change; and acting as arbitrator of last resort. Appointments Since its establishment, the European Council has reserved senior appointments – Commission President, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) – for itself. Its performance, however, has been lacklustre and not added to its prestige in the public eye. The process leading to the appointment of Jacques Santer as Commission President in 1999, the appointment in 1998 of Wim Duisenberg as ECB chief and

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not least the appointment of José Manuel Barroso as Commission President in 2004 led to much acrimony among its members and soured the atmosphere in the European Council during subsequent sessions. The same can be said for its role in deciding the geographic locations of EU institutions and agencies. The blood spilled on this altar seems out of proportion to the interests involved.

Agenda setter Also, outside the major issues set out above, the European Council has played an important role as agenda-setter in ways that go beyond its ‘big picture’ role, inter alia through the establishment of work programmes in various areas of EU policy. Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) is a prime example. The programme established by the European Council in Tampere in 1999 laid down a detailed legislative programme which was broadly followed by the Commission and the Council during the following 5 years. The same is true for the follow-up programme, the Hague programme established by the European Council during the Dutch Presidency in 2004, though progress has been slower. The European Council was also instrumental in establishing the framework for establishing a Common Defence Policy through the ‘Helsinki headline goals’ and based on proposals from Javier Solana, the High Representative for the CFSP. Otherwise, the European Council has devoted much less attention to CFSP issues than the often very long conclusion texts would seem to indicate. The work has mostly been handled by the Foreign Ministers before or in the margins of the European Council. Here, the Foreign Ministers have been much more productive than in exercising their role as General Affairs ministers, where their input has often been small or non-existent. Outside JHA and CFSP the agenda-setting function of the European Council has been prominent in the area of environment policy, including its international aspects. A very encouraging sign of continued capability of the European Council to set the agenda for the EU emerged from its Brussels meeting in March 2007. Here, the European Council fixed a very ambitious agenda for EU action in the fields of climate change and energy, fields which in recent years, starting with the informal European Council at Hampton Court during the UK Presidency in 2005, have moved up to the top of the EU’s agenda. The success has been due to a happy combination of factors. The European Council seized a topical issue of clear relevance to its citizens, where there was clear ‘added value’ in European cooperation. There was also close and

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confident cooperation between the Presidency and the Commission in preparing the March 2007 European Council meeting – in fact not a comma was changed in the text prepared by the Commission. Strong leadership was also provided by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who chaired the meeting and who enjoyed great trust and confidence from a very broad spectrum of her colleagues.

Coordinating economic and social policies in the EU: Promoting structural change The European Council has from the beginning had a vocation to promote coordination of member states’ economic, social and structural policies. ‘The economic and social situation’ was a prominent item on the agenda of the European Council in the first years of its existence. Much energy was expended on preaching the need for increased coordination of economic policy between the member states or debating the relative importance of economic expansion and the fight against inflation. However, the topic almost disappeared from the agenda from 1985 to 1993 during the period of negotiations on treaty revision and financial packages and the roll-out of the internal market programme. It returned with the Copenhagen European Council in June 1993. From the beginning of the 1990s, the tide had been turning on the positive economic development of Europe which had characterised the second half of the 1980s. Unemployment was now a preoccupation in many member states. Once more it was Delors who set the tone for action with a White Paper entitled Growth, Competitiveness, Employment: The Challenges and Ways Forward into the 21st Century. Delors’ focus was very much on developing EC action to support job creation (e.g. through Trans-European Networks), increased Community research activities, the effects of a single currency and promoted education and life-long learning. This spilled over into the negotiations on the Treaty of Amsterdam, where employment became an important theme, but with a much greater focus on the coordination of national policies and little on interlinking EC and national policies. In the following years, a host of different Presidency-inspired procedures (Luxembourg, Cardiff, Cologne and Gothenburg) were developed by the European Council. These culminated in the Lisbon process established in 2000 – again at the initiative of the Presidency – with the strategic goal of making the EU the ‘most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’. They were all based on the assumption that the European Council could somehow – possibly by

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magical inspiration – bring about an effective coordination of national policies and promote structural reform in Europe. Much time has been spent in the European Council over the past 10 years on this topic. Every year, at least one session of the European Council has been devoted almost entirely to the Lisbon process. The exercise has not been easy and has led to many misunderstandings and sometimes frustrations. The European Council’s deliberations on economic and structural change – in contrast to other discussions – have not raised passions either with the participants or with the press and the public waiting outside. The issue might be crucial for the future of the EU, but it has not been easy explaining convincingly that the action of the European Council itself makes much difference. Peer pressure can change things (for instance based on measuring the ranking of the accomplishment for each member state on major reform indices), but it would be hard to prove that the deliberations of the European Council have had a decisive effect on national policies. At the same time, there is an inherent danger in the process of making the EU an easy scapegoat for deficiencies in national policies. The revised Lisbon process from 2004 has improved the situation. The Commission has been given a bigger role in analysing each national programme and directly or indirectly spelling out its opinion about what needs to be done. The Lisbon process has become more focused. Still, I firmly believe that other EU mechanisms and actions have had a greater impact on improving the economic situation in the EU than the Lisbon Process. These include meeting the EMU convergence criteria despite occasional difficulties in assuring their respect, and the Commission’s constant efforts to ensure respect for EU competition policy and the acquis in various other areas, in particular the internal market.

Arbitrator of last resort Finally, on many occasions, files – sometimes of a very detailed kind – have been submitted to the European Council when a solution to a policy problem has not been achieved at Council level. There has always been a danger involved in this kind of activity, ranging from the lack of technical knowledge to the demotivation of the Council to make sufficient effort to solve the issue. To this could be added the lack of respect for institutional roles and normal safeguards in the institutional process. This could for instance take the form of a Prime Minister – often without any kind of preparation – seeking the blessing of the European Council on issues relating to competition and state aid policies and ignoring the

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competence of the Commission in this area. This could lead to embarrassing situations for a Commission President who, as full member of the European Council, is bound, at least politically, by the conclusions of the European Council. Such occurrences have been a major factor pushing the European Council to revise its working methods. This it did in Seville in 2002. Other factors played a role. The number of items on the agenda of the European Council had increased (with some unknown to participants before the meeting). It was not always clear what the purpose of a discussion in the European Council was. At the same time, the informal close cooperation between the Council Presidency, the Council Secretariat and the Commission in preparing the European Council – which earlier behind the scenes had ensured coherence between the actions of the institutions – had gradually broken down. The new rules prescribed systematic preparation by the General Affairs Council – in practice COREPER – circulating annotated agendas spelling out the items to be discussed and the options available. These rules have basically been followed since. The changes were probably unavoidable, but they also involved risks of bureaucratising meetings and leaving less room for political input from the European Council itself.

The future There are two basic questions. Will the European Council continue to play the same determining role in future in the institutional and policy development of the EU as it has done in the past? Will the European Council continue to be the ultimate guarantee for the continued progress of the European project? No doubt the Heads of State and Government of the member states will remain crucial actors. Domestic policy and EU policy have become so intermingled that no Prime Minster or President can permit himself not to be on top of his country’s EU policy. But this does not automatically mean that the influence will be exercised primarily through the European Council. The period 2003–2006 revealed as much. It was not a happy period for the European Council. There are several explanations: the divisions caused by the Iraq war; difficult economic situations in several member states and increased divergence in economic performance; difficulties in adapting to enlargement – having 60 people around the table in the European Council instead of 34 makes a huge difference in the dynamics of a body that functions by consensus; frequent failures in coordination between the main actors behind the scene

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(Council Presidency, Commission and Council Secretariat); lack of close personal relationships between the members; and finally bad luck – or was it conspicuous misjudgement of timing? – like the failed ratification of Constitutional Treaty. But the tide could be turning. The economic situation is improving. Merkel’s success with her first European Council in March 2007 was followed by a similar success in June on the question of institutional reform with agreement on a detailed IGC mandate for a new ‘Reform Treaty’, which later became the Treaty of Lisbon. These successes have changed the atmosphere and inspired new confidence. It would, however, be dangerous to pin all hope for a revival of the EU on a return to the Golden Age of the European Council. Returning to past glory will require among other things that the Heads of State and Government are willing at the crucial moments to pay a price – or venture into the unknown – by accepting a European solution. Mitterrand and, in particular, Kohl are rightly seen as members of the European Council that in the past were willing to do just this, but there were many others. However, let us not forget that both Kohl and Mitterrand sincerely believed that playing the European card would pay dividends back home. At the present juncture few – if any – members of the European Council are in such a favourable situation. The European Council is no doubt the institution in the EU which is most affected by enlargement. The European Council works for all practical purposes – and will continue to work – on the basis of decision by consensus. It relies very much on positive group dynamics, something not easily created around a table of 60. Members now hardly know the faces, to say nothing of the names, of all the participants. Gone are the days where policy was created in the European Council itself. The preparatory process and behind-the-scene dealings are likely to become an even more important part of the process in the future. Exercising the functions of the Council Presidency for the European Council will certainly become more demanding. Doubts have been expressed on the capacity of all the member states to fulfil the personal and administrative requirements that are necessary in order to fulfil this function. But one should not neglect the fact that small country presidencies in the past have been among the more successful. The solution foreseen in the Treaty of Lisbon is the creation of the office of permanent President of the European Council. There are certainly solid reasons for establishing such a post. Practice has shown that in order to chair the European Council effectively, it is necessary to devote all one’s energies and most of one’s time during the period to the

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job. It can be difficult to combine this task with the time needed to exercise one’s role as national Head of Government, though Merkel seemed to cope quite well. So, to put one person who is not presently occupying a prime ministerial position in charge for a longer period makes sense. However, one of the difficulties with the proposed solution laid down in the Treaty of Lisbon is that the President has not been given any specific means or powers to carry out his functions. He has only his own personality and skills on which to rely. The experience with the appointment of Solana as High Representative for the CFSP shows that such qualities can help to overcome, or at least in part diminish, the lack of formal powers. But general agreement exists that this has not been sufficient to make the EU’s CFSP chief operational and effective, hence the provisions in the Treaty of Lisbon on ‘double-hatting’ and giving the new style High Representative the role of chairing the Foreign Affairs Council. The new Treaty, however, does not provide for similar powers for the President of the European Council. In addition, no clarity exists on how the President of the European Council should relate to the rest of the institutional set-up in the EU. It is for instance not foreseen that the President shall preside over the General Affairs Council that has the formal role of preparing the European Council. This confusion as to who prepares the European Council could turn into a major handicap for its new permanent President. A basic conclusion to be drawn from an analysis of the functioning of the European Council is that it has worked best when a close and confident relationship has existed between the Council Presidency, the Commission and the Council Secretariat (which supposedly – even though nothing is decided – will provide secretarial assistance to the European Council President). There is a minefield of potential conflicts lying around here in relations with the Commission, to say nothing of the EP. Can a very high profile personality overcome these difficulties? A positive response is not to be excluded, but a very high profile could also aggravate conflicts. Some of the strongest supporters of the idea of a permanent President of the European Council see this person as the first among equals in the European Council. My guess would be that a person with a somewhat lower profile and ambitions will have a higher chance of being successful, meaning a President who would see his role as troubleshooter, conciliator and organiser, functions similar, at least in part, to those of the Secretary General of NATO or the United Nations. Another crucial issue is whether the European Council should deal with as broad a range of topics as it has done in the past. The analysis above concludes that the European Council has been

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more successful in handling certain topics than others. Also, the change in the institutional balance brought about through an increase in the influence of the EP could affect the role of the European Council in the future. On institutional change, the European Council is likely to continue to have a decisive role in setting the agenda. The rescue operation concerning an institutional settlement from the ashes of the Constitutional Treaty was masterminded behind the scenes by members of the European Council. However, the time when the European Council as a collective body engaged in detailed treaty formulation has gone and is unlikely to return. The same is certain to be the case, if we were to engage in negotiations on another new treaty in the future. Incorporating a convention into the treaty revision process has now been formally established by the Treaty of Lisbon and will be used on future occasions. This means in practice that the European Council will have to share its influence with the EP and indeed potentially national parliamentarians. The experience from the conventions that drafted the Charter of Fundamental Rights (1999–2000) and the Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (2002–2003) has been that the EP representatives have exerted considerable influence on the result based on their experience and cohesion. Overall financial settlements will continue to be an area where the European Council will be heavily involved. The next occasion will be the 2008/2009 budget review. But again the EP is likely to gain influence. The budget prerogatives are an important part of the real power base of the EP. One cannot assume that the EP in the future will more or less passively accept that the European Council calls the shots. On enlargement, the European Council will certainly continue to hold the reins on all strategic decisions concerning if and when further accessions will take place. The same will apply to senior appointments, notably the Commission President and the President of the European Council. I am very doubtful whether the European Council in the future will play an important role as the arbitrator of last resort on issues blocked in the normal decision-making procedures. Its performance in this area has not been impressive lately. On two major pieces of recent legislation – the REACH directive on the approval of chemical substances and the Services Directive – the European Council failed to break the deadlock, and in the end it was the EP that succeeded in finding the ‘European consensus’. More and more EC legislation is decided by co-decision, and the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon will mean further steps in this direction. It will be increasingly difficult for the

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European Council to mingle in this interplay, even if it has an ambition to do so. This leaves consideration of the European Council’s roles as agendasetter in relation to the overall development of EU policy and as supreme coordinator of economic, social and structural policy (the Lisbon Process). The successful March 2007 European Council should inspire reflections on the future role of the European Council in this area. The example shows that the European Council can continue, if sufficient care is taken in the technical and political preparation, to play a very important role in fixing new priorities and adjusting existing priorities for the development of the EU. Often very difficult arbitrage between national and EU competence is involved, and the European Council is uniquely placed to act as arbitrator in these matters. The European Council probably remains the body in the European construction with the best political feel for the emergence of new priorities and in judging whether the EU should take on a leading role in such areas. The Lisbon process can be made to work, but experience shows that the process is most successful when it addresses the basic issue – how to combine EU politics with national policies in order to solve common challenges facing the member states and what kind of roadmap is suited to achieve this aim. The salvation of the EU cannot, therefore, be found in a return to the ‘golden era’ of the European Council. The ‘normal’ institutions will have to do their part – and increasingly so. They will be helped by the reforms to decision-making procedures established in the Treaty of Lisbon. These will improve decision-making. Whether the Treaty of Lisbon’s reforms regarding the European Council will significantly enhance its performance remain to be seen.

Notes ∗

This chapter reflects the author’s personal views and does not in any way engage the institution for which he presently works.

1. The role of the European Council in the institutional field has not been limited to treaty negotiations. In addition, the practical functioning of the institutions, in particular the Council, has figured prominently on the agenda. Consider the various ‘Wise Men’ reports during the early years of the European Council, subsidiarity and transparency (from the Danish rejection of the TEU in 1992 until today), and the functioning of the Council and the European Council (Helsinki, 1999 and Seville, 2002). 2. However, the Agricultural Council reappeared again – somewhat surprisingly – on the scene in 2003 with the adoption of the most comprehensive reform of

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the CAP ever undertaken (the Fischler reform) with its major shift away from price support to non-trade-distorting forms of income support. This happened without any intervention by the European Council. 3. In the light of its significance, and the importance of the Copenhagen criteria for later enlargement, it is surprising how little attention was actually paid at the Copenhagen European Council to this historic decision; it was almost an A-point, well prepared through a Commission proposal by Sir Leon Brittan and discussions in COREPER.

6 Fairy Tale of Luxembourg? Reflections on Law and Legal Scholarship in European Integration Jo Hunt and Jo Shaw

Tucked away in the fairyland Duchy of Luxembourg and blessed, until recently, with benign neglect by the powers that be and the mass media, the Court of Justice of the European Communities has fashioned a constitutional framework for a federal-type Europe. Stein 1981: 1 Over a quarter of a century ago, Czechoslovakia-born, US-based international law scholar Eric Stein was an early and influential academic voice drawing attention to the role of the European Court of Justice (the ‘Court’ or ECJ) as a champion of the integration process. Implicit in Stein’s work was the view that the new legal framework constructed by the Court – part international, part national, and crucially, part supranational – was a new legal order for a new political order. Law was, and is, not approached by academic lawyers simply as the object of integration. It is not simply a discrete field within which new common rules emerge, and in which new institutions and structures are created, through the processes of negotiating, adopting, implementing, exercising and enforcing new legal norms at the European Union (EU) and national levels. Law may also be perceived as an agent of integration (Dehousse and Weiler 1990: 243). Indeed, for many lawyers, because of the focus of their disciplinary lenses, it is the agent par excellence, with the story of EU integration being explored as one of ‘integration through law’ (Cappelletti et al. 1985). The exercise of new legal rights to live, to work, to trade, to study and to vote on the same terms as nationals of the destination state may 93

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have consequences in other domains, stimulating economic, social and political integration. At the constitutional level, the emergence of the new legal order, a process driven forward by the ECJ and its case law, creates a new species of constitutional framework which underpins the emerging political order. By using the language of constitutionalization to describe this process of the creation of the new legal order, legal scholars may be seen to be making multiple, often implicit, claims about the object of their study that warrant, and have been receiving, further attention. The first claim is that the system under creation reflects and respects constitutional practices. To put it another way, this is the claim that the legal system, and the political system it supports, are premised on liberal notions of limited government and of the protection of individual human rights within this system. The second claim is that through borrowing from such state-like notions, the use of the language of constitutionalization reflects the idea that the law, the Court(s) and the legal order are engaged in an ongoing integrative process in which ‘constitutionalization’ is used as a short-hand for ‘rendering the EU more state-like’. For well over a decade now, however, such images of the Court, the legal order and their role in the integration process have been under challenge, from both within and outside the legal academic community. From the latter, the assumptions of the integrative potential of law that were inherent in many lawyers’ accounts have been questioned, particularly through the work of political scientists, whose own disciplinary orientations focus on a rather different set of questions than those which have engaged the legal community. As Conant states, for political scientists, ‘scholarly interest in the politics of legal integration originated with the puzzle that a supranational court had transcended state sovereignty’ (Conant 2007b: 45). For a majority of, but not all, lawyers the puzzle was perhaps not so much as how this could have occurred but more one of what, in legal constitutional terms, had in fact taken place, how the resulting order could be defined and what the consequences of it were for our received legal and constitutional categories and practices. Although constitutionalization may be suggestive of progress towards something state-like, this outcome is certainly neither assumed nor advanced in most current legal scholarship, which seeks to find alternative modes of conceptualizing the nature of the EU legal order. Whilst political scientists have adopted a range of theoretical approaches – predominantly realist/intergovernmentalist, neofunctionalist but also constructivist – to explore how ‘legal integration’ was able to occur (see reviews of this literature in Conant 2007b; Armstrong 1998), there

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has also been an empirical challenge to the integrationist assumptions of a broader integration-through-law agenda, assumptions which have ‘usually been made without thorough methodological inquiry or solid evidential backing’ (de Búrca 2005: 313). Such challenges can be found in both the legal and political science literatures. More critical questions are now asked, such as the following: what impact in fact has legal integration had upon actors in a range of policy sectors? Has integrationthrough-law actually occurred? Are new rights being respected and given effect to in practical terms? Are new networks and coalitions of actors emerging? As de Búrca (ibid.) explains, there is inevitably something of a disciplinary scepticism held by one academic community towards another. For political scientists, ‘legal scholarship often appears arid, technical, atheoretical . . . full of unproven or unstated assumptions, lacking empirical support and seemingly disinterested in the actual dynamics of political and social change’. To lawyers meanwhile, much political science work appears ‘woefully misinformed about law and the legal process, simplistic if not crude, stating the obvious as if newly discovered’ (Alter et al. 2002: 114). Armstrong sums up the disciplinary cross-talk from a lawyer’s perspective with the question ‘political scientists have discovered the Court of Justice, but have they discovered law?’ (Armstrong 1998: 155). It is of course axiomatic that lawyers should consider that ‘law matters’. However, whilst the normative force of law offers one explanation for why law matters, it would be wrong to assume that academic lawyers will neglect to take explanatory enquiry into outcomes any further. Many are engaged in the task of providing convincing accounts of why law matters: of how law and legal frameworks structure and constrain; how political actors engage with the law and translate political claims into legal language, having to modulate objectives to fit into appropriate legally recognized categories with currency before the courts; indeed how the very concept of ‘law’ is conceived and experienced by the range of actors that are involved in its operation. Rather than being concerned exclusively or indeed primarily with doctrinal exposition, much legal scholarship engages with questions of how and why the law may be more than the functional handmaiden of political actors. In the next section, a brief overview of the range of legal work being undertaken on the EU is provided, and it will be demonstrated that for many academic lawyers, European legal studies is about far more than what courts do. In a third section, the focus returns to what is the main point of connection for a range of disciplines addressing law in the integration process

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and will consider lawyers’ accounts of the role of the Court. Here too it will be shown that there has been a significant questioning of the ‘heroic’ vision of the Court and of the existence of an inherently integrative constitutionalization process – not everyone subscribes to the fairy tale of Luxembourg. Finally, the chapter concludes with some assessments of EU legal scholarship to date and suggestions as to its future potential.

General developments in EC/EU legal scholarship Walker, one of the foremost legal theorists working on EU law, has highlighted what he describes as a tendency towards ‘a reactive, event-driven and context-dependent approach to EU legal studies’ (Walker 2005: 583). If this is a criticism of EU legal scholarship, then it is somewhat unfair. The EU, after all, is a polity in the making, and it is understandable that scholars will seek to make sense of its ever-emerging, evolving dimensions. The scope of what may be included under the heading ‘EU legal studies’ is vast. Echoing a more extended review by Shaw (2005), all that is offered here is a snapshot. Thus EU legal studies could include a focus on the EU’s constitutional order, including its interactions with national-level constitutional orders; or on the EU’s place in the world as an international actor, in trade matters, in defence and foreign policy; or it could cover studies of specific policy sectors, such as the environment, social policy, competition and health care, with the lens turned to the EU level, as well as national systems (most usually one, given linguistic and legal cultural considerations) and analyzing the processes of legal norm reception, usage and feedback, revealing, across different policy sectors and different states, variegated patterns of the degree and depth of EU law’s reach; or finally, returning to the supranational level, it could focus on the use of administrative governance techniques and the role of law in such processes or on other uses of policy-steering tools, which fall outside the traditional European Community (EC) legislative method, providing assessments of their domestic impacts. In many ways, more recent scholarship often transcends the Court-centred emphasis of early years of EU legal scholarship. Legislators, administrators, committees and the full range of those who are affected by policysteering exercises using law and alternatives to law may be brought into focus. In terms of methodological approaches and theoretical assumptions, the field is again open. Many academic lawyers will have come to the

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study of EU law from other sub-disciplines in law, most notably international law, as well as public law and private law, and these backgrounds will often frame their engagement with EU legal studies, and how they conceive of their subject for study, and formulate the questions to be asked and the conclusions to be drawn. For some, the EU remains to be analyzed as an international organization. For others, it may be compared with a domestic polity. Yet others will embrace the concept of a multi-level governance regime. Snyder, writing in 1990, drew attention to the fact that ‘European Community law represents more evidently perhaps than most other subjects an intricate web of politics, economics and law . . . which virtually calls out to be understood by . . . an interdisciplinary, contextual or critical approach’ (Snyder 1990: 167). This call has elicited a significant response from the legal academic community, as scrutiny of the pages of journals such as the ‘law-in-context’ European Law Journal will attest. This response is most notable in work published in the English language, though such work is not necessarily undertaken by those trained and working in the United Kingdom or the United States. The imprint of the intellectual heritage of the European University Institute (which founded the European Law Journal) is significant, and this institution has now bred generations of law-in-context scholars, working mainly in English, though initially trained in other EU states, and beyond. Doctrinal exegesis remains important, as scholars map the relevant legal and quasi-legal terrain, seeking to identify points of consistency and coherence, as well as inconsistencies and incoherencies in legal regimes. The doctrinal tradition remains particularly strong outside the United Kingdom and United States, where links between legal academia and the legal professions are more deeply entrenched, though this stereotype is being challenged with broader contextual work being brought to an English language audience through initiatives such as those of the Jean Monnet Program at New York University, which has recently published two symposia on European Legal Integration: New German Scholarship (Von Bogdandy and Weiler 2003) and New Italian Scholarship (Toniatti and Weiler 2007). Once the doctrinal underpinnings are in place in a subject area, critique may then come from a range of vantage points, including morality (Weiler 1992), economic efficiency (Tridimas and Tridimas 2002), the law’s social or political implications (including feminist and queer theory readings) and its effectiveness and legitimacy (Arnull and Wincott 2003; Smismans 2004). ‘Legal’ work may engage explicitly with a critical legal scholarship agenda (Everson and Eisner 2007), social theory (Shaw

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1999; Sideri 2005) and political theory (MacCormick 1999) and may also seek to explore how the law works in practice, through socio-legal work making use of social science methodologies (Lange 2005). Lawyers are often of course also engaged in collaborative research projects, across states and across disciplines. Many, but not all, will work within the framework of a positivist approach to law. The ‘law’ under such a view covers those measures and practices which carry the formal designation of law, which have been ascribed this status through their creation by recognized law-making bodies. But non-positivist accounts are also present, i.e. accounts which approach ‘law’ as being defined through normative social practices (de Búrca 2005). Such approaches can call into question the very legal nature of the policy instruments being used. The turn to ‘new governance’ opens up new fields of enquiry for lawyers, as they investigate the relationship between law and alternatives to law. Walker and de Búrca (2007) remind us, however, that, in this investigation, a clearer conceptual understanding needs to be reached about the nature of law and new governance tools. We should not be too quick to assume that the study of ‘new governance’ necessarily embraces a non-positivist notion of law. The umbrella term ‘new governance’ covers a range of non-legislative interventions – including soft law, the open method of coordination, and, as Curtin (2006) amongst others, identifies, the rise of executive power in the EU, seen with the use of comitology and an increasing involvement of agencies. To the extent that these bodies fall outside the traditional scope of lawyers’ concerns with hard legislative enactments, Curtin questions the role for law and lawyers in the new context, asking whether ‘ “law” and “lawyers” still have a significant role to play in the contemporary phase and form of European political integration? If so, what type of role? And how does – and should – that role tak[e] shape in an emerging political system?’ (Curtin 2006: 3). For Curtin, the answer is that lawyers can contribute to ‘designing accountability mechanisms that are tailored to fit contemporary realities’ (ibid.: 37). The turn to new governance, and away from established notions of law, does not mark the first time in the history of EU legal studies that something akin to a ‘crisis’ has been identified. Shaw (1996) considered the increasing fragmentation and disintegration in the EU legal order as a challenge to received notions of a coherent and cohesive legal order, progressing in a unilinear direction towards greater integration. This challenge, as Shaw argues, may be accommodated by breaking the intuitive link between law and integration that had dominated much legal work until

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that point. As such, there are strands of work within the legal academy which see the EU being approached as a mature system of governance. As disciplinary developments since the early 1990s have shown, such turns have been accommodated in EU legal studies, and rather than signalling a crisis, the recognition of challenges to the dominant model of law and legal integration received from those working in decades past open up the vista to more nuanced, innovative engagements with the place and role of law.

The court as a constitutional actor: Retellings of the fairy tale At this stage however, we will step back to the dominant received model of law, its role in integration, and the place of the ECJ in the constitutionalization process, charting in more detail how this ‘fairy tale’ has been retold by a range of EU legal scholars. All students of EU law are steeped in the canon of familiar cases which are strung together in a legal narrative that tells the story of the Court’s constitutionalization of the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC). Starting with Van Gend en Loos (European Court of Justice 1963) and Costa v ENEL (European Court of Justice 1964), it tells how the Court, through its judicial pronouncements, created a set of principles which structure the EU legal order. Through these early, crucial interventions, the Court recognized the possibility of the direct effect of Community law, thereby creating a framework in which rights derived from Community law could, under certain circumstances, be relied on directly before national courts. Further, these Community law rights are to be regarded as supreme, thereby trumping conflicting national law, of whatever status. The Court subsequently developed a set of legal principles on the operation and effectiveness of remedies for the breach of EC law at national level, going so far as to construct a right to damages for individuals in the event of a sufficiently serious breach of EC law by the member states. Additionally, the Court was to expand on the review of legality of Community acts with which it was charged under Article 230 TEC, identifying a set of overarching ‘general principles’, including fundamental human rights, which could operate as legally enforceable constraints on the exercise of power by the EC institutions and also by the member states in the context of their application of EC law. In this way, it developed for itself a role as a court of constitutional review, famously proclaiming in Parti Ecologiste ‘Les Verts’ that the EC ‘is a Community based on the rule of law, in as much as neither

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its Member States nor its institutions can avoid a review of the question of whether the measures adopted by them are in conformity with the basic constitutional charter, the Treaty’ (European Court of Justice 1986). Added to this has been the Court’s role in determining the extent of the EC’s internal and external competences, fixing the outer limits of the legitimate exercise of the EC’s attributed powers. The Court has been conventionally perceived as a motor of integration, driving the Community ever onward towards further and deeper integration. Whether the Court has been presented as hero or villain – the latter most notably by Rasmussen (1986) in his account of the Court, which presents it as acting well beyond the text of the Treaties and, indeed, the boundaries of permissible judicial interpretation – it is nonetheless seen as having made a critical, determinative impact, though some would argue strongly that the Court’s role as an innovative interpreter of the law has been exaggerated (Baquero Cruz 2006). The steady accretion of constitutionalizing case law over the years may be presented as the inevitable achievement of what Pierre Pescatore, a former ECJ judge, has termed ‘une certaine idée de l’Europe’ (1983: 157) coded into its legal system and as according with some blueprint to which the Court is tirelessly working. As Vauchez (2008) convincingly demonstrates, the hegemony of what he terms this ‘Europeanization-through-case-law’ narrative owes much to the identities of those involved in the first decades of the EU’s operation. Vauchez’s detailed and sensitive history of the development of the mythology surrounding the ‘magic triangle’ of direct effect, supremacy and the preliminary ruling procedure reveals that ‘many of the most prominent EU actors [at the Court, in the Commission, and the institutions’ Legal Services] were often at the same time academics, most of them legal scholars, playing on both sides of the fence’ (ibid.: note 6). As important as the judgments themselves were, the public retellings of the judgments, at conferences and in academic commentaries, and the drawing-out of a specific set of legal and constitutional implications by a group of actors who had a real interest in reinforcing the significance of the law and courts for integration are clearly linked. Walker too has highlighted the ‘missionary zeal’ that many commentators brought to their work on European integration (2005: 586). The timing of the critical direct effect and supremacy cases was also significant, according to Vauchez, coming at a time when integration through legislative harmonization was beginning to appear an impossibility. The promise of a judicial contribution to integration was thus particularly welcomed and championed. The strength of the mythology which built up around

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these cases, and also from further evidence from later cases which could be used to support the central claim, thus ensured that it remained the dominant narrative for a number of decades. However, such an account has been demonstrated as being based on assumptions about the Court and the law which are open to question. Such assumptions have been shown to be partial and fallacious, as they overstate the integrative capacity of law and posit a view of the case law as progressing ineluctably to a particular constitutional finalité. They are also unhelpful in that the rhetoric of constitutionalization ascribed to the Court’s activities was taken as the starting point in the negotiations and drafting work, which led to the 2004 Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (the ‘Constitutional Treaty’), a process which revealed the judicial constitution to be out of step, and to be irreconcilable, with social and political reality. That caution should be exercised in accepting the simplified constitutional narrative was a point raised in the late 1970s by Shapiro. He launched a critique on conventional lawyerly accounts of constitutionalization by the Court as being: constitutional law without politics . . . [which] presents the Community as a juristic idea; the written constitution as a sacred text; the professional commentary as a legal truth; the case law as the inevitable working out of the correct implications of the constitutional text; and the constitutional court as the disembodied voice of right reason and constitutional teleology. (Shapiro 1979–80: 538) Picking up this critique, Shaw challenged the assumption underpinning many accounts of the Court which posits ‘an immutable link between law and legal processes and integration’, where the latter ‘is conventionally if somewhat simplistically understood as a process leading towards greater centralization of governmental functions’ (Shaw 1995: 3). Shaw asserts that ‘the role of law and of the Court in feeding integration processes is taken for granted, and frequently overstated’ (ibid.: 4), whilst the true picture is significantly more complex. Wincott (1995a: 298) similarly critiques the ‘inevitability of the constitutionalization of Community law’ apparent in some doctrinal accounts, which writes out politics and agency and assumes a ‘linear progression towards ever closer union’. Clearly, Shaw and Wincott are not denying that the Court has handed down judgments of constitutional significance, but they highlight that attempts to present this as an inevitable and inexorable move

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towards further integration would be wrong and that an easy reliance on the Court as a constitutional champion is misplaced. A major corrective to conventional constitutional accounts has been in the growth of work which focuses on the environment in which the Court operates, on its interlocutors (Weiler 1994) and, most significantly, on the relationships between them. Key amongst these interrelationships are those between the ECJ and national courts and the resulting interconnections between the ‘EU’ and national legal orders. Whilst the ECJ may formally present an image of a unified and cohesive EU legal order, with it and its law at the pinnacle, national takes on this may be very different. This was clearly seen in the context of the creation of the failed Constitutional Treaty, which involved attempts to formalize and concretize certain constitutional doctrines which formerly existed solely in the Court’s jurisprudence and which had been ‘received’ with varying degrees of enthusiasm and consistency by the national courts. These doctrines had never, as such, been held up to a binary accept/reject determination on the part of member state governments. It is in relation to the principle of primacy, or supremacy, where we see the most glaring mismatch between the conventional rhetoric of judicial constitutionalism clashing with other legal and political realities. A privileging of the Court’s jurisprudence presents Community law supremacy as an essential, fundamental and unconditional aspect of the legal order. The Court of course ruled in Internationale Handelsgesellschaft (European Court of Justice 1970) that provisions of Community law held supremacy over national constitutional provisions. A majority of member states, however, would not share this view. Their courts’ understandings of supremacy are conditional, and the ECJ’s rulings are refracted through their own national constitutional lenses (Slaughter et al. 1997). Some indeed have had the opportunity to make explicit their rejection of EC law supremacy over their constitutions. According to the conventional constitutional rhetoric, however, such positions by member state courts could be regarded as temporary aberrations, with the expectation that they will eventually fall into line. What such views fail to capture is that the conditionality attached to supremacy is not a temporary aberration but a permanent feature of the EU constitutional order. As Maduro warned, the idea of ‘constitutional tolerance’ (Weiler 2003), whereby the ECJ and national courts are complicit in engaging in a practice of avoiding constitutional conflicts may be ‘as good as it gets’ when trying to fix the relationship between EU and national law (Maduro 2003). The drafting history of the supremacy

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clause is instructive here. The first drafts of the proposed Constitutional Treaty provided that the law of the EU would be supreme over the law and constitutions of the member states. The final text, contained in Article I–6, merely provided that ‘the Constitution and law adopted by the institutions of the Union in exercising competences conferred on it shall have primacy over the law of the Member States’. Although a Declaration appended to the Treaty went on to state that the provision was simply a codification of existing case law, the absence of the reference to the Constitutions of the member states certainly allowed for an ambiguity not provided for in the Court’s own jurisprudence. In any event, the minimalist solution settled upon in the Treaty of Lisbon sees the principle of supremacy removed entirely from the text of the Treaty, though it features as a Declaration, which merely carries interpretative force. Of course, that ambiguities and controversies existed over the scope of the supremacy principle is unsurprising. The Court’s version of supremacy is only one version of this story, told for particular purposes. Whilst this version has tended to be privileged and reified in some EU law writing, it simply does not capture the complexity, the mixed ‘in between-ness’ of the EU constitutional order. An alternative version has been gaining ascendancy in academic writing over the past decade, drawing on the idea of constitutional pluralism, and presenting the relationships between the EU and national orders as ‘pluralistic rather than monistic, and interactive rather than hierarchical’ (MacCormick 1999: 118; Walker 2002). Fixing a matter such as the primacy of EU law over national constitutional provisions definitively and unconditionally in a constitution would, according to Shaw, ‘require something akin to a constitutional revolution in Europe and in the Member States’ (Shaw 2004: 237). Rather than taking the constitutionally impossible step of concretizing the position of the Court and its legal order, removing the indeterminacy of the system, and establishing definitively the status of the Court and the effects of its rulings, the settlement reached in the Constitutional Treaty left these issues open and indeterminate, rejecting the maximalist view of the Court’s constitution. Such developments are easily incorporated into pluralist visions of the EU and national legal orders. However, the search for measures of ‘good governance’ against which to assess the operation of the mixed constitutional order again comes up against the state/international organisation dichotomy: where should we look for the relevant measures, and are they transferable from the state-level to the EU? A note of caution on this point is sounded amongst certain authors (Shaw 1999; Walker 2003).

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What academics have laid bare is that the relationships between courts are a crucial element in revealing the dynamics of the processes of integration and in identifying the legal constitutional nature of the resulting order. Authors have also concentrated on demonstrating the importance of other elements of the context and environment in which the Court as a judicial actor operates, an environment that is by no means under the control of the Court of Justice (Wincott 1995b). Similarly, Armstrong’s approach reflects an understanding that the Court’s jurisprudence ‘should not be conceived of in terms of fidelity to a foundational Member State bargain, nor to a preordained teleology of integration, but rather to an attempt to mediate between law and its environment’ (Armstrong 1998: 156). In this environment, the Court’s identity as a judicial institution is paramount: to ensure its legitimacy qua judicial authority, it has to be seen to be operating according to legal processes and norms of appropriateness. The Court’s rulings have to fulfil certain basic requirements so as to satisfy the demands of ‘internal’ or legal legitimacy (Bengoetxea et al. 2001). These would include the sources used by it in reaching its judgment and the nature of its reasoning processes. A judgment which is internally justifiable according to legal norms will not necessarily be externally justifiable, in the sense of being considered ethically, politically or ideologically acceptable by other actors. That is not to say that the Court operates in an apolitical vacuum, of course. External forces may well prove important, but these have to be fed into, and responded to, within the context of the Court operating as a legal institution. The Court operates within a dense network of policy actors, including referring courts, national supreme and constitutional courts, the Commission, Advocates General, member state governments and litigants. Some of these actors have a particularly privileged place in the Court’s institutional structure, enabling them ready access to participate in cases, presenting the Court with their own perspectives on the ‘correct’ response in particular cases and feeding into an ongoing, iterative process of policy and polity development. Important recent work has seen attention turn to assessments of the contributions made to the direction of the Court’s case law by the submissions of Advocates General (Burrows and Greaves 2007), as well as of the member state governments, through the observations made before the Court (Granger 2004) in a range of policy sectors. However, it is perhaps significant and reflective of the residual strength of the autonomous, heroic view of the Court to note how little attention lawyers have placed on the important interchanges which have taken place between Commission and Court, since Stein (1981) identified the

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former’s apparent contribution. Reviewing the then extant corpus of constitutionalizing cases, Stein demonstrated that in all but 2 of the 11 cases, the Court’s judgments accorded with the views presented by the legal service of the Commission. Indeed, it was the Commission which had introduced to the Court in Van Gend en Loos the idea of the Community system as a new legal order and had argued strongly for the recognition of the direct effect of Community law provisions. In fact, the Court stopped short of the Commission’s position in this case, which sought acknowledgement of the supremacy principle, though of course this was later to come in Costa v ENEL. Stein views the Court as having been ‘led’ by the Commission, their close alliance ‘probably alleviat[ing] some of the concern members of the Court may have felt regarding the legitimacy and acceptance of its rulings’ (Stein 1981: 24). All this should not be taken as assuming that the Court is in some way captured by the political actors in the field. It is not simply the agent to their principal. Rather, it will be aware of its political environment, of what is presented as politically appropriate, and may seek to incorporate such views when exercising its judicial functions. Just as there were particular views held by the members of the Legal Service of the Commission, it is of course relevant to consider the views held and approaches taken by the members of the Court at a particular time. Sometimes, these may well coalesce around ‘une certaine idée de l’Europe’ which is shared by certain other political actors. Particular views may be deeply embedded in the system, such as the attainment of effectiveness and coherence in the legal order, while others may be more policy-specific, reflecting particular political and economic ideologies. Such principles and values could include, for example, the achievement of the goal of market integration, fair competition and respect for family life. However, such principles should not necessarily be seen as static, or all powerful, as they respond to the changing values of the time and to the shifting composition of the Court. The importance of judicial backgrounds was averred to by another former Judge of the Court, Ulrich Everling, who, in the mid-1980s, suggested that the Court’s ‘increasingly cautious’ approach to laying down general principles was in part due to ‘the arrival of judges from the common law tradition schooled in case law and inclined to a pragmatic approach’ (Everling 1983–4: 1301). As has already been seen, a further corrective to the conventional constitutionalization approach was Shaw’s recognition of disintegration in the EU legal order, the counterpoint to increasing centralization, apparent, for example, in the EU’s fragmented pillars, and, within the EC pillar, in the space for difference and diversity reflected in the norms, tools and techniques of the law. These include the principle

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of subsidiarity, but also in longer-standing elements, such as the space afforded national variation by directives. Such elements are presented ‘not as exceptions to an integrationist norm, but as autonomous facets of the whole’ (Shaw 1996: 241). Over a decade later, the disintegrative elements in the EU order are more pronounced, or at least, more acknowledged by legal commentators. Disintegration becomes normalized, as accounts of the Court and the legal order have matured. The assumption that the Court seeks ‘to expand the scope of supranational governance’ – claimed to be ‘implicitly shared by nearly all legal scholars’ (Stone Sweet 2003: 25) – is increasingly untenable, as seen by the cases in which it has resisted centralizing tendencies (European Court of Justice 1996, 2000). Nor, it should be noted, has the Court pursued all lines so as to reinforce its own constitutional role. It famously has chosen not to facilitate the route to the Court for direct challenges to the legality of Community measures for ‘non-privileged’ actors under Article 230 TEC. As Schepel and Blankenburg point out, it has ‘refrained from turning Article [230] into a vehicle of general constitutional review’. Further: [a] court that wants to engage in lawmaking usually transforms its courtroom into a legislative assembly – allowing class actions, public interest litigation, popular constitutional complaints, Brandeis briefs. The most striking feature of the ECJ’s case law is that it has resisted all of these. (Schepel and Blankenburg 2001: 41) In short, legal scholarship has shown that whilst ‘constitutionalization’ may be a consequence of the activities of the Court, it is little more than a label – and a contested one at that (Avbelj 2008) – holding many meanings which may be ascribed to the various judgments which have had a structuring impact on the nature of the EU legal order. The Court is intimately connected with a range of other legal and political actors in this structuring process, and a more nuanced and conditional view of its contribution is necessary. Certainly, ‘constitutionalization’ should not be seen as some inherent logic within the legal system, driving the Court – and the integration process – ever forward.

Conclusions: Assessing EU legal scholarship Fifty years on from the birth of the discipline, EU legal studies is a wideranging enterprise, engaging with the full range of legal and quasi-legal phenomena connected with the operation of the EU, at international,

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transnational, supranational, national and regional levels. Traditional doctrinal approaches remain an important part of the academic lawyers’ tool kit, and a functional demand for such skills remains strong amongst academic lawyers given their role in the training of new generations of practising lawyers. However, work since the early 1990s in particular reflects a pluralism of approaches and intellectual influences, drawing on the eclecticism of discipline of legal studies itself which was certainly not visible before 1990. The subject can be cut in an almost endless variety of ways, and approached from any number of theoretical perspectives, with the result that there is simply no single answer to questions such as: what is the legal constitutional nature of the EU, and what is the role of the law in the governance of the EU? To give just one example, positivist doctrinal approaches may be suggestive of one particular set of answers to these questions, but these may be expected to vary significantly from one policy area to another and indeed from one state to another. Arguably, despite the evolution under way in EU legal studies in terms of theoretical engagement, there remains significant scope for legal scholars to engage usefully in more constructive efforts towards theorybuilding, connecting their work more self-consciously and consistently to well-established or newly emerging currents of theory. To continue the rather parochial, UK-centric view employed in this chapter, initiatives such as those from a consortium of UK universities to develop a doctoral training programme for candidates in EU (and international) law requiring them to engage specifically with theory and methodology must be welcomed (Cryer et al. 2006). Future generations of EU legal scholars trained in this way will have a clearer appreciation at least of the assumptions that may otherwise be unselfconsciously and unwittingly brought to their work, attuning them to be more explicit in how and why law may be shown to matter in processes of EU governance, with broader benefits for all those engaged in understanding the EU, whatever their disciplinary perspective. In terms of the relationship between EU law and other branches of legal scholarship, there is of course already much crossover. Those with interests in specific policy fields at national level – e.g. employment law, social security law and competition law – must make themselves aware of EU developments, and with the evolving policy reach of the EU into new fields this is becoming necessary for greater numbers of scholars. The pages of journals devoted to such specific policy fields, from the Company Lawyer through the Industrial Law Journal to the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law regularly feature articles and case commentaries

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on EU legal developments. ‘EU law’ must not be approached as something separate and distinct from the legal orders of the member states. It is, after all, regularly incorporated and applied as national law, though its EU origins bring with it additional considerations that must be factored into accounts and assessments of the corpus of law on any issue at national level. Walker (2005) has suggested that there may be rather too much of a tendency for some academic EU lawyers to reject the insights and theoretical tools of those working within a national law or international law frame, given a belief in the EU’s exceptionalism, of its sui generis nature. Certainly, many would argue that there is good reason not to be too ready to apply the approaches from one level to another. But that does not mean that the insights derived from EU legal scholarship cannot have consequences for or assist our understanding of legal categories and concepts operating at a national or international level. Within the field of public law in particular, there exists a necessary engagement with the impact of EU law, and with the insights derived from EU legal studies, on national administrative law, judicial review and constitutional law (Birkinshaw 2003; Harlow 2004). EU legal scholarship has challenged many of the shibboleths of national and international law, contesting received notions of concepts such as sovereignty, citizenship and statehood, which may ultimately lead to new reflections on these notions by scholars operating outside the EU framework.

7 Institutional and Policy Analysis in the European Union: From the Treaty of Rome to the Present∗ Simon Bulmer

How did our knowledge of the institutions and policies of the European Union (EU) develop over the 50-year period since the signing of the Treaties of Rome in 1957? What have been the key contributions to institutional and policy analysis over this period? What have we learnt? These are the questions which are the concern of this chapter. In offering answers, I briefly explore the early literature on institutions and policy prior to 1970. I argue that it was approximately at that time, notably with the publication of Lindberg and Scheingold’s Europe’s Would-Be Polity (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970), that the study of the EU moved from the use of international relations paradigms towards a focus on policy-making. Secondly, therefore, I explore the policymaking literature and the institutional analysis that followed in the next two decades. The second key development in the literature, I argue, was the emergence in the 1990s of the governance ‘turn’ in EU studies. This period witnessed an explosion of studies on the EU’s institutions and policies. Comparative politics approaches emerged as a major reference point in studying EU institutions and policies. In a third section, I explore the reasons for the governance turn – reasons which derived not only from the EU’s development but also from wider changes in the role of the state, the increasing international penetration of domestic politics and changing patterns of state-society relations. This review of the different stages in the development of institutional and policy analysis culminates in a stocktaking of the key components of the contemporary toolkit for analysing EU policies and institutions. In this fourth section I focus on analysis at the EU level, as the growing attention to the impact of the EU on member states – Europeanisation – is addressed elsewhere (see Schmidt, this volume). However, it should be noted that this development is intrinsically linked to the governance turn. 109

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Looking back: The early analysis of supranational policies and institutions Reviewing the early analysis of the institutions and policies of the European Community (EC) is a rather more impressionistic task than evaluating more recent published output. The personal explanation is that I did not engage with the literature in depth until commencing research in the second half of the 1970s. As an undergraduate in European Studies at Loughborough University from 1972 to 1975, I first came to grips with the subject matter in a final year course taught by David Allen. Its concerns were not untypical – integration theory, a relatively traditional examination of the EC’s institutions but also of pressure groups and consideration of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the EC. The course explicitly made reference to the shrewd observations made in the early 1970s by Puchala. His metaphor was of the EC as an elephant and of academic analysts as blind men. Each blind man felt different parts of ‘the beast’ and came to understand it in a different way. No one actually identified the EC as an elephant, that is, the EC was seen partially rather than as a totality. Lively debate ensued between the ‘blind men’ (and the analysts were almost all men at this time) (Puchala 1972). Puchala’s metaphor continues to have some validity today, because there still are academics who build their professional career and even, occasionally, some kind of theory of the elephant’s evolution without feeling a large part of the animal. In the 1970s, though, the metaphor was more powerful because the study of the EC was very patchy. Three key features of the literature were striking at the time. First, the early theoretical or analytical literature on institutions and policies was a by-product of integration theory. This literature was centrally concerned with explaining the trajectory of European integration. It was the insights from the neo-functionalist literature which were of the greatest value for understanding the EC’s institutions and policies, although many of the empirical findings related to the European Coal and Steel Community (Lindberg 1963; Haas 1968). These studies served as the starting point for some of the analysis that followed in later decades. It is welcome to see Haas’ neo-functionalist contributions being re-examined in the contemporary context (Rosamond 2005a). Second, the study of the EC’s development was overwhelmingly conducted in terms of international relations frameworks. Functionalism, neo-functionalism, federalism and security communities were the main overarching literatures on European integration. Each of these approaches or theories offered insights into European integration,

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although this theorising was just entering the doldrums. Neofunctionalists in particular drew conclusions from the EC’s stagnation following the 1966 ‘empty chair’ crisis and Charles de Gaulle’s challenge to the integrative pathway charted by the Treaties of Rome (Haas 1975). Deutsch’s work on security communities was arguably undervalued, despite the welcome inclusion of comparative reference-points in regional integration, as well as his emphasis on social communication, an aspect which has recently found favour in the constructivist analysis of the EU (Deutsch 1957). The federalist literature’s apparent origins in comparative politics was undermined by the strong normative content that came with its advocacy of an international state to overcome the nation-state system that was seen as having led to two world wars. Hence, there was nothing surprising about a key book for students on theorising the EC in the 1970s bearing the title International Theory and European Integration (Pentland 1973). Third, institutional studies were predominantly configurative and atheoretical. Already at this time, practitioners, such as Walter Hallstein (former Commission President) and Emile Noël (former Commission Secretary-General), were making contributions to the academic literature (Noël 1967; Hallstein 1972) – a pattern which continues to the present. Amongst the studies which contributed to understanding the functioning of the EC at the start of the 1970s were those by Holt (1967), Mayne (1962), Palmer and Lambert (1968), Robertson (1973), and Pryce (1973). The study of interest groups had been advanced already by Meynaud and Sidjanski (1971). Without studies such as these, undergraduates would have struggled for information in an era without the resources of the Internet. In addition, these works provided the startingpoint for another generation of scholars who gave a stronger analytical dimension to the study of EU institutions and policies. Another important contributor was Uwe Kitzinger, who had founded the Journal of Common Market Studies in 1962, as well as contributed a major study of UK accession negotiations (Kitzinger 1973).

From integration theory to policy-making During the 1970s, the research agenda on the EC shifted. The perceived ‘obsolescence’ of regional integration theory led to new concerns moving centre stage. The first book to break the mould was arguably Lindberg and Scheingold’s Europe’s Would-Be Polity (1970). It heralded a concern with policy and institutional analysis from more innovative perspectives and made a number of contributions which have now largely

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been forgotten but which pre-figured later developments. Its contributions were twofold – to adopt a comparative politics approach to the EC and to pay serious attention to the role of EC law. First of all, it drew on the comparative politics literature for its organisational framework, namely, David Easton’s then-popular systems theory of politics. This was 24 years before Simon Hix’s article laid down the comparative politics challenge for the study of the EU (Hix 1994): an article which, according to received wisdom, is now presented as the origin of comparative politics analysis of the EU! Europe’s Would-Be Polity treated the EC as a political system; it also employed four policy case studies to explore its arguments, namely, agriculture, transport, coal and the customs union. Re-examining Lindberg and Scheingold’s book it is interesting to see how its research questions have stood the test of time: 1. What is the functional scope of the subjects that it (the political system of the EC) comprehends, and how important is its role in these areas compared with that of the individual nation-states acting more or less unilaterally? 2. Through what institutional structures and processes are decisions typically taken: what are the basic norms or implicit rules of the game “governing” the behaviour of decision-makers in the system? and what are the implications of these norms and structures for the problem-solving capacity of the system? (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970: 65) These questions – for which quantitative and qualitative data were produced to help find the answers – remain central to research on the institutions and policies of the EU. Lindberg and Scheingold’s second contribution was to take the legal dimension of the EC seriously. In retrospect it is a little puzzling that Lindberg and other integration theorists scratched their collective heads and then abandoned integration theory in the face of the stagnation brought about in the 1960s by de Gaulle, while largely overlooking the legal dynamics of integration. For it was during the 1960s that key judgements emerging from the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg had established principles such as the direct effect and supremacy of EC law (Dehousse 1998b: 36–46). Nevertheless, where Lindberg and Scheingold blazed a trail was in taking account of the interaction of law and politics in their study. This was Scheingold’s contribution; he had already explored this interaction in an earlier study, albeit in connection with

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the ECSC (Scheingold 1965). The law-politics interface has proved to be an important one. It has been followed in the work of academics such as Eric Stein, Joseph Weiler, and, then later, in that of AnneMarie Slaughter, Walter Mattli and Karen Alter in North America; and by Francis Snyder, Renaud Dehousse, Peter-Christian Müller-Graf, JeanVictor Louis, Jo Shaw, Kenneth Armstrong, Joanne Scott and others in the EU itself. The policy-making literature emerged in the late-1970s and initially derived from a reading of integration theories (as well as the then newly developed international relations literature on transnationalism and interdependence), focusing on what these theories prescribed for the institutional power balance in policy-making. The path-breaking study was Wallace, Wallace and Webb (Wallace et al. 1977), an editorial team which brought together a set of authoritative analysts. Many of these analysts were working on larger studies of individual policies, reflecting the way that the literature was burgeoning in Britain, the United States, as well as in the founding member states. When it was first published, 30 years ago, it offered the first analytically organised comprehensive review of the EC’s policies and policy-making. This book has now reached its fifth edition (Wallace et al. 2005) in an obviously more crowded market. The book was also one of the first to bring together an international team of scholars to address common themes – something which is taken for granted nowadays but was a significant logistical task in the era before word processors and email. An earlier study was also influential on the policy-making literature and should not be overlooked. Glenda Rosenthal’s The Men Behind the Decisions was a monograph, which applied intergovernmental politics, interest-group lobbying and elite networks as three competing lenses through which to explore to a set of five case studies from the period 1968–71 (Rosenthal 1975). From the 1970s the EC’s institutions also began to receive in-depth analysis. Two books were, in my view, significant in taking such analysis forward. The first was Coombes’ Politics and Bureaucracy in the European Community. Coombes offered a detailed analysis of the workings of the Commission, explored its leadership potential and its bureaucratic characteristics, examined some case studies, such as the Kennedy Round, and focused on the impact of the 1965 empty chair crisis. He noted the essential tension that continues to the present – that between the Commission exercising delegated, administrative functions that give it the characteristics of a ‘bureaucratic organization’, on the one hand, and ‘the creativity and initiative demanded of a body capable of promoting

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political unity in Europe’, on the other (Coombes 1970: 326). This tension is not just an empirical one but continues to be at the centre of academic debates – for new institutionalists, who have explored the Commission’s entrepreneurialism in exploiting its powers and for those using principal-agent analysis in assessing the degree of autonomy that the Commission has from member state principals. Coombes raised the standard by going well beyond a mere configurative study of the Commission. The second book was by Sasse and associates called Decision-Making in the European Community (Sasse et al. 1977). Although it did not hang together especially well as a volume, it brought together research-driven analysis of the key institutions. The volume was a bit of an oddity and in fact comprised several discrete projects. Despite its title, it included not only the key EC institutions but also linked up with EU policy-making arrangements in the member states – a subject-matter to which Helen Wallace had already devoted attention in a pioneering study written at the time of the United Kingdom’s accession (Wallace 1973). A German version of the book had appeared already (Sasse 1975) in a series of studies associated with the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP), a think tank led from 1969 to 1973 by Beate Kohler-Koch and from 1973 to 1994 by Wolfgang Wessels. Many of these studies were under-recognised in English-speaking scholarship, but collectively they formed an important part of the accumulated knowledge of the EC, their institutions and policies.1 An important article published at the start of the 1980s would also have a major impact on the study of institutions and policies – Stein’s paper on the European judicial process and the ‘making of a transnational constitution’ (Stein 1981). His article has one of the mostfrequently cited introductions – e.g. Hunt and Shaw in this volume – and is worth repeating: Tucked away in the fairyland Duchy of Luxembourg and blessed, until recently, with benign neglect by the powers that be and the mass media, the Court of Justice of the European Communities has fashioned a constitutional framework for a federal-type structure in Europe. From its inception a mere quarter of a century ago, the Court has construed the European Community Treaties in a constitutional mode rather than employing the traditional international law methodology. Proceeding from its fragile jurisdictional base, the Court has arrogated to itself the ultimate authority to draw the line between Community law and national law. Moreover, it has

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established and obtained acceptance of the broad principle of direct integration of Community law into the national legal orders of the member states and of the supremacy of Community law within its limited but expanding area of competence over any conflicting national law. (Stein 1981: 1) This contribution was not only fundamental to socio-legal scholarship, but it was an important wake-up call to political scientists to look beyond the intergovernmentalism of the Council of Ministers to observe more subtle changes that were having a major effect. For the time-being, however, intergovernmentalism remained the overarching framework that retained the greatest validity for understanding the EC’s development (Hoffmann 1966, 1982). The lack of any convincing explanation of what lay behind member state behaviour in the EC prompted attention being turned to domestic political explanations of governmental (and non-governmental) behaviour in European arenas (Bulmer 1983; and, on Germany, Bulmer and Paterson 1987). During the 1980s, the integration process regained momentum with the Single European Act and the single market programme. The consequences of this development were threefold. First, the literature on institutions and policies began to become much more diverse as the sheer breadth of academic activity resulted in a loss of the pre-existing coherence. For instance, a separate literature developed on the EC as a foreign policy actor, and discrete intellectual networks began to emerge, such as that dealing with European Political Cooperation. Secondly, the effect of integration on domestic politics impacted on scholars who had not previously been part of integration studies. One illustration of this development came with Scharpf’s much-cited article on the jointdecision trap, revealing the way in which European decision-making – like that in German federalism – encouraged member governments to adhere to a logic of consensus that generated sub-optimal policy outcomes (Scharpf 1988). It was striking how Scharpf, whose work on German federalism and German policy-making was well established, was now shifting attention to the EC – a journey that other public policy and public administration scholars were to make later on. Thirdly, the growing attention to Eurobarometer surveys of public opinion and the introduction of direct elections in 1979 necessarily led to enhanced interest amongst political sociologists and psephologists. These three developments had the effect of fragmenting the study of institutions and policies.

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The governance ‘turn’ in the 1990s The 1990s witnessed several major developments. Most significantly they saw a veritable explosion of the academic literature on the EU. One key organisational development was the growth of journal articles as the medium of publication. The Journal of European Public Policy was established in 1994, and other comparativist journals extended their remit to include EU topics, for example West European Politics, the European Journal of Political Research and, later, Comparative European Politics. Mainstream journals such as Public Administration, International Organization and the British Journal of Political Science published articles on the EU in their particular sub-disciplines. Much later, in 2000, European Union Politics was launched. Another development was the initiation of major initiatives designed to give a focus to research on the EU. The UK Economic and Social Research Council supported programmes on the single market and ‘One Europe or Several’. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, its German counterpart, supported research in a similar way in Germany, notably the project on ‘Governance in the European Union’, coordinated from the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research. As a final organisational development the English language increasingly became the lingua franca for the publication of research in EU studies. Intellectually, it was possible to recognise a number of developments. There was a growing understanding of the EC/EU as a political system to be analysed using the comparative politics toolkit (Hix 1994). Relatedly, the governance ‘turn’ emerged in the EU literature, taking different forms in the United Kingdom and Germany. It had more of a comparative politics origin in the former and more of an international relations background in the latter. The scope of EU studies became enlarged because of the further impact of the EU on the member states’ political systems. This impact took place, for example, through the monetary and social policy developments contained in the Treaty on European Union (1992). It brought additional public policy scholars into EU studies. Finally, the study of the EU became much more ‘mainstreamed’ into political science and international relations. And a much larger analytical toolkit came to be deployed. The governance ‘turn’ triggered or was closely linked with many of the developments of this era, although not all analysts explicitly used the term governance. With the increasing ‘congestion’ in EU studies, it becomes less possible in what follows to highlight individual pieces of work. Instead, the identification of concepts, academic arguments, even

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‘schools’, becomes more of an appropriate way to proceed. Why did the governance turn take place? Five explanations may be offered, and these account for the governance turn in general, and not just in the context of EU studies. A first explanation lies in the international penetration of domestic politics, notably because of the growth of globalization. The EU itself was closely involved in this development. Second, the character of state power shifted away from ‘rowing’ to ‘steering’, to use the terminology of Osborne and Gaebler (1992). This move was reflected in the reduction in state involvement in the economy, for instance through the privatisation process in the United Kingdom starting under the Thatcher governments, the growth of regulatory agencies including at EU level and the development of a more networked form of governance and so on. Third, and this explanation overlaps with the previous two, nation-state institutions were seen as being hollowed out from both above, for instance by the EU itself, and from below. In the latter case, the EU’s own encouragement of regionally based and partnership-based governance was a specific impulse. The EU thus challenged the nation states from both directions. Fourth, Kohler-Koch and Rittberger (2006: 29) offer a more normative explanation associated with ‘good governance’. This impulse came relatively late to the EU context with the Commission’s White Paper on European Governance (European Commission 2001). Fifth, there were changes in the toolkit of political science and international relations. The emergence of new analytical approaches, such as new institutionalism and constructivism, were inextricably linked with the shifting forms of governance. All these explanations applied to the governance turn generally. However, there were some specific characteristics in the EU context. The EU’s policy instruments had never been interventionist in the form of national governments’ (for instance, there was no EU state ownership of the economy). And the EU had no ‘government’. But the way in which the EU was governed was changing: increasing regulatory patterns of governance; the growth of multi-levelled governance in connection with the EU structural funds; and, over the last decade, the growth of the Open Method of Coordination with its reliance on the techniques of bench-marking, peer-review and so on. In the words of Hix (from a ‘new governance’ perspective), the EU is ‘a unique set of multi-level, non-hierarchical and regulatory institutions, and a hybrid mix of state and non-state actors’ (Hix 1998: 39).

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The contemporary toolkit for analysing EU policies and institutions A diverse set of analytical approaches has established itself for analysing EU institutions and policies in the contemporary period. I will focus on the following: new institutionalism, constructivism, policy network analysis, multi-level governance, regulatory politics, constitutionalism, ‘politics like any other’ (as it is termed by Hix) and brief reference to other approaches. In the background of the review, it is important to remember that Moravcsik’s liberal intergovernmentalism has become the orthodox macro-political account of the dynamics of European integration (Moravcsik 1993, 1998). Consequently, it has implications for the analysis of the EU’s policies and institutions. The richness and diversity of the analytical approaches mean that the dispassionate reader can assemble a much clearer picture of Puchala’s metaphorical elephant. However, the diversity of approaches has also been accompanied by a certain sectarianism, whereby individual analytical approaches or research methods are assumed to be superior. The predilection for positivist methodology in the United States is one explanation for the leading scholars in the ‘non-conforming’ constructivist camp of EU scholarship being based in Europe. New institutionalism offered two clear insights: first, that institutions mattered and, second, how they mattered. ‘Institutions’ were understood in a more encompassing manner than in the traditional sense: as rules, norms and – for some analysts – as cultural constructs (Bulmer 1993). Thus new institutionalism was well adjusted to tackle governance. As a broader development in the discipline of political science, it was an attempt to counteract the relative inattention given to institutions during the behaviourist revolution of the previous decades. Three variants of new institutionalism could be identified – rational choice, historical and sociological institutionalism (see generally Hall and Taylor 1996 and, in the EU context, Aspinwall and Schneider 2000). The rational choice institutionalist approach allowed a more formal theorisation of how actors respond to institutional rules. Indeed, a range of authors, such as Tsebelis, Scully, Garrett and others offered alternatively modelled accounts of institutional winners and losers as reforms have been undertaken for procedures such as co-decision between the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Ministers (Tsebelis 1994; Scully 1997; Tsebelis and Garrett 2000). This work arose out of developments in American political science relating to legislative procedures and developed within the EU context, which was changing

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as a consequence of successive treaty reforms. Historical institutionalism has been theorised to the greatest extent by Pierson (1996, 2004). This approach can help explore the temporal dimension of institutions and policies – how arrangements become embedded, locked in and dysfunctional. The real challenge for this literature is in trying to theorise the circumstances under which change occurs – ‘critical junctures’. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is frequently cited as a policy that has become highly path-dependent and consequently difficult to reform. As Pollack notes, the structural funds, by contrast, are subject to periodic reviews (which offer critical junctures), and this creates an opportunity for them to be reshaped without suffering the rigidity of the CAP (Pollack 2005: 21–22). Sociological institutionalists have offered a different account of EU policies and institutions. Essentially the interpretation goes beyond the rational-actor, strategic-behaviour model of the rational choice variant of institutionalism. Sociological institutionalism sees interests and identities as emanating from within institutions: social context matters. Ideas, beliefs, discourse and knowledge matter. Institutions ‘supply actors with their bearings in a turbulent world, and thereby contribute to actors’ senses of who they are and what their interests must be’ (Rosamond 2000: 119). The sociological institutionalists’ contribution has been in two broad areas and is well summarised by Wiener. On the one hand, international institutions, such as the EU, are assigned the role of creating interactive spaces for elites, who then take an active role in diffusing norms, ideas and values through interactions back in their respective domestic contexts. On the other hand, norms, such as human rights norms, may also be assigned regulative and constitutive influence (Wiener 2006: 38–39). Schmidt has taken the sociological dimension in a different direction by ‘bringing discourse in’ in her study of the contrasting ways different national democracies have engaged with the EU (Schmidt 2006a), as well as in a special issue of West European Politics, co-edited by her and Claudio Radaelli, on policy change and discourse in the EU (Schmidt and Radaelli 2004). Put concisely, therefore, new institutionalism in its three variants reveals that, respectively, rules matter to rational action, time matters to policy and institutional evolution, and social context matters to political behaviour within institutions. The boundary between constructivism and sociological institutionalism is somewhat indistinct, since both are based on a fundamental assumption that individuals are a product of their social environment. However, what is more explicit about constructivism is that structures and agency are seen as mutually constitutive. Put more concretely, the

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institutions of the EU alter the identities and interests of individuals and of the member states that engage with it. Constructivist insights into the EU were brought to the fore with a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy (Christiansen et al. 1999). Constructivism offers an important ‘handle’ on a particular set of issues where their mutually constitutive nature is striking – citizenship, rights, the re-shaping of political identity and so on. Constructivism encountered robust criticism from rival analysts, such as Moravcsik (1999), who argued that it failed to build falsifiable hypotheses or explore the same evidence using rationalist analysis. This critique has been superseded, however, by a number of studies on Commission and national officials, where more positivist approaches have been deployed by constructivists (Hooghe 2005). Hooghe’s article is in a special issue of International Organization (2005) that includes recent state-of-the-art papers applying constructivism to the EU. In addition, Jupille, Caporaso and Checkel have put forward an explicit way in which a dialogue can be engaged in by constructivist and rationalist scholars (Jupille et al. 2003). However, those scholars working in a more ‘reflexive’ mode, for example, by using ‘speech acts’ as a constructivist methodology, may find this dialogue more difficult to join (Wiener 2006). Policy network analysis is rather different in nature. It offers an actorcentred approach to understanding the policy process in the EU. Advocated in particular by Peterson and Richardson, policy network analysis gives greater attention to policy actors (or agency) than the more structural accounts offered by institutionalism (Richardson 1996; Peterson 1995; Peterson and Bomberg 1999). On the other hand, it shares with institutionalism an affinity to the governance turn because of its emphasis upon ‘the mutuality and interdependence between public and non-public actors’ (Peterson 2004: 119). In Germany, a group of academics working with Kohler-Koch developed the notion of ‘network governance’ (Eising and Kohler-Koch 1999; Kohler-Koch 1999). This approach has a slightly different perspective, although utilising a related language. The key issue is the EU bringing together the main societal and state actors in a problem-solving rather than utility-maximising role within issue-specific constituencies. Kohler-Koch and her collaborators work much more explicitly within the governance ‘turn’ than Peterson does. Policy networks also achieved an impact in the Frenchlanguage academic community (le Galès and Thatcher 1995). Neither policy network analysis nor network governance has found much resonance in North American-based writings on the EU. Both approaches share a strong capacity for empirical application.

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Work on the EU as a system of multi-level governance (MLG) was driven forward at the outset by Marks and Hooghe. It found its early classic statement in an article published in 1996 (Marks et al. 1996). Multilevel governance essentially sought to explain how the authority of ‘the state’ was being hollowed out by EU structural funds, that is, by the EU from above and its partnerships with regions, from below. It perhaps over-stated the case a bit, as critiques of liberal intergovernmentalism seem destined to do. Not least, its validity beyond the structural funds is limited. It has subsequently been theorised rather more and ‘Type 1’ and ‘Type 2’ MLG have emerged: the former is close to the more ordered layers of governance, such as federalism, whereas the latter conforms to more ad hoc arrangements that are task-specific (Hooghe and Marks 2003). The concept has been well explored empirically (Bache and Flinders (2004)). Separate work has been undertaken in Germany using similar conceptualisation (Kohler-Koch 1998). Majone’s work on regulatory politics and the EU as a regulatory state also has powerful analytical explanation: for the changing character of the EU from the late 1980s, with the development of the Single Market; for an EU with limited budgetary policy instruments; for an EU with limited social policy instruments; and with the growth of EU regulatory agencies responsible for policy execution in a range of discrete areas (Majone 1996). The regulatory politics literature is a terrain of study rather than a single analytical approach. However, the terrain itself is precisely the outcome of the transformation of EU governance over the last two decades or so. This work has been carried forward by scholars such as Héritier (1999), as well as Coen and Thatcher (2005a). The new constitutionalism has been a prominent concern of scholars working at the interface of law with political theory. As Walker puts it, constitutionalism seeks to ‘provide an explanatory nexus between constitutional doctrine and institutions on the one hand, and the broader socio-political dynamics of European Union on the other’ (Walker 1996: 266). This scholarship can be traced back to Stein’s pioneering work (see above) and is especially associated with Weiler (1999). These constitutional ‘meta-issues’ surrounding EU governance have received considerable attention. For example, Shaw has explored the notion of ‘postnational constitutionalism’ (Shaw 1999). And a normative debate about constitutionalism developed in the run-up to the Convention on the Future of Europe in 2002–03 (Shaw 2003; Wiener 2003b).2 Like ‘regulatory politics’, constitutionalism is not an analytical approach but a terrain of study that has been devoted increasing attention, especially

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with the EU’s troubled efforts to define its own constitutional framework in the period from the Convention to the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. Hix argues that much of the work on EU governance – he calls it ‘new governance’ – ‘is transforming politics and government at the European and national levels into a system . . . best understood as a sui generis phenomenon’. He contrasts this new governance approach with a rival approach, which asserts ‘that “traditional politics and government” do exist in the EU’ (Hix 1998: 54). The rival camp of politics like any other is concerned with competition over the input side of politics and is more likely to involve rational choice explanations. It, therefore, is once again a terrain of study but demarcated by Hix from what (he regards as) the more sui generis aspects of EU politics. The analytical methods deployed in connection with politics like any other draws inter alia on rational choice institutionalism (see above). In addition to the competing explanations of winners and losers in inter-institutional relations, this work includes several studies of voting alignments in the EP (Hix 1999, 2001, 2004); MEPs’ relations with their voters (Bowler and Farrell 1993); analysis of the socialisation of MEPs (Scully 2005); and work on party incentive structures in the EP’s committee system (Whitaker 2001). I am not entirely convinced that this distinction is helpful. Dividing the literature up in this way does not, in my opinion, assist with understanding the metaphorical elephant that is the EU. Hix himself admits that, whilst these may be seen as two rival camps, it is through the combined forces of the two approaches that a better understanding will emerge of how the EU works and how it may be improved (Hix 1998: 55). Other approaches: The explosion of analysis of EU policies and institutions has rendered it difficult to do justice to all the approaches now available (for alternative reviews, see Pollack 2005; the contributions to Jørgensen et al. 2006 and to Cini and Bourne 2006). Even in the literature on policies and institutions narrowly defined there are other approaches. One such is Wessels’ fusion thesis, which seeks to integrate the EU’s development as part of the wider reconstruction of the European state over the last decades (Wessels 1997). Normative political theory has embraced EU studies (Føllesdal 2006). There is a growing literature on the political economy of the EU (Verdun 2006). A range of critical perspectives on the EU also exist (Manners 2006). Other disciplines beyond political science and international relations have contributed as well, notably through anthropological studies, for example of the European Commission (Abélès and Bellier 1996; Shore 2000).

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Conclusion: what have we learnt? Over the 50 years since the signing of the Treaties of Rome our knowledge of the policies and institutions of the EU has grown extensively. The impulses for this development have come from two sources – the evolution of the EC/EU itself, and the changing ideas and trends in intellectual thought (Bourne and Cini 2006). That is a clear pattern observable in this chapter. The empirical literature on individual institutions and policies has become vast, and this chapter has barely touched on it. The amount of information is enormous, especially with Internet sources. Gone are the days when academic conferences, in particular the annual January conference of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies, served to bring over practitioners so that those attending could get from practitioners the latest institutional or policy information to teach students later in the year. This material is all available online. It is no surprise that there has been a large growth in the analytical toolkit to facilitate ‘processing’ the raw empirical data, whether quantitative or qualitative. In short, we have learnt a lot – the importance of preferences, institutions, identity, discourse and so on. A number of divisions can be identified in the literature discussed above, and they relate to what Ben Rosamond terms ‘the political sciences of European integration’; they are no less present in respect of its institutions and policies (Rosamond 2006: 8–9). Is the subject of study ‘EU politics’, where the need to compare is virtually eliminated, or is it ‘the political science of the EU’, where the EU serves as an illustrative case study? Is the study of EU politics and institutions to be pigeonholed within comparative politics, or does international relations still have something to offer? Is the study of the EU to be considered ‘area studies’ (sometimes in a dismissive manner), or is it social science? Are European and (North) American approaches to the study of the EU apparent or even sectarian positions emerging on the subject-matter? Questions like these will doubtless persist in the study of EU institutions and policies. To the extent that divides open up – whereby constructivism, say, may be seen to depart too far from evidenced-based analysis or ‘politics like any other’ privileges formal modelling over its relationship to empirical reality – the prospects are, in my view, dim for obtaining a good picture of Puchala’s metaphorical elephant. In this sense, the main challenge for the future of institutional and policy analysis in the EU is arguably to maintain intellectual openness. In other words, every effort should be made to ensure continued dialogue between those who analyse EU policies and institutions according

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to mainstream political science and those who regard a more multidisciplinary approach as necessary because of the EU’s special features (Rosamond 2006: 14–17).

Notes ∗

I am grateful to participants at the UACES/FCO conference for their comments on the original presentation of this paper. I am also grateful for their comments to the editors. Parts of the final substantive section of the paper draw in part on Bulmer (forthcoming). The paper was written up while on research leave from the University of Sheffield as visiting professor at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin. I am grateful to both institutions and especially the latter for its support and the hospitality of its colleagues. I take the opportunity to thank Dave Allen, Roger Morgan, Dennis Swann (Loughborough), Paul Taylor (LSE) and Michael Wheaton (Hull) for stimulating my interest in the European Communities while I was one of their students.

1. Apart from Sasse (1975) an overview of the IEP’s output can be gauged from a publications listing on its webpage: http://www.iep-berlin.de/fileadmin/ website/09_Publikationen/iep-bibliographie.pdf (accessed 25 October 2007). 2. Also see the ConWeb papers available at: www.qub.ac.uk/pisp/Research/Paper Series/ConWEBPapers/ (accessed 20 February 2007).

Part III Tough and Challenging Journeys

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8 The International Impact of European Integration: Key Events, Players and Trends Jolyon Howorth

What do we mean by ‘international impact’? How does one measure it? Political scientists have offered various approaches (Allen and Smith 1990; Ginsberg 2001), but none has proven wholly satisfactory. To what extent does the European Union (EU), through the adoption of a unified voice, succeed in defending its interests in world affairs? To what extent does the EU, through its external action, succeed in influencing the nature and direction (both general and specific) of international relations? And to what extent does the EU, through its values and example, succeed in projecting itself as a normative model of international action to be either solicited or emulated? In order to assess these issues, we shall examine key events, players and trends. At a purely cognitive level, some form of European integration for maximising international impact seems to have been on the agenda for centuries. The Enlightenment and the philosophical traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries already perceived federalism as a logical extension of the nation state. Moreover, by the late nineteenth Century, the conjunctural reasons why individual European nation states had dominated international relations from the fifteenth Century onwards (trading, banking, navigational, technological and military advances) had all but disappeared. By the mid-twentieth Century, it was clear that Europe could not continue on the course it had adopted for the previous 500 years without bleeding to death. In the ‘new pecking order’ of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, European states were being challenged by rising giants: the United States, Russia, China, India, Brazil, etc.1 The traditional European nation state was increasingly seen as too small a unit for the maximisation of international impact. Size, while not a determining factor, does matter. 127

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For two centuries, the power-decline of European nation states – and the concomitant rise of new superpowers (the United States and Russia) – was predicted repeatedly by those whose enlightened gaze rose above the rough and tumble of the nationalist trough. The original seed of European unity, charioted by historical forces, was the realm of ideas. Immanuel Kant, Napoleon Bonaparte, Saint-Simon, Jeremy Bentham, Victor Hugo and Alexis de Tocqueville all predicted the inevitable decline of the European nation state, and all, in very different ways, proposed some form of European unity as the obvious alternative to the fratricidal declinist tendencies of European national diversity. PierreJoseph Proudhon predicted that ‘the twentieth century will open the era of federations, or humanity will begin again a purgatory of a thousand years’. Yet Europe’s stubborn nation states continued to believe in themselves alone and were prepared, in the course of the twentieth century, to send untold millions to Proudhon’s purgatory (or worse), thus circling the narrow nationalist wagons against the sweep of broader historical forces.

Key events Europe as an international actor has had four (and possibly five) midwives in the form of major, precipitating ‘events’. The first evenemential midwife was the reality of that very carnage the intellectuals had dreaded. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, the first to draw the European conclusions from the bloodletting of 1914–18, founded the movement whose contemporary offspring, the International PanEuropean Union, has long battled for transcontinental reconciliation based on libertarian, social, Christian and European values. Aristide Briand, in his speech to the League of Nations on 8 September 1929, argued that only a federation based on economics but with explicit social and political goals could save Europe from itself. The following year, he established his ‘Regime of a European Federal Union’. I cite these early twentieth century thinkers and politicians because, although their immediate efforts came to nought, they kindled and nurtured a flame which still burns bright – the flame of Europe as a force for positive good in the world. The second – and most immediate – midwife was World War II. After what E.H. Carr (2001) called the 20-year crisis, the refrain of ‘never again’ was arguably the most powerful stimulant in the minds of most of the post-war greats: Monnet, Schuman, Adenauer, Churchill, de Gasperi and Spaak. All were deeply motivated by the desire to put an end to the

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1000-year-old European civil war, seen as the main cause of Europe’s decline in the international pecking order. And all saw – albeit less centrally – that therein lay the price of Europe’s emergence as an international actor. This is the fundamental endogenous driver behind the integration process – the exorcising of Europe’s inner historical demons. The third event was exogenous – the combined effect of the Cold War and of the Marshall Plan. The former had the effect of producing an external security blanket in the form of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a helpful framework within which fissiparous tendencies could be held in check. Despite frequent transatlantic quarrels during the Cold War, the Alliance held firm, galvanised by the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union. The corollary to this was unflagging support for European integration from all US administrations – at least until the advent of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the recent ‘divide and rule’ school in Washington DC. The Marshall Plan was informed by liberal internationalism and an open door trading mentality. In the words of Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the influential editor of Foreign Affairs in the 1940s: if the European economy is gradually to be revived and restored, it must be helped to reconstruct the plant that in turn will enable it to be independent of us and to compete with us. We must encourage not merely enterprises which will be mutually profitable to Europeans and to us, but also those which will be profitable to them and to third parties; for Europe will resist becoming the satellite of American capital and industry, even in order to live, and in broad terms it is not to our advantage that she should so become even if she would. (Armstrong 1947 – emphasis added) John F. Kennedy perceived the outcome of these twin processes as an interdependent Atlantic community: We believe that a united Europe will be capable of playing a greater role in the common defence, of responding more generously to the needs of poorer nations, of joining with the United States in lowering trade barriers . . . and developing coordinated policies in all economic, political, and diplomatic areas. (Kennedy 1962) European integration and the rise of the EU as an international actor were not US creations (as is often asserted in US studies), but were, it has

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to be acknowledged, considerably facilitated by inputs from the United States. The question can be put: to what extent would European integration and Europe’s international impact be of a lesser order – or at any rate different – today had neither the Marshall Plan nor NATO existed? The Marshall Plan of course gave major impetus to the efforts of Monnet, Schuman and others to forge a common market – the one event, at the end of the day, which has probably done most to maximise Europe’s leverage. The fourth event (and history may well record that it was in fact the most influential one in terms of generating serious international impact) was the end of the Cold War. This event had four major effects on the accelerating emergence of the EU as an international actor. First, by throwing into question the familiar binary world of the Cold War period, it hung a new question mark over Europe’s internal and external stability, a factor which had previously been somewhat taken for granted. Within 4 months of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the drive towards a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) began in earnest. It was in large part a trade-off between France and Germany, both of which were concerned to confront EU enlargement by ensuring a prior process of deepening, Helmut Kohl agreeing to French pressures for monetary union and François Mitterrand acquiescing to German proposals for political union. CFSP was an assertion of the recognition that in the brave new post-1989 world, European nation states should either hang together or risk hanging separately (Howorth 2001). Second, by suggesting the inevitability of the eventual withdrawal of the US security guarantee, the end of superpower confrontation forced Europeans to think about something previously unthinkable – the organisation of their own autonomous security and defence requirements. Third, by helping bring about the reappearance of war inside the European space, the end of the Cold War considerably reinforced that trend towards security autonomy. Fourth, by initially implying the advent of what George H.W. Bush referred to as a ‘new world order’ based on multilateralism and the rule of law, the end of the Cold War helped European ‘norms’ to come into their own. Is there a fifth major event delivering the EU’s international impact? It is difficult to argue that the events of 11 September 2001 had a direct – or even a decisively indirect – effect on the intensification of the EU’s international impact. However, 9/11 did initiate the process, whereby the EU began to harmonise its counter-terrorism policies, a process which was considerably accelerated and intensified after the Madrid bombings on 11 March 2004 and further consolidated after the London bombings

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of 7 July 2005. In short, faced with a new and deadly type of external threat, the EU has, albeit painfully slowly, made progress towards pooling intelligence, police, judicial, financial and banking instruments with a view to offering a coherent response – both tactical/short-term and strategic/long-term – to what has emerged as the most important political development of the early twenty-first century – the struggle between extremist elements of Islam and Western values and interests. To the extent to which the events of 9/11 also led the US administration to adopt a new security strategy based on pre-emptive warfare and the export of democracy, implemented through the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it is also the case that the EU, in an attempt to define its own strategic approach to the world, generated, in December 2003, its own European Security Strategy (Solana 2003). That document, and its 2008 successor, the putative European White Book, have, at the very least, forced Europeans for the first time since 1945 to think in strategic terms.

Key players To invoke, in a chapter like this one, the names of the ‘great and the good’ in European integration (Monnet, Schuman, Adenauer, de Gasperi, Spinelli, Spaak, Hallstein, etc.) would simply be to repeat the blindingly obvious. Their place is assured in the Pantheon of European statesmen and major actors. Nothing can detract from it. Safe too is the place of the second generation of major political actors, Giscard, Heath and Schmidt, as well as the third generation, Mitterrand and Kohl, Delors and Gonzalez and Prodi. These too have a fixed place in the Pantheon. Salute tutti! In terms of key players who have not yet been written about extensively, Javier Solana probably stands in a class of his own. As High Representative for the CFSP, Solana has grown in stature constantly and is now universally accepted as the ‘external voice and face’ of the EU (Barros-Garcia 2007). During President George W. Bush’s first term of office, Solana became, for Secretary of State Colin Powell, the indispensable European collaborator. So widely recognised were his talents as a consensus-builder that when the European Council decided, in June 2004, to make an appointment to the putative new post of Union Minister for Foreign Affairs, the man on everybody’s shortlist was Javier Solana. He has played an unparalleled role in defining and implementing wide swathes of the EU’s CFSP and practically the totality of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) discussed below. But Solana’s stature and impact should not be exaggerated. Newsweek

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concluded that ‘single-handedly’ he had created CFSP (Power 2002). He remains dependent, however, on policy green lights from the member states. Given their support, he can play a major role in international crises such as the Balkans, or in ensuring the continuity of EU policy towards Iran or more broadly towards the Middle East. But if member states seriously disagree – as they did over Iraq in 2002–03 – then Solana’s voice is practically silenced. There are other players who are not so often mentioned as architects of European global impact but whose contribution nevertheless demands recognition. The most important is Charles de Gaulle. Long before the end of World War Two, de Gaulle had concluded that, in the post-War world, only the coming together of the major European nation states in some form of coordinated effort and with an overt political project could preserve and ‘multiply’ the international impact of the old continent in a rapidly changing world. Being de Gaulle, he saw this process as involving a privileged relationship between nation states – in the first instance France and the United Kingdom. His discussions with Churchill in Paris on 11 November 1944, where he sought to persuade Britain to join forces with France in securing Europe’s place in the emerging world order, demonstrate that his entire post-war vision was already firmly in place (De Gaulle 1959: 63–64). Subsequently, during the 1940s and early 1950s, he developed his notion of a West European ‘bloc’.2 As President after 1958, he tried once again to work first with the British – with his wartime colleague Macmillan – but was obliged to fall back on the Franco-German ‘motor’, of which he was the key initiator. He simultaneously attempted (unsuccessfully), via the Fouchet Plan, to devise a Europe which would probably have been similar to the one that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s (with greater decisionmaking powers to the Council and a more circumscribed executive role for the Commission) and with an autonomous foreign and security policy. De Gaulle’s Europe also demanded the transcendence of the Cold War and the embrace of Central and Eastern Europe. His vision was correct, but 25 years too early. Most importantly, de Gaulle was the main (and for a long time the solitary) voice calling for Europe to take charge of itself strategically, not in opposition to the United States but from a healthy position of partnership (ICG 1992; Bozo 1996). In 1994, no less a witness than Henry Kissinger paid homage to de Gaulle’s lasting effect on France’s contribution to European strategic thinking: ‘the most consistent, the most creative, the most systematic thinking on strategy in Europe today takes place in France’ (Kissinger 1994). Today’s ESDP project is remarkably similar in many respects to de Gaulle’s 1950s vision

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of a coordinated European defence effort – which he presented as an alternative to the European Defence Community. De Gaulle was a ‘great European’ who undoubtedly contributed as much to the international impact of Europe as any other of the European greats. His European contribution has been overshadowed, however, by his legacy as the leader driven by ‘a certain idea of France’ (Gordon 1993). Another unlikely player whose European policy contributed to the enhancement of Europe’s impact was Margaret Thatcher. Her wholehearted embrace of the Single European Act (SEA) and the extent to which she proved ready to sacrifice entire swathes of British ‘sovereignty’ in order to complete the Single Market contributed to the launch of a process which has progressively and inexorably led to the creation of the Council Secretariat, to CFSP and to the Single Currency. We can take pride in the distance travelled’, she said in 1986. ‘But we must also remember how far we still have to go. The Community is now launching itself on a course for the 1990s, a course which must make it possible for Europe to compete on equal terms with the United States and Japan. . . . What we need are strengths which we can only find together. We must be stronger in new technologies. We must have the full benefit of a single large market. (Thatcher 1986) To the extent that the Single Market is arguably the vector of Europe’s most serious impact in the global order, then Margaret Thatcher was an important architect of that global impact.3 A third ‘accidental’ actor in the process, whereby Europe emerged as a growing international actor was Ronald Reagan. In the early 1980s, his sabre-rattling unilateralist response to the Soviet Union’s 1970s deployment of the SS-20 mobile missile, followed by his launch of the Strategic Defence (‘Star Wars’) Initiative, gave rise to three distinct but interconnected European reactions. The first was the official NATO response involving the deployment of a new generation of ‘Euromissiles’ (Pershing-2 and Cruise) across a range of European countries. The second was the rapid growth of a trans-continental European ‘peace’ movement. The third was the discreet ‘re-actualisation’ of the Western European Union, which paved the way for moves towards an autonomous European defence capacity a decade later. Historians are already debating whether the ‘Gorbachev phenomenon’ of the late 1980s was primarily sparked by the Reagan/NATO Euromissiles offensive, which confronted the Soviet Union with the choice of spending

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itself into bankruptcy, or throwing in the towel (Gaddis 2006) or indeed by the European peace movement which, by reassuring the Soviet leadership about the peaceful intentions of Europe’s citizens, eased the entire continent’s passage out of confrontation (Kaldor 1991; Grachev 1995, 2005). Whichever of these two forces proved to be the more influential, there is no doubting that Europe’s politicians, while tacitly accepting US leadership of the Euromissiles crisis, were nevertheless sufficiently alarmed by the confrontational tone and style of the mid-1980s (and subsequently horrified by Reagan’s unilateral 1986 ‘denuclearisation proposals’ to Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik) that they began discreetly to explore the prospects for greater European autonomy within the Atlantic Alliance. It is revealing that a man as devoted to traditional Atlanticism as Geoffrey Howe could, in 1985, publish an article exploring the prospects for a distinct ‘European Pillar’ within the Alliance (Howe 1984–5; Bailes 1999). Howe’s article was significant not only because it was the first in a series of similar arguments in favour of greater European coordination in the realm of security and defence policy but also because it was a British Foreign Secretary who started the trend. I have suggested that the end of the Cold War, as a key event, had greater influence over the emergence of the EU as an international actor than any other single event. Mikhail Gorbachev, therefore, also deserves credit as being another paradoxical and accidental architect of European empowerment. His eventual objective was no doubt the opposite of the type of transcontinental Europe which has actually emerged. Through his notion of a ‘common European home’, he aspired to a continent reconciled with itself (arguably akin to de Gaulle’s ‘Atlantic to the Urals’) but one in which he assumed that reform communism (rather than EU accession) would be the future for the Eastern half (Asmus 1990). Others see in the concept of the ‘common European home’ a fundamental shift in Russia’s ‘European thinking’ (Malcolm 1989). The reality, of course, is that Gorbachev’s decision not to use force to constrain the historical developments unleashed in the late 1980s, and particularly not to stand in the way of German unification, has led to immeasurable increases in the size and overall continental influence of the EU. In this connection, mention must also be made of a number of key figures from Central and Eastern Europe who, through their embrace of Europeanism, have helped inject into it energy, perspective and values, which have added an Eastern dimension to the project itself, as well as to its international impact: Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Aleksander Kwasniewski, George Soros. From a completely opposite perspective, the unintentional role of

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Slobodan Milosevic in helping the EU member states forge a common approach to the Balkans was undoubtedly significant. Finally, let us just pass in review a number of names of those who, as a function of the political capital at their disposal, could have had a major impact on Europe’s global influence but who ultimately failed to make any significant difference – Silvio Berlusconi, Gerhard Schroeder, Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar, Jacques Chirac – in short, the entire ‘fourth generation’ of European leaders. Their role was to manage the major transformations (SEA, economic and monetary union, enlargement) kick-started by their predecessors. With the exception of ESDP (see below), there were no new major initiatives between the mid-1990s and the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Key trends ‘Trends’, for the purposes of this chapter, are powerful underlying (and ongoing) forces exerting a significant influence on the process, whereby the EU has increased its international impact. The first major trend, globalisation, is not a recent phenomenon. It presided over the birth of the original European integration project in the form of pressures not only from the United States but also from the post-war financial and commercial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to free up trade (and, by extension, to help combat communism). In its early incarnation, globalisation generated pressures for the EU to create a common market. In its more recent (post-1980s) incarnation, it has led almost inexorably to ever greater deregulation, to the exponential growth of financial markets and of international trade and to the structuring of world economic influence along regional and ‘polar’ lines. It informed in many ways the emergence of the SEA and contributed to the many logics leading to the Single Currency. The EU has both acted as a shield against some of its more deleterious effects and constituted a conduit for some of its more dynamic processes (Schmidt 2002a: Chapter 1; Hay and Menon 2007: 428–430). Whatever the reactions and views of European citizens, the fact is that, out there in the real world, globalisation has helped European companies in their hundreds to become world champions (Reid 2005; Rifkin 2005). A second trend worthy of attention is the growth, all around the world, of regional regimes. It is a feature of human history that functional socio-political units have grown constantly larger – from tribes, to medieval communes, to city states, then finally nation states. By

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‘functional’ I mean units whose ‘being’ (memory, values, language, identity, culture) are in harmony with their ‘doing’ (trade, economy, institutions, structures, politics). Being works by consensus, doing by majority vote. When the two are in harmony, this is what scholars call ‘political culture’ (Howorth 2000a). For the past 200 years, the optimum unit for such functionality has tended to be the nation state. But increasingly, that unit is being paralleled if not transcended by ‘regional regimes’, the grouping of several nation states at regional level. In part, this is another result of globalisation. The EU was the first and to date has been both the most ambitious and the most successful of these. But such regimes are now in evidence all around the world: Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), African Union (AU), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Mercosur, South American Community of Nations (SACN) and others. The key features of all these regional regimes is their recognition that today’s world is being structured by an ever smaller number of ever larger units in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The exemplary role of the EU is explicitly recognised by some of these regional regimes as a model to be emulated, while others explicitly reject that model, and none is likely to replicate it. Schmidt (2006a) has coined the term ‘regional state’ to refer to this phenomenon. The EU’s capacity to radically transform neighbouring states aspiring to accession is unprecedented in human history and constitutes a unique and arguably unparalleled form of ‘impact’ (Vachudova 2005). Thus far, regional regimes have only functioned at the level of ‘doing’, but at this level they have challenged and on occasion transcended the nation state. It remains to be seen whether they can and will also transcend the nation state as the primary locus of ‘being’. In the meantime, the EU derives from this emulation a measure of international influence (Miliband 2007). A third deep trend, which is both directly and indirectly boosting the EU’s international impact, is what one might call post-Westphalianism. Robert Cooper (himself, as Solana’s right-hand man, no mean player) has argued that the EU is the first seriously ‘post-modern’ political entity, relying for its authority and impact not on the balance of power but on negotiated consensus, policing itself not with armed force but with transparency and mutual surveillance and regulating itself not with the threat or use of coercion but through acceptance and implementation of international law (Cooper 2003). It is a political entity in which states’ rights are counter-posed to the rights of individuals, in which state actors share the stage with non-state actors, in which persuasion

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and soft power have gradually come to co-exist with (although not yet to replace) hard power. This was one type of world implicit in George H.W. Bush’s notion of the ‘new world order’, even though Bush himself almost certainly had a different view of what was implied by the term – one closer to the liberal triumphalism of Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ than to the positing of a new era in history marked by multipolarity, international law, soft power and ‘issue politics’. It is precisely around key issues – the key political and legal challenges of the twenty-first century posited by post-Westphalianism – that one can detect the fourth deep trend affecting the EU’s international impact. Issues such as environmentalism generally and climate change in particular, human rights and international criminal jurisdiction, nuclear proliferation and multiculturalism are high on the agenda of this post-modern world. It is ironic that, on all these issues, whereas the United States took an early international lead in setting the agenda, proposing new regulations and offering a strong normative direction, over the past two decades that lead has gradually been taken over by the EU. This has been particularly so during the presidency of George W. Bush, when the United States appeared effectively to have turned its back on multi-lateralism, international norms and even international law. Increasingly, European agencies (usually member state governments) are making all the running on controlling carbon emissions, planning sustainable development, climate management, promoting international criminal tribunals and supporting human rights causes (Bodansky 2003; Hood 2003; Vogel 2003; Mowle 2004; Leonard 2005a). Moreover, whereas the United States has done very little since 2000 to underpin or bolster the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the EU has made some such efforts. Both its nuclear powers (UK and France) have, since 1990, reduced drastically their nuclear arsenals, to what each considers minimal ‘sufficiency’ for the purposes of deterrence, and the EU ‘troika’ (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) assumed fully the task of engaging Iran in negotiations over its nuclear intentions. Some might argue that it is precisely the EU’s lack of international clout which has prevented it from ‘delivering’ on the Iranian challenge, and the same critics might add that only the United States has the international leverage to unblock the situation. To a certain extent they might be right. The EU is not and does not aspire to become a player of the same type as the United States. But at least the EU is emerging as a recognised international actor and is taking a positive lead in areas of crucial importance to the post-modern world.

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This trend towards ‘actorness’ has, of course, been considerably enhanced by the emergence of the CFSP. Although it is fashionable to belittle CFSP and to insist that the EU-27 have enormous difficulty in reaching agreement on significant common foreign policy approaches, the opposite is actually the case. In the 15 years since CFSP was launched, the EU member states have engaged in a significant degree of foreign policy convergence. Where, not so long ago, there was either cacophony or the total dominance of one or two large states in any key foreign policy area (e.g. policy towards the Balkans, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, China), in 2007 positions towards all these key regions have converged markedly. There are, of course, still differences over specific policy issues (how strongly to play the human rights card in Beijing, for instance), but in a more general sense, a discernible commonality of broad approach exists (Ginsberg 2001; Hill and Smith 2006). There are two major exceptions to this trend. The first is ‘US policy’, where – especially recently – the ability of the United States to play divide and rule exacerbates the inherent EU dichotomy between the Atlanticist and the Europeanist camps. The second is ‘Russia policy’ where three different groups of member states co-exist awkwardly – the confrontational, the accommodational and the tactical. Otherwise, the picture is one of growing convergence, partly as a result of a steep CFSP learning curve (Balkans, Middle East), partly as a result of objectively converging collective interests (Mediterranean, Africa) and partly as a result of consensual deliberations through the institutional framework of CFSP. The most recent significant trend in international ‘actorness’ on the part of the EU, which fits neatly into this post-Westphalian framework, is the emergence of the ESDP. Driven by the consequences of the end of the Cold War, ESDP has generated a number of unique features, which are increasingly highlighting the EU as an innovatory actor in world politics. Although both Blair and Chirac were earlier denied any general accolade for their contribution to Europe’s international impact, it has to be noted that their historic summit meeting in SaintMalo in December 1998 represented one occasion on which the two actors dramatically pushed forward the direct cause of European security and the indirect effect of an increase in Europe’s international impact. What is the distinctiveness of ESDP, which is causing the world to pay attention? The EU’s military capacity, while constantly honing its skills and modernising its assets, is not intended for (or geared for) expeditionary warfare, overseas conquest or coercive diplomacy. It is designed for and explicitly situated within the framework of what is called

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‘crisis management’. Its missions are the so-called ‘Petersberg Tasks’ (humanitarian, peace-keeping and peace-making tasks) (Ortega 2005). Its strategic compass is the 2003 European Security Strategy document which is structured by such un-militaristic concepts as ‘comprehensive security’, ‘global public goods’ and ‘human security’ (Biscop 2005). Its cardinal feature is the unprecedented mix of military and civilian instruments, which derive from its concurrent and significant development of the instruments of ‘civilian crisis management’ (Nowak 2006). The EU is developing unprecedented experience in post-conflict reconstruction, and in nation-building and state-building (Dobbins 2008). It is doing this in ways which are not going unnoticed by the international community. Between 2003 and 2008, it launched 21 overseas missions in 15 countries on three continents. In short, the EU, through its ESDP is emerging as a significant player not only in redefining the way international relations is conducted, but also in supplying crisis-management and post-conflict reconstruction missions not just in the European hinterland but also much further afield. There is still a very long way to go before it can be said that the EU has had a major impact on the redefinition of international relations. But it has already come a very long way in less than 10 years (Howorth 2007).

Conclusions The EU’s international impact in terms of the first of the three criteria I set out in the introduction (i.e. defence of collective interests) undoubtedly derives from the events of post-war reconstruction, from actors such as the founding fathers (plus Thatcher) and from trends such as globalisation and the growth of regional regimes. The EU has emerged as the largest trading bloc in the world, the unit with the largest gross domestic product in the world (overtaking the United States in 2005), and the market with the biggest portfolio of inter-regional trade in the world. The euro, whatever its structural or political weaknesses, is increasingly seen as the alternative global reserve currency to the US dollar (Steil 2008). The European Commission can prevent purely internal US mergers and acquisitions and can bring a giant like Microsoft to heel; achievements which would be beyond the powers of any single nation state. When the Trade Commissioner speaks to China or in the framework of the WTO, she or he speaks with a single European voice that commands serious respect. Yet for a host of reasons, the EU economy remains sluggish and the ambitions of the Lisbon agenda – to produce the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010 – are

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far from being on target. In short, the EU has by no means maximised its ‘interest-defending’ potential and will be overtaken during the next decade in terms of overall size and clout by other economies, e.g. China, India, maybe even Brazil. In terms of my second criterion of impact – influencing the nature and direction of international relations – the picture is less clear-cut, but it is evolving. The key events here were decolonisation, the end of the Cold War and the advent of a more norms-based international order. Through its dogged commitment to multilateralism, to international institutions and to international law, the EU has blazed a trail which has not been without significant impact around the world. It provides over 55 per cent of world development aid to the Global South and strives hard to find a long-term political solution to poverty, under-development and injustice. Although the sums involved remain paltry when compared to the sums spent on defence (US$50 billion and US$230 billion, respectively, in 2004), and although the abolition of the Common Agricultural Policy would in and of itself do more to help the Global South than all the development aid disbursed, the fact remains incontrovertible that, as a good global citizen, the EU is in a league of its own. Moreover, as a rising actor in the field of crisis management and post-conflict reconstruction, the EU has increasingly taken up the nation-building challenges left by the United States after the latter’s involvement with military heavy-lifting. Post-conflict reconstruction is increasingly recognised not only as vitally important in and of itself, but as a function which (unlike the violence of a military operation) is much harder to carry out successfully, involves a complex range of instruments and demands a long-term commitment. In a similar way, the EU has essentially bankrolled the Palestinian Authority since its inception and has been instrumental in stabilising parts of Africa, Central and Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and even areas of Asia (Timor and Aceh). As a specialist in civilian crisis management, the EU is in increasing demand from all quarters – including from the United States. Its biggest problem currently is that of not being able to respond to all the requests it receives for this type of service. However, there are very real and very tight limits to what the EU can hope to achieve in this area. It does not possess or aspire to develop armed forces of the US type and has no intention of engaging in expeditionary warfare. It cannot and will not, for instance, be able to influence the political behaviour of other international actors by deploying – or by threatening to withdraw – an aircraft carrier group. Although the

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initial ‘ball park’ for EU military forces drawn up in the Helsinki Headline Goal of 1999 was to have been 60,000 troops, 400 aircraft and 100 ships, that quantitative objective has been replaced by the more usable, qualitative targets of the Headline Goal 2010, essentially structured around 15 battle-groups of 2000 troops each. With these sorts of numbers, it is unthinkable, for instance, for the EU to get seriously involved – militarily – in a conflict such as that in Darfur. The EU is emerging as a military player, but it is as yet a minor military player though its ethos – the use of force for humanitarian intervention – is new and different. Finally, I suggested that ‘international impact’ also involved the EU’s role as a normative model. In this sense, as we have seen, the EU has had a phenomenal international impact in attracting into its midst, democratising, liberalising and humanising, a range of former European dictatorships of both right (Greece, Spain, Portugal) and left (the former Warsaw bloc). This is no mean achievement and must be massively credited on the positive side of the international impact equation. To a certain extent, this power of attraction extends to the EU’s near abroad. A country like Turkey has changed beyond measure in order to meet the EU’s accession criteria, even if, at the end of the day, it may prove to have been too little too late. The European Neighbourhood Policy commands widespread attention. Leonard (2005b) has devised the notion of the ‘Eurosphere’ as a grouping of 100 or so countries around the world, which look to Europe for a lead and as a model. Around the world, emerging regional regimes are consciously – if gingerly – looking to the EU as a model of regional integration worth emulating. The United States is arguably the last of the great nation states. The EU is probably the first of the regional regimes (or regional states?) which will structure the twenty-first century. To that extent it exerts an influence which goes well beyond its own time and place.

Notes 1. In a 2005 projection of the International Monetary Fund, over the years 2005–50 the major economic powers of the present will change positions markedly. China will rise from 4.3 per cent of global GDP in 2005 to 19.1 per cent in 2050; India from 1.5 per cent in 2005 to 12 per cent in 2050; the US will decline from 29.4 per cent to 15.1 per cent; Germany from 5 per cent to 1.5 per cent; the UK from 4.2 per cent to 1.6 per cent; France from 3.9 per cent to 1.4 per cent and Italy from 3.1 per cent to 0.9 per cent. 2. Of course, especially from a British perspective, de Gaulle also acted as a spoiler, twice vetoing the UK’s accession prospects. His ‘empty chair’ policy in

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1965 is usually taken as evidence of his opposition to European integration. Moreover, there is little doubt that he also saw Europe as a means of multiplying French power and influence in the world. But for all that, history has already recognised that he played a key role in developing a clear intergovernmental thrust to the European project (ICG 1992; Bozo 1996). 3. Sir Stephen Wall has written a cool and lucid appraisal of Margaret Thatcher’s key role in the establishment of the Single Market (Wall 2008: Chapter 4).

9 Fifty Years of Economic and Monetary Union: A Hard and Thorny Journey Kenneth Dyson

The path to European monetary union will not be a stroll; it will be hard and thorny. Karl Blessing, president of the German Bundesbank, 27 January 1963, remarks on NDR radio programme ‘Hard and thorny’ though its path may be, the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has been a constant presence in debates about European integration. Remarkably, in the light of a widespread scepticism, this path was pursued to its destination. The historical narrative of this journey is one of the most extraordinary in the 50-year history of the Treaty of Rome. No less fascinating, though more an invitation to speculation, the creation of an ‘incomplete’ EMU in 1999, with a less complete economic than monetary ‘constitution’, promises that the post-euro path will also prove ‘hard and thorny’. This chapter analyses these two ‘hard and thorny’ paths, the path to the euro and monetary and currency union and the post-euro path. First, conceptual and historical clarification is needed. Stage I of EMU began in July 1990, with the dismantlement of all internal barriers to the free movement of capital within the EU. Stage II, from January 1994, established the European Monetary Institute (EMI) to prepare stage III, prohibited the financing of the public sector by central banks, prohibited privileged access of the public sector to financial institutions, and required the avoidance of excessive government deficits. In these respects, EMU applies to all European Union (EU) member states. More broadly, EMU includes macro-economic policy coordination exercises that were developed with, and after, the 1992 Treaty on European Union (TEU) – notably, the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines, the European 143

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Employment Strategy, the Lisbon process of economic reform, and the Stability and Growth Pact on fiscal deficits and public debt. Additionally, the monetary union had its antecedents in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of 1979–99 and its post-1999 successor, ERM II, through which states peg their currencies to the euro. Stage III involved the creation of the Euro Area with the monetary union in 1999 and with currency union in 2002 – in short, the European Central Bank (ECB) managing the single currency, the euro, for those states that qualified for euro entry. It gave birth to the Eurosystem, which comprised the ECB and the national central banks of the Euro Area, and the Euro Group formed by the finance ministers of the Euro Area. The path to the monetary union has been possible on the basis of tolerating a diversity of economic and political preferences through the creation of a differentiated EU of three types of member states – ‘insiders’ who share a single currency and monetary policy (initially 11 out of 15 in 1999; by 2009 16 out of 27), ‘temporary outsiders’ who have euro area entry plans with a self-imposed timetable (that includes entry to ERM II), and ‘semi-permanent outsiders’ who lack euro entry plans and have formal ‘opt outs’ from stage III (e.g. the United Kingdom) or who develop a track record of persistently deferring entry dates so that their entry comes to lack credibility [potentially some Central and Eastern (CEE) states]. ‘Temporary outsiders’ are keen to capture the trade and financial stability gains of a single currency, as well as to strengthen external incentives to domestic discipline (not least consequent on removal of devaluation as a policy instrument) linked to monetary union. ‘Semi-permanent outsiders’ prefer to retain autonomy of action in exchange rate and, above all, monetary policies, as well as avoid potential sanctions in fiscal policy, in order to maximize their flexibility to respond to asymmetric shocks. However, these categories only roughly capture a more complex reality. Some states that lack ‘opt outs’, like Czech Republic, are poised uneasily between ‘temporary’ and ‘semipermanent’ outsider status as they revise or suspend their euro entry plans; whilst Denmark – in contrast to the United Kingdom – combines an ‘opt out’ with long-standing loyal ERM participation. The path after the monetary union begs the question of how the Euro Area will cope with the transition from an initial global political economy of relatively ‘good times’ to one of ‘bad times’. This question is impossible to answer given the multiple sources of uncertainty and risk that the Euro Area faces, including processes of contagion in financial markets and the policy dilemmas and political exposure

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associated with simultaneous exposure to rising inflation and stagnation or recession in the ‘real’ economy. At its most fundamental, it raises the issue of sustainability not just of Euro Area membership for some states but also of the monetary union itself. The experience of the ‘hard and thorny’ path after the monetary union, with the economic union still elusive, has barely begun. Moreover, the stories of the two paths are intertwined: failures to cede and share sovereignty either in areas like banking and financial market supervision or in establishing a ‘federal’ budget stabilization mechanism may have made the post-euro path extra hard and rocky, as earlier sceptics argued (Krugman 1993). In these respects the monetary union lacks a political umbrella under which to shelter.

The ‘Hard and Thorny’ path to EMU The path to EMU is a story of the defeat of sceptics, whether those who believed that the Bundesbank would never give up the D-Mark for Europe (Margaret Thatcher’s view) or that destabilizing financial and exchange-rate crises would derail the venture (the view of John Major after the 1993 ERM crisis). More prosaically, sceptics argued that one or more of the six founding member states of the European Economic Community (EEC) would fail to achieve the necessary economic convergence (represented by meeting the convergence criteria contained in a protocol of the TEU agreed at Maastricht in 1991), and thus the start date (1 January 1999 at the latest) would be aborted. In practice, the Bundesbank was scrupulously loyal to the process; the widening of the fluctuation bands of the ERM in 1993 eased tensions in managing the markets (not least reducing the Bundesbank’s exposure to intervention); and, by strenuous domestic efforts, an unexpectedly large number of states (11 instead of five or six) qualified as founder members of the Euro Area, including all EEC founding members. The key post-Maastricht crises were surmounted: the 1993 ERM crisis, which threatened the Franco-German heart of EMU; and the negotiation of the Stability and Growth Pact in 1995–7 to provide a ‘fiscal constitution’ to flank the ‘monetary constitution’, to satisfy the Bundesbank that member states were committed to sustained budgetary discipline, and to make it politically easier to gain domestic political consent in Germany for a relatively large Euro Area in 1998–9. This chapter argues that the process of agreement at Maastricht on EMU in 1991 and the management of the crises in transition to Stage III – in the context of so many difficulties – was made possible

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by a combination of structural factors (notably the post-Bretton-Woods vacuum in US global leadership after 1973, the ‘conventional wisdom’ that prevailed in monetary policy after the Great Inflation of the 1970s, and the dynamics created by the Single Market project after 1985) with political leadership, notably from France and Germany. These underlying structural changes offered opportunities for FrancoGerman (and Commission) leadership. Leadership mattered in that these opportunities had to be seized and skilfully managed. Initially, EMU had been little more than a fleeting shadow in the background of negotiations to establish the European Payments Union in 1949–50, principally advocated by American ‘New Dealers’ like William Foster and Paul Hoffmann (Dyson 1994). It surfaced only briefly in the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Rome, principally in the Spaak Report (as ‘mutual assistance’), and in later declarations of the Action Committee for the United States of Europe in 1959 and 1961 (notably the proposal for a European Reserve Fund). The Belgian economist Robert Triffin was important in providing both a rationale and initial policy proposals for the EMU (Triffin 1960; Maes 2002). The ambition to launch EMU gathered slow and fitful momentum as two forces coalesced: the attempt of the European Commission to envelop the new customs union and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in a secure exchange-rate and monetary framework; and the emergence of proposals for reform of the international monetary system, especially from Belgian and French critiques. This ambition was thrown into sharper relief in the European Commission’s 1962 Action Programme for the second stage of the customs union. It was, however, strongly opposed by the Bundesbank under Karl Blessing, whose preference was for tighter transatlantic monetary policy cooperation. The waning credibility of the Bretton Woods system of exchangerate coordination, anchored on the US dollar, provided the context in which EMU took on a sharper profile in the Barre Plan in 1969. This initiative reflected mounting concern in the European Commission about the effects of monetary problems on European integration in the wake of tensions over the D-Mark and the French franc. The Hague Summit of 1969 represented the first occasion when the heads of state and government expressed a collective political interest in moving ahead with EMU. Though the subsequent Werner Report of 1970 was largely buried in the economic difficulties and divergences of preferences thrown up by the collapsing Bretton Woods system, the Paris Summit of 1972 witnessed the first collective endorsement of EMU as a political objective of the EEC (Tsoukalis 1977; Dyson 1994).

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The shift to EMU as a legal objective had to wait until the Single European Act of 1987. Its context was the European Monetary System (EMS), focused on the ERM and established in 1978–9, and the new commitment to qualified majority voting and the 1992 timetable to ‘complete’ the single market. Both developments, against the larger background of earlier abdication of US monetary hegemony in 1971–3, created a revitalized rationale for EMU. This rationale was sponsored by Jacques Delors as Commission President and provided by the Padoa Schioppa report in the form of the theory of the ‘inconsistent triangle’. The single market (notably freedom of capital movement), the ERM, and domestic monetary policy autonomy were inconsistent; only with EMU could the single market and the ERM be sustained (Padoa Schioppa 1987). More simply, advocates of EMU argued that a single monetary policy and currency were the ‘logic’ of the single market, without which it would be incomplete and remain vulnerable to ‘roll back’, though notably the EC Monetary Committee proved reluctant to accept this logic in 1987–8 (Dyson and Featherstone 1999). The evolution of the ‘hard’ ERM in 1983–7 was a pivotal development as member states, led by the Netherlands, and emulated by France after its 1983 ERM crisis, sought to bind their currencies to a narrow band of fluctuation with the ‘anchor’ currency, the D-Mark. This firm external anchor was seen as the basis for pursuing a domestic strategy of ‘competitive disinflation’ to reduce unit labour costs. In effect, the voluntary embrace of the ‘hard’ ERM represented a process of de facto monetary union; monetary policy autonomy was surrendered to the Bundesbank. It created, in turn, an economic and political incentive to collectivize monetary policy-making at the European level – in other words, for it to be made for a European area and not just for Germany. The ‘hard’ ERM served as a training period in the disciplines of monetary union, for some states (e.g. the Benelux) longer than for others (e.g. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, or Italy). In a de facto sense, therefore, by 2007 EMU had been around for longer than 8 years. However, the timing of de facto accession – measured by the adoption of a ‘hard’ exchange-rate peg with the D-Mark – was highly variable and suggested that in 1999 some states had longer to learn about how to manage the constraints of EMU. On this basis, it is possible to differentiate a residual D-Mark-Zone ‘core’ within the Euro Area. This core is more integrated in intra-industry trade, stronger agglomeration processes, and more synchronized business cycles (Baldwin 2006a). There are, correspondingly, different implications for individual states in terms of how ‘hard and thorny’ the post-euro path is likely to be.

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The world economy: Filling a vacuum How then is the success of a group of EU member states in walking this ‘hard and thorny’ path to monetary union to be explained? A critical aspect was the position of the EU in the world economy. The post-war history of US international economic and monetary power is central. Through the Bretton Woods system anchor to the US dollar, the United States assumed responsibility for providing the collective good of international economic stability. However, from a relatively early stage, the costs to the hegemon of playing this role – summarized as early as 1959 in the so-called ‘Triffin paradox’ – signalled the underlying fragility of the system and helped foster ideas of EMU in the 1960s, initially of a European Reserve Fund (Triffin 1960; Tsoukalis 1977). According to Triffin, the volume of US dollars in foreign hands would so far exceed the US gold reserves that the ‘overhang’ would erode confidence in the dollar’s convertibility. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971–3 proved destabilizing in its effects, adding new complications and strains and contributing to the failure to implement the Werner Report, with the consequent deferment of EMU. On the other hand, its collapse – signalled by President Richard Nixon’s decision to suspend the gold convertibility of the dollar in 1971 – also offered a new permissive context in which to pursue exchange-rate coordination in Europe – at first with the Snake (1973–9), then the ERM (1979–99), and ultimately irreversibly fixed rates in EMU (Tsoukalis 1977; Gros and Thygesen 1998). US ‘benign neglect’ and the lack of an external provider of the collective good of economic stability for EEC member states provided an incentive to shift (often reluctantly and with time delays) from loyalty to reviving the US-centred Bretton Woods system to prioritizing EMU in European integration. In contrast, enduring US hegemony as the provider of collective defence through NATO served to constrain the potential for substantial European defence integration, at least prior to Iraq II in 2003. EMU was a distinctively European form of ‘coalition of the willing’, which grew in the cracks that were opened by a reluctant and retreating US hegemon. It is testament to the way in which European integration benefits from a power vacuum in the provision of international public goods. Hence, in a slow, tidal shift in elite attitudes, consequent on irritation with US benign neglect, ‘monetary’ Europe prevailed over ‘defence’ Europe in the history of integration. Within this larger international context, German monetary power defined the terms on which exchange-rate coordination and eventually

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EMU were based. In short, it filled the US gap. Already apparent in the 1968–9 crisis of the French franc, and later in the successive crises of the Snake and the ERM, this emerging German monetary hegemony transformed EMU into a new central issue in the post-war ‘taming’ of German power through European integration (Milward 1992). It catapulted EMU to the heart of Franco-German relations in ‘building Europe’ and into the hands of two strongly integrationist leaders, President Francois Mitterrand (1981–95) and Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1982–98). For political realists in France and elsewhere, Europeanizing monetary policy was about gaining power over policy – by sharing it with Germany. Through a European ‘economic government’ to counterbalance a European central bank, they would gain power to pursue a more growth and employment-based economic strategy (Howarth 2001). German unification in 1990 reinforced both this incentive to ‘tame’ German power and the urgency of EMU as a litmus test of a more powerful Germany’s reliability in ‘building Europe’. In the process, it opened a window of opportunity for a pro-European Kohl to link EMU to an initiative for European political union, taking up the old Adenauer formula: ‘German and European unification are two sides of one and the same coin’. In negotiating EMU in 1988–91, the international and European contexts of power were different from the Bretton Woods period. US hegemony offered no major constraints as in ‘defence’ Europe, whilst the European ‘anchor’ of German monetary and financial policies did not face similar difficulties to the United States earlier. The only terms for Europeanizing monetary policy were those of the European hegemon, Germany, and its particular Ordo-liberal, rule-based paradigm of stability-oriented fiscal and monetary policies (Dyson and Featherstone 1999). Critically, for a combination of historical and economic reasons, Germany proved willing and able to collectivize its hegemony despite the loss not just of the D-Mark but also of its competitive advantage from relatively low real interest rates. Its priority was to avoid heavy domestic costs by insisting on the fundamental principle that the new single currency must be ‘at least as stable as the D-Mark’ as the basis for institutional design of EMU. This principle served the strategic purpose of ‘binding in’ the Bundesbank to the process and thus an anxious German public opinion (Dyson and Featherstone 1999). Its outcome was the centrality of central bank independence and the ‘ECB-centric’ character of the Euro Area (Dyson 2000).

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On the other hand, largely as a consequence of shouldering the heavy costs of German unification, Germany entered the Euro Area as a less secure and confident hegemon. It imparted weaknesses, especially in growth, employment, public finance, and consumption, as well as strengths, to the Euro Area, above all failing to act as its ‘locomotive’. For this German-centred reason, the Euro Area emerged as weak in its capacity to deliver on key economic objectives. The Euro Area lacked a German regional equivalent of the US consumption-led ‘locomotive’ of the world economy. When this German role emerged in 2006–07, it took the form of a renewed export-led expansion based on German success in relative unit labour cost development and in the consequent capture of market share of other Euro Area producers and of market share in emerging markets.

Conventional economic wisdom: Providing the content Notwithstanding this benign context of international power, progress with EMU depended on its grounding in a professional transnational expert consensus around an edifice of macro-economic theory. Emerging consensus on this theoretical edifice endowed EMU with both direction and legitimacy and provided its sponsors with the requisite intellectual confidence to fend off critics. In effect, EMU is a narrative about the emergence and significance of a small transnational ‘epistemic’ community, united around shared normative and casual beliefs and a shared project of central bank independence (Dyson 2000). It invites parallels with other areas like the creation of the AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation’s core agenda by the ‘eminent persons’ group’. The intellectual underpinnings of the Werner Report in 1970 were provided by Keynesian theories, which at that time, with Karl Schiller as Federal Economics Minister, had a new vogue in Germany. The report did not refer explicitly to a European central bank or to central bank independence as a prerequisite. Instead, it spoke of two equal poles, economic/fiscal and monetary, with much weight being placed on strengthening the fiscal pole. However, the report’s implementation was frustrated by a protracted period of uncertainty and conflict linked to paradigm change in macro-economic theory in the face of unexpected developments. With its seeds in the 1960s, but fed by oil crises and the collapse of Bretton Woods, the Great Inflation of the 1970s and macro-economic uncertainties unleashed divergences in national responses. Moreover, the emerging scale, complexity, and speed of

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innovation in financial markets, gathering pace by the 1980s, posed new challenges to rethink policies. This context of intellectual uncertainty was unfavourable to progress with EMU. The establishment of the ERM in 1978–9, and its evolution in 1983–7 into a ‘hard’ ERM, reflected a gradual process of convergence in macroeconomic policies, differentiated across states (Gros and Thygesen 1998). Creeping convergence was both supported by, and acted as a catalyst for, the formation of a new transnational consensus. The intellectual epicentre was in financial and monetary economics and central banking, whilst its institutional epicentres were the EC’s Monetary Committee and the Committee of Central Bank Governors. Beginning with the Delors Report in 1988–9, EMU was reconstructed on a new conventional wisdom, based on a shared monetarist paradigm of ‘sound money’ (McNamara 1998). This formidable edifice of theory was further strengthened as the EMI worked on preparing Stage III in 1994–8 and under the ECB after 1998–9. It ensured that the Eurosystem – comprising the ECB and the national central banks of the Euro Area – took on a distinctly missionary character, its officials speaking from a single cognitive script, characterized as the ‘sound money and finance’ paradigm (Dyson 2000). Shared core beliefs underpinning EMU include the following: • Money is neutral. Over the long term, it does not affect growth and employment, which are the consequences of the structure of the economy, especially in product, services, financial and labour markets. Hence the ECB should focus only on price stability. Growth and employment are the responsibilities of governments, employers and trade unions. This belief underpins the ECB argument that effective coordination (and accountability) is the outcome of a clear allocation of responsibilities. It also leads the ECB to play a didactic, agenda-setting role in promoting structural reforms by member state governments to strengthen growth and employment. • Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Longer-term developments in money and credit supply signal inflationary risks and should prompt preventative monetary policy action. Hence the ‘monetary’ pillar continues to be given a major role in ECB monetary policy strategy, with which the ‘economics’ pillar (and its ‘real’ economy data) is cross-checked. In holding to this belief, the ECB parted company with much work in contemporary monetary economics. It did, however, acknowledge its intellectual debt to the Bundesbank.

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• Inflation is a phenomenon of expectations. Hence the main task of the ECB is to acquire and retain credibility as a central bank that will act vigilantly and proactively to curb inflationary pressures. Credibility is best achieved by ‘tying hands’ – either by pegging the exchange rate to the strongest currency (as in the ERM) or by an independent central bank with a robust anti-inflationary strategy (Giavazzi and Pagano 1988; Alesina 1989). In addition, disciplined communication of a coherent message about ‘vigilance’ assumes a central importance in disciplining expectations of firms, employees and trade unions, and governments and preventing ‘second-round’ effects in wage-setting from inflationary shocks. • Elections provide an incentive for politicians to use fiscal or monetary policy, or both, to pursue expansionary policies irrespective of the economic business cycle. The subsequent destabilizing ‘boom and bust’ effects of the political business cycle argue for an independent central bank, flanked by clear, strict, and enforceable fiscal policy rules. An independent ECB offers the condition for ‘time-consistent’ decision-making in monetary policy (Barro and Gordon 1983). • In a monetary union, without a supporting framework of political union, the ECB must take special precautions to ensure that monetary policy is distanced from national political or economic pressures. Hence, the ECB places great importance on a disciplined communication policy that stresses only Euro-Area-wide considerations. The result is no published minutes that might reveal divergent positions in the Governing Council. Accountability focuses on the president of the ECB. The ECB avoids open dialogue amongst Governing Council members or published minutes, which might reveal different views about the macro-economy and appropriate monetary policy positions [see the classic debate about accountability between Buiter (1999) and Issing (1999)]. The absence of the traditional protective umbrella of a sovereign state and of a strong shared identity places an extra premium on the stout defence of central bank independence (Dyson 2008a). Though the independence of the ECB represents a broad international trend since the 1980s, the TEU provides it with an ‘extreme’ version. The rationale is to be found in the particular problems of a new central bank in establishing credibility and the pronounced difficulty and dangers of trying to do so in the context of a set of assertive national governments with different policy preferences. The ECB enjoys more than just institutional, personnel, and financial independence, alongside ‘instrument’

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independence in deciding on the use of official interest rate. It has ‘goal’ independence in that it decides how price stability is defined. The initial ECB decision to define price stability as an increase in the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices of ‘below 2%’ – later as ‘below but close to 2%’ – over the medium term pointed, in an asymmetric fashion, in a tough anti-inflation direction. In contrast to the Werner Report, the conventional wisdom that underpinned the Delors Report, the TEU and the asymmetry in prioritizing the ‘monetary constitution’ reflected and reinforced the power of central bankers in European integration. EMU reinforced the role of central banks in macro-economic policy formation.

Political leadership: Driving the process Missing from these structurally biased accounts of international hegemonic power and of knowledge-based power is a clear appreciation of how, and why, political leadership matters. It matters not so much in driving and managing the substantive content of EMU (where knowledge-based expert elites like central bankers count) as in driving and managing the process. Political leadership performs three main functions: it provides the discursive constructions, above all symbolism, that legitimate EMU (like ‘irreversibility’); it sets the agenda (or fails to); and it manages the process (effectively or not). Opportunities for political leadership are opened in contexts like EMU where the economic costs and benefits, and how they are distributed, are difficult to calculate. Given this distributional uncertainty, business, employer and trade union organizations have problems in mobilizing behind clear detailed positions. Their relatively high collective-action problems contrast with those of central bankers, whose clear agreed position is that EMU’s design must safeguard against risks to price stability. Hence, central bankers were able to achieve a power to shape the outcomes of EMU denied to other actors. For this reason, political leaders were faced with a paradox. They faced relatively limited problems with business, employer, and trade-union organization. However, because of the low collective-action problems of central bankers, political leaders were, and remain, in large part irrelevant to power over the substance of EMU. Their role was in negotiating the extent to which commitments are binding and how they will be honoured. At this point – honouring domestic commitments – they encounter the core problems of delivery on fiscal policy and on structural reforms. In consequence, they are drawn into renegotiating

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them – as with the Stability and Growth Pact – or into simply avoiding precise commitments – as with the Lisbon process (Debrun and PisaniFerry 2006) and, arguably, the 2007 climate change agreement. In the process, the Lisbon process was deprived of much substantive impact. On the path to EMU, political leaders mattered as agenda-setters in 1987–8 (notably the German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and Kohl) and in managing the process in 1988–91 (Dyson and Featherstone 1999). The process was not simply driven by a relatively stable configuration of structural power to its logical conclusions – the TEU, the Stability and Growth Pact, the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997 with its employment chapter, and the Lisbon strategy. Political leaders designed and manipulated the process in two main ways. They engaged in institutional ‘venue management’, deciding which actors were to be entrusted with power to shape policy outcomes (e.g. the constitution of the Delors Committee and of the subsequent Guigou Committee and the definition of the roles of the intergovernmental conferences that drew up the TEU and of the Committee of Central Bank Governors in 1988–91). They also resorted to devices of temporal management, using deadlines, road maps, and sequencing to alter the timing and pace of EMU. Their power was expressed in driving the process by these means or, in the case of the Lisbon process and the excessive deficit procedure, failing to drive it. By playing these roles – and animating the process – Kohl and Mitterrand mattered critically in ways that ‘grand’ theories of integration do not fully capture. They sustained the sense that EMU was the ‘high politics’ of history making, about making European integration ‘irreversible’. However, power to shape the substantive outcomes tended to shift to the group with the fewest collective-action problems, the EU central bankers. Equally, many of the problems of the post-euro path involve failures of domestic political leadership. Especially in larger Euro Area states, political leaders have proved reluctant to ‘own’ EMU in the sense of facing up to, and providing, a legitimating formula for, the macro- and micro-economic policy implications of renouncing devaluation and interest rates as key instruments of domestic adjustment. Adjustment pressures are inevitable, post-euro – both to external shocks and to shifts in internal Euro Area ‘real’ exchange rates consequent on persisting inflation differentials and differing rates of productivity growth. Not least, the Euro Area has shifted the source of domestic vulnerabilities from foreign-exchange markets to potential asset price shocks, for instance in property markets, and to shocks in credit or other financial markets and subsequent risks of transnational banking

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crisis. A combination of external shocks with internal diversity threatens a build-up of adjustment pressures. Internal adjustment has to fall on mechanisms other than exchange rates and interest rates: wage-setting, labour-market and welfare-state policies; more open and innovative product, services, and financial markets; and effective mechanisms of banking and financial market supervision to prevent contagious crises of confidence and trust. Hence the post-euro path is a ‘hard and thorny’ path of economic reforms that places extra burdens on domestic political leadership. It makes more transparent the constraints on domestic political leadership in economic reforms and turns a harsh light on the performance of domestic leaders. The Franco-German ‘motor’ of European integration offers an insight into the role of political leadership. The ‘hard and thorny’ pre-euro path was managed because of Franco-German power ‘over’ the process of EMU, notably in 1988–99. Post-euro, other than in the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact in 2003–05, Franco-German leadership in economic reform was much less evident. This traditional political motor lacked the power over domestic actors to shape their own domestic policies, let alone to pursue EU-level reforms. The French ‘bulldozer’ and the German ‘locomotive’ proved incapable of powering the post-euro reform process. German Chancellors prioritized building on the Lisbon agenda of economic reform throughout the EU (27) and mistrusted French emphasis on a European ‘economic government’ through formalizing and strengthening the role and powers of the Euro Group of Euro Area finance ministers. French policy was seen as a Trojan horse for subverting the independence of the ECB, and its strict focus on price stability, with potential destabilizing effects on stability-oriented German public opinion (Dyson 2008b).

The ‘Hard and Thorny’ path after the Euro In 1999 and afterwards, few doubted – even the most fervent advocates of EMU – that the post-euro path would be tortuous. The new ECB faced a tough challenge in embedding a ‘stability culture’ across the Euro Area and fending off political challenges to central bank independence, notably in France and Italy. The Euro Area also inherited a low-growth, high-unemployment economy, weak labour productivity, and problematic public finances. The open question was whether the Euro Area would demonstrate the collective-action capacity to tackle these problems. In the short- to medium-term the provisional answer was that the Eurosystem central bankers possessed this capacity to a

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higher degree than other actors. Mandated to secure just price stability, and possessed of a shared conventional wisdom about how to do so, they had a less arduous task than politicians, employers, and trade unions confronted with larger challenges of growth, employment and fiscal consolidation. Assessments of how challenging the post-euro path is, and is likely to prove, revolve around positions adopted on five issues: • The nature of the world political economy in which the Euro Area is embedded. • The timing, sequencing, and size of monetary union. • The ceding and sharing of sovereignty for the purpose of economic policy coordination. • The domestic political ownership of economic reform and the capacity to compensate losers. • The endogenous effects of monetary union and the capacity for market-based adjustment through activation of firms. The political economy of ‘Good Times’, the political economy of ‘Bad Times’ By 2007, there was no substantial evidence that the Euro Area had been a new shaper of the world economy. It displayed neither the capacity to ‘decouple’ from US-centred financial markets and from the role of US consumers as the ‘locomotive’ of the world economy nor the potential to take over a locomotive role for global demand in case of US inability to sustain this role. Even its success as an exporter highlighted its vulnerability to events in its main markets. The international roles of the euro as an anchor for exchange-rate policies, a reserve currency held by central banks, a denominator of trade and currency in foreign-exchange transactions highlighted the strength of forces of inertia and weakness of its gravitational pull (Cohen 2008). The euro emerged as a strong regional currency, with slow, incremental growth in its various international roles. Threats to the dominance of the US dollar came from domestic US failures. In this context, the question was whether developments in the world economy supported or threatened the Euro Area’s sustainability. Very tentatively, by late 2007, it seemed possible to differentiate two periods. They presage a shift in EMU from the political economy of ‘good times’ to one of ‘hard times’, though in timing and in form that we do not know. The capacity of the Euro Area to deal with the effects will decisively affect how ‘hard and thorny’ its path proves.

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In its early period, the Euro Area operated in a historically benign international context. This context of a favourable tailwind enabled the ECB to deliver price stability at relatively low economic and political costs. In turn, its ‘accommodative’ monetary policy stance kept political pressures on the ECB low. Financial tremors like the bursting of the ‘dot-com’ bubble and 9/11 were relatively easy to contain. This favourable worldwide environment included a high rate of global economic growth; global credit expansion, linked to historically low real interest rates, new sources of financial innovation, and reduced aversion to risk; the linkage of downward pressure on prices to the rapid incorporation of new low-cost producers like China and India into the world economy and to continuing technological innovations; and the role of the United States as borrower and spender of last resort. The likelihood that this political economy of good times was historically exceptional and time-limited was suggested by the fragile conjunction of rapid global economic growth, muted inflationary pressures, low real interest rates, and high corporate profitability with growing income differentials, wage stagnation, job insecurity, asset price bubbles, and new opaque forms of financial risk-taking. This relatively benign historical macro-economic and financial conjuncture shielded from view potential design faults in EMU. These design faults were set to be exposed by future political economies of bad times, when much harder choices would be forced on central bankers and political leaders. From 2005–06 a range of potentially serious risks began to surface in the international political economy. Most gripping was the risk of a destabilizing correction of global imbalances. Though – or more accurately because – the correction of imbalances was likely to focus on China and the United States, the Euro Area was highly vulnerable to its effects through trade and through financial markets. In addition, disinflationary effects from new technologies and from new entrants into the world economy seemed likely to exhaust their potential for helping to create so benign a context for monetary policy. New demand for energy, food, and other commodities from these new entrants, along with domestic wage growth, suggested that ‘globalization’ could not be relied on as an ongoing mechanism for disinflation. In consequence, ECB monetary policy faced the threat of harsher headwinds and dilemmas about how restrictive to be to shore up its credibility in delivering price stability against a background of slowing growth and higher inflation (‘stagflation’). More seriously, the end of the US property boom seemed likely to persuade US households to rein in spending and to signal the demise of the US’s role as locomotive

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of the world economy. By 2007, the capacity of the financial markets to deliver shocks was again evident in a potentially virulent and unexpected form – collapsing confidence in credit markets triggered by crisis in the US sub-prime mortgage sector, threatening to spill over into other markets and into the ‘real’ economy. The political economy of bad times could range from painful evolutionary adjustments in policies (as in banking supervision and financial market regulation) to a lethal cocktail of external shocks. These external shocks could in turn act as catalysts for internal shocks. An example of potential internal shock is provided by the puncturing of asset price bubbles, especially in property markets in Ireland and Spain. These states appear over-committed to their construction and housing sectors in the context of doubtfully sustainable money and credit growth. This type of shock would reverse what have been Euro Area success stories into crisis stories. Another example is the Euro Area’s dependence on a heavy, slow-moving internal locomotive – Germany – that is itself export-dependent. The German ‘export-investment-employmentconsumption’ chain has proved diminishingly effective in generating growth and jobs, and German consumption highly resistant to stimulation. In consequence, the Euro Area risks being caught in a ‘low-growth’ trap, set by its inability to decouple from the United States and to generate compensatory internal demand without unleashing inflationary pressures. This trap stems in part from the absence of sufficient economic flexibility, especially in the services sector, and in part from the absence of stimulatory money and credit growth in its core economy. The trap is set by the collective-action problems in economic reforms, rooted in abiding differences of economic culture and institutions and in powerful domestic veto players. Neither the Lisbon I (2000–04) nor Lisbon II (2005–) processes was linked to a deepening process of pre-commitment to domestic reforms (Debrun and Pisani-Ferry 2006).

Timing, sequencing, and size How difficult the post-euro path proves to be depends on design issues that revolve around the timing, sequencing, and size of the monetary union. The timing and sequencing issues were viewed differently in the ‘economist’ and the ‘monetarist’ approaches to EMU. According to the traditional ‘economist’ view, monetary union should represent the crowning moment of European unification, its moment of ‘coronation’. It would be sustainable if embedded in a prior economic and

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political union that represented a ‘community of solidarity’ (Deutsche Bundesbank 1990). This view represented an uploading to the EU of the German historical experience of political and then monetary unification in the nineteenth century. Only in such a context could a monetary union withstand a political economy of bad times. Seen from this perspective, the timing of the euro was premature and its sequencing wrong. Neither the TEU nor the successor Treaties of Amsterdam, Nice, and Lisbon created a secure political umbrella beneath which monetary union could safely shelter. Monetary union existed in a dangerous political vacuum. However, those who adhered to the ‘economist’ approach differed in vital respects, notably on whether a fiscal union was required and, if so, of what type. For US-focused scholars in particular, monetary union necessitated a large federal budget for economic stabilization, and the equitable sharing of costs of adjustment (Krugman 1993, Tondl 2000). For others, the key requirement was a clear set of binding fiscal rules and sanctions to ensure the compliance of participating states. These rules would flank monetary policy and enable reliance on the effective anti-cyclical operation of automatic stabilizers, without generating unsustainable public debt positions. Fiscal union threatened to weaken domestic discipline through political pressures for ‘bail outs’. In contrast, and more optimistically, the ‘monetarist’ approach trusted to endogeneity. Acceleration of monetary union would create new realities to which states and markets would react, being in effect a catalyst for economic and political union. It would reinforce disciplinary pressures on fiscal policies and wages, and through the trade creation effects of eliminating exchange-rate uncertainty and reducing transaction costs, spur economic integration and convergence. Also, by creating easy access to a new large capital market, it would pool and better insure against financial risks. Not least, the monetary union would provide much stronger safeguards for the single European market, especially in the context of asymmetric shocks. In short, the ‘monetarist’ approach advocated a bolder, more ambitious policy for monetary union. The Maastricht approach to EMU contained in the TEU, along with the refinement of the excessive deficit procedure in the Stability and Growth Pact, rested on a carefully crafted reconciliation of these two approaches on the principle of ‘parallelism’ in EMU and political union (Dyson and Featherstone 1999). However, much room remained for differences of interpretation and assessment of the prospects for sustainability of monetary union. In one view, monetary union required only minimal political union: it depended on fiscal discipline, wage moderation and flexibly functioning markets – product, services, capital

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and labour – to ease and speed adjustment. These requirements were primarily the responsibility of member states. In short, monetary union depended on domestic political ownership of the implications of renouncing interest rate and exchange rate as adjustment instruments. Sustainability was threatened if and when domestic political leaders engaged in ‘blame shifting’ by seeking to distract public opinion from their own failings. Issues of timing and sequencing also surfaced in debate about the appropriate size of monetary union. In economic debate, the size issue revolved around ‘optimum currency area’ theory (McKinnon 1963). According to this traditional theory, a sustainable monetary union depended on certain exogenous conditions, notably integrated markets in which highly developed intra-industry trade created a bias to symmetric rather than asymmetric shocks and labour was mobile. The EU satisfied neither of these conditions. Hence, EMU was at best a highly differentiated form of integration around the old D-Mark bloc (Austria, the Benelux, France, and Germany). Even then labour mobility was very low. Seen from these strict economic criteria, the Euro Area seemed doomed to fail, at least in the configuration established in 1998–9. Critics pointed out that these economic criteria ruled out many longestablished monetary unions as unviable (like the United States). More importantly, they neglected endogenous factors like trade creation and financial risk sharing (Frankel and Rose 2005). Above all, in the end an ‘optimum currency area’ was politically constructed; it worked if people identified with it. Popular support for the euro and for the ECB was essential; if weak, it could be mobilized against monetary union. Eurobarometer surveys highlighted a wide dispersion of pro- and antieuro attitudes, with negative views most apparent in Greece and Italy. It also provided little supportive evidence that the euro was a catalyst for greater European identity (Gallup Europe 2006). Size also mattered in the context of setting a ‘one-size-fits-all’ monetary policy for the Euro Area as a whole in the face of persistent inflation differentials. Some states found themselves with a restrictive monetary policy (like Germany until 2005–06), while others (like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) experienced a loosening of money and credit conditions (Aherne and Pisani-Ferry 2006). For Germany, ECB monetary policy was less accommodating than it might have been in a smaller Euro Area in which German GDP weight was higher, inflation dispersion less marked, and inflationary pressures lower (Enderlein 2004). A single monetary policy with a number of diverse economies sharpened contraction in the German economy.

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This pessimistic scenario loses its plausibility when seen against two other sources of internally generated risk. First, compensating for this contraction, the monetary stimulus to German export markets in the Euro Area helped an export-led expansion. The combination of this export expansion with German wage moderation and reduction in unit costs provided new competitive challenges to states like Italy and Spain. Secondly, the money and credit-fuelled economic expansions in states like Ireland and Spain were highly dependent on the confidence and trust of borrowers and lenders and thus precariously balanced. Germany lacked a similar exposure to domestic asset price bubble in the housing and construction sectors. It could not, however, easily escape contagious effects from a ‘bubble burst’ elsewhere, not least into the ‘real’ economy of exports, investment, and jobs.

Ceding and sharing sovereignty Assessment of the post-euro path is also bound up in differences of view about the appropriate extent of ceding and sharing of sovereignty in economic policy. Underpinning these differences of view are contrasting approaches to economic policy coordination (Dyson 2000). In one view, optimal policy responses require ex ante and explicit coordination, in which individual actors agree to make their own policy decisions with reference to an agreed set of shared formal objectives, relating for instance to growth, employment, fiscal deficits, inflation, and exchange rates. This approach informs proposals for European ‘economic government’ and for globally agreed exchange-rate regimes or policies. In the contrasting view, optimal policy stems from the ex post and implicit coordination that is based on a clear assignment of functions to individual actors (like price stability to the ECB, fiscal policy to government, and growth and employment to employers and trade unions). If each performs effectively in discharging its function, the result is optimal policy coordination. Similarly, optimal exchange-rate coordination is the result not of pre-fixed shared targets but the outcome of effective domestic stabilizations. The context in which coordination issues have been resolved is an asymmetry in state attitudes to ceding and sharing sovereignty. Ceding monetary policy sovereignty was facilitated politically by recognition of the benefits of central bank independence. Once the case had been accepted domestically, the political costs of Europeanizing central bank independence were substantially reduced. A broad international shift to embrace this principle provided a supportive context

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of cross-national consensus and convergence of interests in monetary policy. No such supportive context existed for ceding fiscal or economic policy sovereignty, even sovereignty over banking and financial market regulation and supervision, to technicians. Fiscal and economic policy decisions involved complex value judgements and trade-offs that rested on political legitimacy, not least with respect to taxation, whilst rescuing banks in the collective interest of financial stability required use of taxpayers’ money. Hence EMU did not involve economic and fiscal union or a European-level banking supervisory authority. Instead of an enhanced EU budget as a stabilization mechanism compensating losers from market adjustment, the EU opted for ‘hard’ commitment to domestic fiscal discipline (McKay 2001). In its initial form, the Stability and Growth Pact was seen as a flanking mechanism for ECB monetary policy, though lacking the automatic sanctions mechanism that German negotiators had originally sought (Eijffinger and De Haan 2000). In its revised version of 2005, the Pact adopted rules and procedures for a more flexible application which, whilst still adhering to the idea of flanking monetary policy, created more room for manoeuvre for states to finance long-term structural reforms. The Pact had come to serve more purposes – not just as a flanking measure for monetary policy and now domestic economic reforms but also as an anti-cyclical mechanism in which consolidation was to be focused more on periods of economic ‘upswing’. This flexibility was gained at the expense of less clarity in fiscal policy commitments. Strikingly, though it produced central bank criticism, the 2005 reform had little direct impact on the financial markets. The main reason was the overall collective improvement in the fiscal stance of the Euro Area states since 1999, irrespective of whether individual states created problems of compliance with the rules (Hallerberg and Bridwell 2008). States were even less willing to make ‘hard’ commitments to economic reforms, notably in some areas of product markets (like energy), services, labour markets, and – to stimulate employment – welfare states. Neither Lisbon I nor Lisbon II was armed with teeth to enforce clearly formulated reform commitments (Debrun and Pisani-Ferry 2006). An exception was financial market regulation and supervision, where the so-called Lamfalussy process (2001–) accelerated reforms (Quaglia 2007). Even here, however, it remained unclear who would assume responsibility in the case of crisis in a financial institution operating across borders. Again, there was an unwillingness to cede sovereignty in banking supervision either to the ECB or to a European financial services authority. More generally the Euro Area lacked the collective-action

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capacity to address effectively the externalities in economic reforms within a monetary union.

Domestic political ownership: Securing long-term commitments and compensating losers Once governments renounce both interest rate and exchange rate as instruments of economic adjustment, the effectiveness of the monetary union depends on their will and capability to put in place alternative instruments of adjustment. In this refashioned context, the weight of adjustment falls on wage moderation, productivity improvements and flexible adjustment in product, services, capital, and labour markets. It also rests on sustainable public debt positions and consequent fiscal consolidation to support low interest rates. Unsustainable public debt, fuelled by imprudent fiscal deficits, and failures of domestic reforms create negative externalities within the monetary union. The Euro Group, comprising the Euro Area finance ministers, is the main institutional venue for this form of coordination. However, unlike ECOFIN which groups together the full EU (27), it lacks legal authority to act and depends on opaque processes of informal coordination. These processes are not made easy when, characteristically for reasons of domestic party, coalition, and electoral strategy and tactics, reforms are abandoned or delayed. They are made even more difficult when governments seek to attribute blame to the lack of an explicit euro exchange-rate policy or to ECB monetary policy for domestic growth and employment problems, as with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. EMU has made more transparent the limitations on the capacity of states to deliver economic and fiscal policy reforms. In testing the capacity of states to deliver, it also invites populist mobilization. The ‘hard and thorny’ post-euro path runs through the thickets of domestic politics. Its future rests on political leaders winning domestic political battles without shifting blame to the ECB and thereby undermining its legitimacy. The capacity to win domestic political battles highlights two key dimensions of reform. First, states must engineer domestic institutional reforms to strengthen their capacity for fiscal discipline and for economic reform. This axis of reform includes territorial governance, electoral systems, and executive-legislative relations. It is also shaped by whether domestic party system configurations support long-term commitments to consolidation and reform or offer strong incentives both to intra-party factionalism and to short-term electoral tactics (Hallerberg

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2004). In the context of coalition governments, a key indicator is the willingness of parties to enter into fiscal contracts that bind spending ministers for the length of the government (Hallerberg and Bridwell 2008). Second, states must possess the capacity to compensate losers from domestic reforms. The appropriate aphorism is that the more market is pursued, the more resources are required to compensate losers. Public policy has to raise the price for vetoing economic reforms. This capacity for compensation depends on states having fiscal room for manoeuvre. A number of key Euro Area states found themselves in the dilemma of needing to pursue urgent but politically costly reforms in fiscally constrained circumstance of high and rising public debt. This configuration suggested a ‘harder and thornier’ path ahead.

Market-based adjustment State capacity to ‘own’ its implications is by no means a stand-alone determinant of a sustainable monetary union (Dyson 2008a). Arguably, the characteristics of domestic political economies are more important than state-centric Europeanization processes (or the weakness of those processes). Business is a privileged player in politics: its threats, notably of exit and outsourcing, have gained a greater credibility in a world of capital mobility, surplus savings, and potential for higher rates of return in new production locations. The combination of a single currency with EU market liberalization and enlargement, along with changes attributed to ‘globalization’, mean that governments become more vulnerable to threats to growth rates, jobs, and tax revenues, not to mention positions in international league tables of performance. Comparative economic advantage also privileges some businesses over others and in different, nationally specific ways – for instance, the City of London, export manufacturers in Germany, luxury goods in Italy. In the genesis of EMU a direct political role for business was muted, mainly because the economic costs and benefits were shrouded in uncertainty. The result was scope for autonomous political determination. However, in mediating the effects of living with the euro, firms were more directly important and more active in shaping the scope for political determination of reforms. Firms were activated to anticipate the effects of the euro in eliminating exchange-rate risk and reducing transaction costs and to capture the consequent trade creation effects (Frankel and Rose 1998, 2005; Rose 2000).

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The results of firm activation were not one-directional. They depended on which types of firms were privileged by domestic comparative advantage and the type of institutional structures in which they are embedded. Sectors and firms whose markets had been traditionally insulated sought to mobilize their governments to protect their position. Hence, one aspect of EMU was an awakening of ‘economic patriotism’, visible especially in Mediterranean Europe. In contrast, traditionally exposed trading sectors sought to enlist governments to pursue tax, labour-market, and wage policy reforms that would lower unit labour costs in this more competitive environment. Some states were caught between contending pressures from firm-led protection and firm-led adjustment (e.g. France); others exhibited a bias to firm-led protection (e.g. Greece); whilst Germany led the pack in an assertive firm-led adjustment. Government reforms in labour markets, employment policies, and taxation can be seen as in substantial part the formalization of what firms in areas of comparative advantage have been pursuing and practising already. Seeking to assess the effects of the euro in terms of scoring ‘top-down’, state-led reforms, like Duval and Elmeskov (2006) for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, misses the key role of firms in areas of comparative advantage in shaping the direction, timing, sequencing, and pace of domestic change. Where governments hesitate to reform to reconfigure and rebalance employer and employee interests, firms are induced to ‘instrumentalize’ existing institutions. This process can be seen in German collective bargaining, notably changes in wage setting, working time, and work organization. In other words, formal institutional continuity can mask major changes in the way that institutions function consequent on the changed behaviour of firms. Seen in this ‘bottom-up’ perspective, Germany has experienced major changes in its labour markets and employment and working patterns that are not fully captured by measures of ‘top-down’ structural reforms to product, services and other markets (Dyson and Padgett 2005; Dyson 2008b). The reform records of the Schroeder and Merkelled governments – typically judged ‘poor’ – tell us only part of the story of behavioural change in the German economy. Firm activation can compensate for political inertia, even retrenchment in reforms. However, from the perspective of the sustainability of monetary union, this ‘bottom-up’ perspective on firm-led management of change is only partially reassuring. Firstly, the comparative advantage that rests on traditional strengths in domestic markets can work to strengthen impediments to adjustment when firms seek protection. Firms and

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sectors that operate as ‘insider’ groups may have little or no interest in pursuing economic adjustment (e.g. the Italian banking and service sectors). Secondly, the pursuit of economic change through lower real wages, reduced costs, and leaner working organization and work forces acts to rein back rather than stimulate consumer demand and thus fails to deliver an expansionary impulse. The resulting paradox is micro-level firm and sector success that coincides with macro-level protracted economic stagnation or lock-in to low growth. This effect serves in turn to reduce incentives for public opinion to welcome top-down economic reforms or for political elites to pursue them. Thirdly, even where a sector enjoys comparative advantage, the political power of its firms is not equivalent to the collective good of the economy. The collective good, above all of ‘outsiders’, rests on the capacity of governments to challenge ‘insider’ power (not least by compensating losers) and to provide incentives for the development of new sources of comparative advantage, especially in the services and financial sectors, including supportive flexible labour-market policies. Equally, aggressive financial institutions in liberalizing financial markets face temptations to pursue highly risky borrowing and lending strategies that threaten major macro-economic costs that become collectivized through banking ‘bail outs’. These three reservations suggest that firm power over domestic policies is not to be equated with a greater capacity to sustain monetary union.

Conclusions An historically informed political analysis of EMU raises three questions: what are the broader lessons for other policy sectors, what problems does it suggest in the scholarly literature, and what have we learnt about EMU? EMU has depended on bold history-making decisions by political leaders both in terms of European treaty making and in terms of domestic political management of euro entry. At the same time, it highlights the crucial importance of the contexts, structural and contingent, in which leadership is exercised. Perhaps, most strikingly, EMU shows how European integration is made possible by a power vacuum in the international provision of collective goods, in this case monetary and exchange-rate stability consequent on US neglect of the Bretton Woods system. In contrast, a similar abandonment was not apparent in the international governance of banking and financial stability. This asymmetry in the global provision of the collective good of economic

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stability (in this case between price and financial stability) helps explain the different power capabilities of the Euro Area in these two related domains. More significantly, the contrast in the scope and speed of development of ‘monetary’ as opposed to ‘defence’ Europe reflects differences in whether the international hegemon has created space in which European integration can move forward. Though the will and capacity for political leadership remains a key to driving the integration process forwards, it needs the opportunity of international space in which to act. EMU also reveals the significance of an intellectually coherent underpinning of elite consensus for European integration. In the case of ‘monetary’ Europe, a formidable edifice of robust theories underpinned elite consensus about the design of a ‘monetary constitution’ that would sustain price stability. This type of elite consensus expands the sphere of the possible and, moreover, gives a missionary quality to elite leadership that has enabled the ECB to carve out a strong role. Again, this type of coherent, robust theory is less apparent in financial market regulation and supervision (hence the dispute about a European financial regulatory authority) or in growth and employment policies (hence the problems of the Lisbon process). In areas like ‘defence’ Europe, a prerequisite for advancing integration is a shared body of normative and causal beliefs about security policies that could underpin a common project of institution building. With respect to problems in the study of European integration, the literature on EMU illustrates the enduring difficulties and contentions around three explanatory issues: materialist/idealist, structure/agency, and level of analysis. Given that EMU is embedded in markets, given the globalizing shifts in many markets, and given the flow of ideas from academic economics into political science, materialist explanations that emphasize structure and the international level have been prominent. This tendency contrasts with studies of ‘defence’ Europe, where constructivist accounts privileging strategic ‘culture’ have been more central. Nevertheless, political science and international relations have retained an interest in economic policy ‘ideas’ and ‘cultures’, represented by different models of capitalism and contrasting institutional foundations of economies. In particular, political science has remained alert to domestic specificities in structures and dynamics of power over policy. In the absence of consensus across political science, international relations and economics – even within each – students of European integration cannot avoid hard and problematic choices and difficult challenges of defensibility.

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A further problem is posed by the role of endogenous developments within EMU and of unanticipated consequences. EMU has unleashed its own dynamics that transform the conditions in which it was launched. Most importantly, it is associated with trade-creation and financial risk-sharing effects. In effect, EMU is a powerful catalyst for ‘informal’ integration that alters the context of state action in the integration process. These changes are likely to be a matter of more than a decade, as learning processes work their way through the Euro Area and EU economies. They may also generate new problems for European integration. Trade creation effects may reveal the potential to ‘free ride’ on the Euro Area by capturing its trade gains through the EU single market, whilst avoiding the exchange-rate and interest-rate constraints on macro-economic policy consequent on euro entry. In the process, the incentives to join would diminish. In addition, asymmetry in trade-creation effects may generate new tensions and conflicts, highlighted in the simultaneous emergence of a synchronized business cycle around a core (the old D-Mark Zone) and of desynchronized cycles elsewhere. Financial risk-sharing is also potentially a two-way process. Cross-national integration of financial markets may not only alleviate domestic credit conditions but also spread banking crises. These characteristics of endogenous development and unanticipated consequences suggest scholarly caution in predicting the effects of EMU on the larger integration process. EMU also throws into relief the limitations of a political-sciencedriven approach to the study of Europeanization. Institutional approaches to the state that focus on domestic veto points capture impediments to ‘top-down’ reforms. However, they miss market-led adjustment (powerful in the German traded-goods sector) and marketled pursuit of domestic protection (as in much of the services sector). EMU awakens discourses of economic ‘patriotism’ as well as of positive engagement in globalization. Equally, however, as Germany showed, firm-based leadership can generate ‘bottom-up’ changes in institutional behaviour that offset inertia or slow transformation in ‘top-down’ reforms. Finally, EMU is a classic case study of politics ‘in time’ and the politics ‘of time’. The constraints of ‘initial conditions’ and historical path dependence on the scope for domestic political leadership remain striking. The institutional design of the Euro Area embeds a particular historical conjunction of forces. At the same time, EMU has served to make more transparent the domestic and European-level skills of political leaders or the lack of these skills. These skills are pre-eminently in the

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timing, sequencing, and pacing of domestic reforms – the arts of when to commit, on what to commit, and how far to renege or put reputation on the line. Prominent political victims in these intensified problems of playing ‘two-level’ games in economic reforms include Silvio Berlusconi, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schroeder. The challenges of temporality need to be reintegrated into EU studies (Goetz et al. 2008). What have we learnt about EMU? Unavoidably, in analysing the ‘hard and thorny’ paths to and after the euro, one cannot avoid – in Robert Frost’s words – the ‘road not taken’. Not all EU states have taken the road to the euro. ‘Outsiders’ have been able to ‘free ride’ on its tradecreation effects through their participation in the single market, whilst maintaining a measure of autonomy in monetary and exchange-rate policies to absorb asymmetric shocks (Baldwin 2006a, b). This option may seem attractive to some new CEE member states, where ‘catch-up’ involves major imbalances and vulnerability to large and unstable capital flows. However, for those ‘insiders’ that persevered with the ‘hard and thorny’ paths to and after the euro, the motives were to be found in their experience of the even harder and thornier path without the euro. The ‘road-not-taken’ included past exposure to shocks from foreign exchange market crisis, the humiliation of ‘policy taking’ from a hegemonic monetary policy actor, and fear that the benefits of the single market could unravel. However, the ‘road not taken’ has also included the creation of a ‘core’ Europe out of the Euro Area. In 1998–2000 this scenario fascinated Jacques Delors, Valery Giscard d’Estaing and Helmut Schmidt and has been revived by the Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt (2006). Instead, the institutional ‘fuzziness’ of the Euro Area has persisted. Even a core function for a monetary and currency union like financial stability remains an EU and global-level responsibility, with a variety of domestic supervisors safeguarding their prerogatives. The Euro Area also lacks a fiscal union. These twin design faults follow from constructing a monetary and currency union in the absence of the legitimating protection of a sovereign European power. The Euro Area functions without the strong umbrella of central political authority and shared identity. The resulting incentive to give a sharp profile to central bank independence as the basis of credibility leaves the issue of democratic deficit exposed (Verdun and Christiansen 2000; Collignon 2002). This incapacity to construct ‘core’ Europe around the Euro Area also has its basis in the different preferences of French and German political leaders. Successive French Presidents have sought to revive this agenda, whilst German Chancellors have sought to stress the benefits of building on the Lisbon

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economic reform agenda of the EU as whole and the risks of a politically divisive strategy for the EU. With respect to ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ three scenarios are feasible. One involves ‘exit’ by one or more ‘insiders’ in the face of overwhelming, asymmetric adjustment problems. This development cannot be wholly ruled out if or when there is a manifest and continuing renunciation of domestic political ownership of EMU. It would, however, be an extremely costly economic and political choice for the ‘exit’ state: its demonstrable weakness would require even more painful domestic reforms to regain lost credibility, external political reputation would be hugely damaged, and the accompanying complexities of currency transition enormous (Eichengreen 2007). Exit by a weak state offers little threat to the Euro Area: it might be strengthened. The second scenario involves German loss of loyalty to the EMU ‘constitution’ agreed at Maastricht. This threat would be of existential significance. The keystone of the Euro Area remains German support for the principle of central bank independence. Despite the Lafontaine period (1998–9), this principle seems very secure. Finally, it is likely that the road to the euro may prove so difficult for some new member states that they will abandon euro entry plans with firm dates and slip from ‘temporary’ to ‘semi-permanent’ outsiders. Here currency and/or credit crises could play a major role and lead either to a new commitment to enter in order to avert future storms or recognition of the benefits from ‘free riding’. The key issues revolve around the Euro Area’s capacity to weather new and varying configurations of a political economy of bad times and its vulnerability to trade and financial transmission channels. By end-2007, the ECB had yet to make monetary policy in the face of a serious headwind as opposed to a benign tailwind. The risks lie in part in exogenous shocks to a monetary union that lacks both many of the conventional economic features of an optimum currency area (though so do other currency unions) and a political framework of solidarity akin to that of many states. The unwinding of global imbalances, especially the loss of the locomotive role of US consumers, constitutes a particular threat. In addition, risks lie in internal diversity and consequent strains. For ‘insiders’ the challenges from competitive disinflation have replaced those from competitive devaluation as unit costs develop differently. By 2006–07 Germany had returned as a source of major adjustment pressure. The result is a spatial restructuring. Production and export of manufactures, especially high-quality capital goods, is gravitating to Germany and the old ‘D-Mark’ zone of economies characterized by high intra-industry trade. More seriously, there is an agglomeration

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of professional services outside the Euro Area in London – advertising, finance, media, and public relations. This raises serious questions about the comparative advantage of large parts of the Euro Area in modern growth sectors and the capacity of both states and corporate actors to address this issue. Capacity is in turn linked to the hierarchy of collective-action problems that lie at the heart of European economic governance. The Euro Area has a high collective-action capacity in monetary policy; has a problematic capacity in banking and financial market supervision; lacks the attributes of a fiscal union; and has a low collective-action capacity in economic reforms. In fiscal and economic reforms, the ‘hard and thorny’ path runs through domestic political economies and highlights the key issues of domestic ownership of EMU and compensation of losers. Till late 2007, the ECB was successful in ‘locking in’ long-term market expectations of low inflation consistent with its price stability objective; whilst the Stability and Growth Pact was associated with an improved aggregate fiscal policy performance of Euro Area states (Hallerberg and Bridwell 2008). More problematic was the record in domestic economic reforms. Evidence suggested that the larger states were the laggards in economic reforms; small states were induced by their greater trade exposure to Euro Area markets to engage more actively in reforms (Duval and Elmeskov 2006). The post-euro path must cross a difficult terrain of domestic factionalism, complex power sharing, and electoral calendars, as well as of populist temptations to shift blame to the ECB. In negotiating this path, domestic political leaders face a challenge of political creativity. They need to manage the complex and difficult trade-offs between market liberalization and compensating losers, thereby increasing incentives to accept change. This is a challenge to political skills not just in the design and packaging of reforms but also in their timing and sequencing, as well as their pacing. Voters and party members must be induced to accept short-term focused pain for longer-term diffused gain. The Euro Area faces a ‘hard and rocky’ path through the dense thickets of domestic political management of economic reforms.

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Part IV European Integration and the Member States

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10 One Union, One Story? In Praise of Europe’s Narrative Diversity∗ Kalypso Nicolaïdis and Janie Pélabay

Birthdays! The EU’s fiftieth was a particularly paradoxical one. It was celebrated with a general lack of enthusiasm in an end-of-crisis atmosphere, albeit a crisis about which the citizens of Europe did not seem particularly concerned. And yet, the occasion inspired a new flurry of speeches on the ‘European story’ and rekindled appetites for some sort of search for meaning. How to define the ‘soul’, pundits asked, of this Europe characterised by the legal and diplomatic coldness of a rule-of-law state? What are the ideas, values or traditions that bind us together as Europeans? Once more, the questions were posed as to whether it was time for this ‘community of interests’ to become a ‘community of identity’ and whether such a shift was necessary to legitimise the normative and institutional bases of today’s European political order. Even those who answer this last question negatively can nonetheless subscribe to a minimal version of such a ‘search for meaning’. Certainly, we tend to believe that the EU is supported by public opinions to the extent that it works and delivers, rather than because it ‘speaks’ to the people. But even this minimalist vision does imply that both as a project and as a constraint, Europe must remain readable to its citizens. This is notably what the rejection of the constitution and its lumbering return under the guise of a treaty teach us. And in order to be readable, the EU must have a story to tell, a story which its citizens can tell themselves and the rest of the world. For, just like any national or transnational community, Europeans must ask themselves what exactly unites them in spite of, or even and especially because of, their diversity. To be sure, we will never agree on a definition of what it means to be European. Some of us believe that Europeans are bound by a shared cultural heritage, others by a common belief in institutions and the rule 175

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of law. For some Europe is about politics, economics and security; for others it is about ethics and art; for others still it is about the ethos of systematic doubt inherited from the Enlightenment. Some believe that our European history is there to be overcome by building decent societies, others that it defines our spiritual landscape. Some see Europe as a community of identity, others as a community of project. Some think the European idea means keeping alive the spirit of Dante or Thomas Mann beyond our museums and universities; others think that it must constantly be reinvented in our common spaces, from the football pitch to the Internet (Nicolaïdis 2005a: 11). This multiplicity of angles may be reminiscent of the answer to the question: what does it mean to be French, Portuguese or British? But when it comes to Europe, the very remoteness of the common project seems to justify the simple question: beyond our mosaic of personal stories, what is the glue that binds us together? Since the end of the Cold War, a number of European intellectuals, followers of Habermas in Germany and of Jean-Marc Ferry in the Francophone world, have offered an answer to Europe’s existential question through a particular concept, that of constitutional patriotism. Accordingly, allegiance to the political community is grounded on a shared respect for common rules and the commitment of all to democratic deliberation regarding their concrete application (Eriksen and Fossum 2000; Laborde 2002; Lacroix 2002; Costa and Magnette 2006; Müller 2007). Here, we seek to retain the non-essentialist, nonexclusionary spirit of constitutional patriotism, while doing away with the illusionary unity it still conveys. It is indeed pointless to seek one single ‘European story’, now more so than ever, as politicians try to accommodate the many contradictory grounds of existence for the EU. Instead, we need to understand and to talk about the EU in a way which respects the numerous narratives, imagined representations, desires, fears and needs which underpin what must remain a minimal transnational consensus. If this is true, we need to ask whether the dominant cognitive maps of the EU in different member states or among different sections of European populations are indeed still compatible – ‘overlapping’ – and if so increasingly or decreasingly so. To bring Rawls’ one level of governance upwards, can we think of the EU as an ‘overlapping consensus of overlapping consensuses’?1 In other words, beyond inter-governmental bargains, is the EU still amenable to inter-societal bargains and thereby to an agreement which accommodates a reasonable plurality of representations of the EU among its citizenry? As the permissive character

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of the EU project is increasingly eluding us, the task of defining the contours of such an overlapping consensus must move from smokefilled rooms to open public spaces. This is not about the people defining the specifics of governance but rather clarifying together or separately the choices and tradeoffs associated with different paths of integration. If the EU is at a crossroad, having stabilised its institutional and constitutional settlement, it is no surprise that people turn their attention to normative issues raised by the very nature and ends of a polity no longer busy trying to establish itself. Combined with comparative analysis, normative theory is indeed helpful for articulating the variety of options for the EU and their respective potential consequences (Lacroix 2004; Dobson 2006). Such emphasis on justification goes handin-hand, we believe, with the goal of democratisation: to be more than a pious slogan, ‘the democratic life of the EU’ must be nourished by a public process of confrontation-cum-legitimation allowing citizens and state representatives to deploy their multiple narratives, while acknowledging that an overlapping consensus can emerge from such multiplicity. In this chapter, we first discuss what can be called Europe’s reasonable pluralism. We then analyse the implications of this reasonable pluralism for European ‘story-telling’. Finally, we attempt to sketch a heuristic providing practical illustrations of the type of minimal transnational consensus required for the pluralist configuration of the EU.

A Europe of ‘reasonable pluralism’ Put together sense of belonging and consensus-building in the EU, and one fact imposes itself immediately – pluralism. Like any liberal democratic regime, the EU is inhabited by people with a multitude of convictions on what should constitute a ‘good life’ or in other words a life which is worth living. This moral pluralism feeds off different visions of the world, social belonging and experience, or doctrines (for the most selfconscious) which influence individual and collective behaviour. It is the expression of the freedom given to each citizen to determine what, for example, will lead to fulfilment in marital, familial, professional or social life, as long as this does not damage the equal freedom of others. Such pluralism is characterised by disagreements which can be considered as unavoidable in two respects according to the credo of political liberalism. First, these disagreements are the result of a fallibility in our reasoning or, in Rawlsian terms, ‘burdens of judgment’ (Rawls

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1993: 54). Second, they arise as a direct result of the exercise of our freedom of thought which is why they cannot be suppressed unless by coercive intervention or the tyrannical use of power. Consequently, the fact of reasonable pluralism and the disagreements which characterise it are, according to Rawls, ‘the normal result of the exercise of human reason within the framework of the free institutions of a constitutional democratic regime’ (Rawls 1993: xvi). To put it simply, any regime which guarantees the respect of basic rights will also be marked by an unavoidable share of disagreement, antagonism and conflict on the ultimate questions of what is ‘good’ – good for the group and good for individuals. It goes without saying that this starting point of liberal reasoning has always been the object of intense debate both analytically and prescriptively. Our focus here, however, is not on these metatheoretical issues but on the nature of diversity and the issues it raises in a transnational community such as the EU. Clearly the liberal and deliberative democratic paradigms are in tension, including when applied at the EU level (Warleigh-Lack 2007). Nevertheless, we argue that once applied to the EU, the liberal commitment to pluralism is likely to require the accommodation of greater participative input than a classic liberal representative framework precisely because of the limits of representation in a context of multi-level governance. When, echoing the draft Constitution, the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon sets out to strengthen what it calls ‘participatory democracy’ it is to rescue rather then strike down that of the representative kind. Indeed, when citizens participate more in politics through providing input to governance, broader deliberation or resistance and mobilisation, representative democracy can be re-legitimised and thus strengthened (Nicolaïdis 2007b). This is more likely to be the case at the EU level where majoritarian logics often (rightly) do not prevail. Thus, providing incentives for citizens to make their voice heard can sometimes serve as a functional equivalent to trust in representation. Such participatory reorientation does not necessarily undermine liberal core principles. To be sure, there are many ‘substantialist’ variants of the republican notion that civic participation is the primary virtue – from communitarian to neo-Aristotelian and ‘civic humanist’ visions – all of which see it as the root of supreme excellence in human beings. For us, and especially given the normative constraints posed by European pluralism, we should avoid grounding civic participation on a particular vision of human nature or of the common good. The search for transnational consensus among European citizens should not be about the ‘perfectionist’ aim to make European citizens good or

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to publicly promote a European vision of the good life. A procedural emphasis on participation, including through deliberation, is a rather useful embellishment to liberalism in view of the practical challenges raised by the unprecedented form of diversity present in the EU. This leads us back to the qualitative ‘difference’ of European diversity. Our politicians often tend to envisage European diversity through the eyes of national diversity. To this, they add a kind of quantitative reading. The EU ends up looking like a larger, more diverse, multilingual and multicultural national community. In Europe, the diversity of languages, religions, ethnocultural traditions and ways of life is quite simply the aggregate of national diversities. More often than not, the motto ‘united in diversity’ refers to this cultural pluralism with a backdrop of moral pluralism. Put this way, the discussion centres on the necessary conditions for a type of integration sensitive to the imperative of recognising otherness. Particularly, it is with this ‘difference-sensitive inclusion’ in mind that Habermas pleads for a separation between ‘political integration’ and ‘ethical integration’. The objective of such ‘uncoupling’ is to prevent the majority culture from ‘dictating the parameters of political discourses from the outset’ (Habermas 1999: 145–146). For there is a risk of producing an assimilationist dynamic on a European scale, if the criteria for access to democratic citizenship are based not simply on abstract and universalist norms but on an ethos marked by the seal of cultural partiality. This dual track approach has stimulated calls from the constellation of postnational thinkers for the establishment of a common political culture which is not damaging to the diverse cultural national identities (Ferry 2003: 18). It also explains attempts to apply a multiculturalist problematic to European citizenship (Kastoryano 2005) or to address the demands emanating from various ‘struggles for recognition’ around Europe (Nicolaïdis 2007a). For sure, adding moral to cultural pluralism is not unique to the EU. While the cliché is true – Europe gathers and juxtaposes such a vast range of histories and lifestyles in such a small space – the practical questions this raises are similar to those encountered by any multinational, multilingual, multidenominational and multicultural political entity. On the other hand, what is specific to the EU as a ‘political community’, and what also makes the search for public agreement a veritable challenge, is the extraordinary form of pluralism found there at a higher level. This is a level where pluralism and the disagreements which accompany it are concerned with how to make ‘ready-made’ (national) collective agreements on coexistence coexist among themselves. It is indeed one thing

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to try to reach a consensus among 450 million people, and it is quite another to reach a consensus in which a variety of already established overlapping consensuses have participated. An overlapping consensus of overlapping consensuses must be extraordinarily narrower than its components. The very configuration of the EU brings together a plurality of political cultures each of which is solidly anchored in a national context, each of which claims to be valid both in itself and on a European level. Consider for instance, the different institutional translations within Europe of the principle of impartiality of the democratic state vis-à-vis comprehensive views of the good life (moral doctrines, mores, religions, etc.) reflected by national variations around notions of secularism, division of state and religion; or the serious conflicts between traditions of thought and concrete political measures in support of the demand for social justice; or conceptions of state sovereignty, ranging from internal control to independence; or the way in which different member states recognise and manage linguistic and ethnocultural diversity, the awarding of group-differentiated rights, access to citizenship and national integration. The diversity making up European unity is itself about the many ways in which ‘unity in diversity’ is pursued across the continent. Against a background of structural pluralism, we are thus confronted with ‘second degree’ diversity not only between individuals and groups but between dominant (often national) versions of what the EU is about. Each citizen has his own story to tell – both to himself and to others – about the EU. But at the same time, the citizens of the same member state tend to converge on certain broad outlines of this story coloured – even unconsciously – by a deep-rooted national model (Nicolaïdis and Weatherill 2003). In order to illustrate that pluralism, Taylor’s diagnosis on the existence of ‘second-level or “deep” diversity’ in Canada might be transposed with even greater force to the EU.2 He describes this diversity as deep because within it ‘a plurality of ways of belonging would also be acknowledged and accepted’ (Taylor 1993: 183). Breaking with a pattern not only of ‘uniformity’ but even of ‘convergence’, this diversity encourages the cultivation of a ‘sense of the legitimacy of multiple options’ (ibid.: 131) in ways of conceiving the political order. This is all the more so when belonging to this order is added on to other levels of political belonging. Evoking deep diversity in connection with the EU does not mean subscribing to ‘differentiated citizenship’ or defending ‘group rights’ or the idea of a substantial ‘authenticity’ of each community within the ‘wider

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society’ (Pélabay 2001). To put it briefly, the idea here is not to prescribe that European citizenry be split up into different pieces. Nor is it to argue that the citizens and peoples of Europe or indeed the member states do not share a set of common principles. These commonalities, which reflect the fundamental rights and norms linked to states based on the democratic rule of law, are arguably the object of a kind of soft consensus in the EU as set forth in its constitutive treaties. The diversity we speak of has to do with translating these fundamental norms into the workings of a polity. This second degree diversity seems unavoidable as a fact. Individual citizens have different expectations and convictions about Europe, and this has an impact on their allegiance to the EU. But to the individual plurality of narratives we need to add a collective plurality. With the acquiescence of their public, national governments make contrasting interpretations of the common principles and put them into practice in the light of particular political projects and competing interests. In turn, these varying interpretations and applications are the source of strong disagreements, which sometimes appear to call the validity of the proposed policies into question. Thus, deep diversity takes on an institutionalised form within the EU: the plurality of the EU’s antagonistic visions is at the heart of its democratic life. Second, these disagreements can be reasonable to the extent that they express individual opinions or the opinions of governments that respect the demands of ‘public reason’ and the constraints of ‘a fair system of cooperation’ (Rawls 1993: 15). In short, it is possible to express diverging viewpoints on what attaches us individually or collectively to the EU without undermining the norms of mutual respect, mutual recognition and equal freedom at its core. Beyond an unreasonable and intolerable diversity – where dogmatisms and other forms of extremism lead to the rejection of others and threats to basic rights – it is therefore reasonably possible to disagree on the ‘EU story’. The plurality of European narratives is unavoidable not only factually but also normatively. This reasonable pluralism within the EU means that no narrative unanimity could serve as a substantive basis for public agreement. On the contrary, we must live with reasonable disagreements and conflicts of interpretation on the meaning and ends of the EU. The ambition to reach ‘unity in diversity’ is not a straightforward affair. How then can we talk about Europe in its name, as it were, as the public basis for the legitimisation of EU policies and institutions?

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How not to talk about Europe Against narrativist approaches The first consequence can be expressed in the negative: it is neither realistic nor desirable to seek the basis for the EU’s political legitimacy in a single European narrative, in a new collective myth, handed down from above, and then drummed into children in civics classes (Pélabay 2006) and adults through circumstantial discourse. And yet, since the double ‘no’ in the French and Dutch referenda on the Constitutional Treaty, the idea is spreading that the EU’s democratic deficit is the result of the absence of a clearly affirmed collective identity. As a result, we have been witnessing of late a veritable quest for ‘Europeanness’, a basking in the ‘idea’, the ‘ethos’ or the ‘soul’ of Europe. The quest might be historico-cultural or ethico-cultural. In the first genre, the evocation of ‘major European figures’ – from Leonardo Da Vinci to Thomas Mann, not forgetting Dante, Erasmus and Voltaire – links historical, philosophical and religious references in order to construct a millennium-long European heritage. In order to celebrate the foundations of a ‘European memory’, an attempt is made to discover or recover the hidden ‘sources’ of an authentic ‘European We’. The second genre attempts to define the ethos or indeed the common good which makes up the particular identity of the EU (Etzioni 2007). The very fashionable – and open to criticism (Ash 2007; Ogien 2007) – language of ‘shared meanings’ and ‘common values’ is used here as a device to draw the substantial outlines of a specifically European good life. To heed the concern for preserving the constitutive goods of the European community its citizens are exhorted to show their ‘loyalty’ to the EU and to agree to the sacrifices imposed by European policies. Such attempts to invest European identity with a common substantive basis, and thus entrench political consensus in a single narrative which incarnates the substance of Europe, run into at least two stumbling blocks. The first is epistemological and stems from confusion between two levels of argument – one based on the notion of foundation and the other on justification. According to the ‘narrativist’ line, it is indeed the foundational character of the historical, ethical and cultural sources of European identity which propels them directly to the rank of criteria for the public legitimisation of the rules, policies and institutions of the EU. In other words, the substantial features of a European narrative are presented as the foundations for a collective identity which, in turn, serves to legitimise

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the political order. The problem is that neither democratic legitimacy nor collective identity are pre-established facts to be exhumed from the hermeneutic depths of a European ‘We’, which would simply have to be uncovered for Europeans to obtain their support for this political union. As has been amply discussed, the identity and legitimacy of a polity are the results of extremely complex processes of construction and manipulation, and it is precisely this ‘processual’ feature that ‘narrativist’ approaches cannot grasp (Barth 1969; Gellner 1983; Anderson 1991; Appiah 2005). This identity-based perspective tends to simply ignore the reasonable disagreements in order to deliver a simple, clear and agreeable narrative on the meaning of Europe. The second stumbling block is normative and concerns Euronationalism. These approaches can generate legitimate concerns about their ability to contain or to defuse tendencies linked to patterns of exclusion and homogenisation which have always characterised the formation of European nation-states (Nicolaïdis 1992). For instance, homogenisation, or the desire to reach a unified and unifying vision of what ‘makes a community’ (une et indivisible) of European citizens, has surely been a staple of the French vision of Europe (Nicolaïdis 2005b, c). Such an aim is perhaps evoked in the name of universal values including tolerance. The fact remains that these values are then defended as being the only ‘good’ ones which the Europeans of the Enlightenment invented for the rest of the world. It may be harsh but true to refer to those who argue that they represent our common essence as ‘Enlightenment fundamentalists’. Exclusionary tendencies in turn betray a possible shift towards a nationalism writ large, which confuses the needs of political integration with the need to define ourselves against others. The shaping of inclusion/exclusion criteria as a function of the narrative boundaries of the political community contributes to ‘communitising’ an EU, whereby only individuals or groups whose vision of Europe merges with the shared ‘top-down’ European narrative would be admitted, anointed by an elite endowed with a higher hermeneutic or ethical authority. In the end, the official narrative on a European past following such a logic of ‘identity at the foundation’ is potentially dangerous. Either it could turn into a latter day religious, moral or cultural ‘rearmament’ of Europe, or it could ‘mutate into a description without the slightest impact on Europeans themselves because of its sterilised, homogenised and fixed appearance’ (Rosoux 2003).

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‘Reasonable pluralism’ versus ‘radical pluralism’ Does this mean that the fact of reasonable pluralism within the EU, together with the rejection of exclusionary visions of European identity, ultimately imply giving in to ‘radical pluralism’ and thus giving up attempts at forging a minimalist political consensus about the EU? We do not believe so. At the very least, we need to rethink the grounds for political cohesion, instead of attempting to reproduce the ‘national-communitarian equation’ between democratic legitimacy and collective identity on a European level (Lacroix 2004: 182) or hoping to collectively define EU identity. Nor does public agreement necessarily call for narrative unanimity. The minimal consensus we call for must take reasonable disagreements on the EU into account and turn them into its defining feature. We argue here that the ‘public use of reason’ provides fertile ground for the creation of a minimal transnational consensus capable of respecting and accommodating the individual and collective plurality of European narratives. Contemporary advocates of political liberalism and disciples of Kant bank on public reason to justify the basic norms of political order in an unavoidably pluralist context. The public use of reason must serve to define ‘fair terms of social cooperation [ . . . ] that we are ready to abide by provided others do’ (Rawls 1993: 62, n. 17). In this, the search for political consensus proceeds from two types of limitations which, one as much as the other, reflect the deep pluralist condition of the EU. On the one hand, to the extent that public agreement has no impact on what it means to be European, the approach adopted by the public use of reason seems expedient in that it allows the search for consensus to be limited to the fundamental principles which govern European political order. On the other hand, such an approach is compatible with different comprehensive doctrines according to resolutely limited criteria which fall short of any public determination of what is or ought to be true. As Rawls explains, ‘holding a political conception as true’, and ‘for that reason alone’ as the one suitable for public agreement, ‘is exclusive, even sectarian, and so likely to foster political division’ (Rawls 1993: 129). Similarly, if the different European narratives are considered as so many comprehensive visions of Europe, the only criterion that must apply is that of ‘reasonableness,’ against the dogmatism which surrounds public affirmation of a collective identity (loaded with historical, cultural and/or ethical content) officially held to be ‘true’ or ‘authentic’. The criterion of ‘narrative truth’ is so controversial that it cannot satisfy the conditions posed by European deep diversity. At the same time, reasonableness definitely constrains the expression

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of radical diversity. Only comprehensive visions of Europe which can be scrutinised by the public use of reason and do not claim to represent the ultimate truth can expect to be part of such a political consensus. Thus, general acceptance, in the sociological and not only in the political sense, of the principle of mutual recognition might be considered to be a necessary condition for integration as the common basis for all these visions of Europe. Visions whose public expression entails bypassing the obligations of mutual respect and recognition cannot contribute to public legitimacy unless, of course, they agree to bend to the self-critical and transforming discipline implied by such a process.

Forming a process-led minimal consensus at European level How then can a wide range of European narratives be accommodated while regulating conflicts through the ‘public use of reason’ (Ferry 2003)? Transposing Rawls, how are the many different European narratives most likely to overlap? First, such overlap can be the result of personal dynamics, whereby citizens are encouraged to build bridges between their ‘most firmly held convictions’ (Rawls 1993: 8) and their general ‘political conception of justice’. This adjustment between private and public convictions can take place thanks to ‘a certain looseness in our comprehensive views’ (ibid.: 159). This overlap can also take place at a more collective level, between different political cultures or the different overlapping consensuses found in each member state, or it could be between several conceptions of political legitimacy, as argued by Lord and Magnette. Here overlapping is motivated by the fact that ‘all those who have views – however divergent – on how the EU should be legitimised have a shared interest in the development of widely-held norms by which particular legitimation claims can be recognised as justified’. Taking the shape of a continuous deliberation where different ‘vectors of legitimisation’ would be put into competition with each other, such a process could benefit from multi-level governance and ‘the degree of uncertainty that is deliberately maintained around the principles of Union legitimacy’ (Lord and Magnette 2004: 195–198). As a transnational overlap of national overlapping consensuses, the EU is to be seen as an association between states permanently seeking to agree on their reasonable disagreements as their publics increasingly are to agree to projects dreamed up by their elites. In this sense, the notion of an overlapping consensus for Europe differs from the idea of a ‘zone of possible agreements’ or the range of possible intergovernmental

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bargains in Europe in three fundamental ways. First, it is not about a package of discrete agreements which can be linked or disaggregated in order to strike deals between member states; rather it is about the broad outlines of the project, the definition of its basic characteristics – a ‘narrative’. Second, the overlapping consensus has to be forged in the public arena(s). It refers to the acquiescence not only of elites, heads of states or bureaucrats involved in direct negotiations but more generally of at least large fractions of the public opinion. Third, and perhaps most importantly, such a transnational overlapping consensus is less ambitious then the ad hoc political bargains that must from time to time be struck: in a political agreement all parties must, so to say, improve their score. Overlapping consensus implies rather the idea of a long-term minimal condition or diffuse reciprocity – that about the range of agreements that can be reached over time, knowing that consensuses which are maintained with difficulty at the national level represent contracts which themselves are already loaded with sacrifices which were difficult to make. In short, sustaining a transnational overlapping consensus does not mean that everybody must love everything about the EU but that a plurality of constituencies can at least live with it. We will never bring into the fold of the European project the extreme xenophobic and jingoistic fringe present in all national politics and we should not try. But we can hope, in time, to bring back all those citizens who are close to giving up on the European project even if politicians continue to present alternatives as black and white, good and bad, for or against Europe. Accordingly, we can hope to rally at least some of these Eurosceptics, who dismiss the EU for not living up to the false pretences set out by its well-meaning defenders. While the idea of transnational overlapping consensus points to plausible interpretations of ‘reasonable pluralism’ in the EU, the transposition of the Rawlsian model to the EU nonetheless poses several problems. First of all, in the European context it does not apply, as Rawls’ Theory of Justice does, to ‘a closed system isolated from other societies’ (Rawls 1971: 8) and where the sharing of a democratic political culture is a veritable ‘tradition’. Of course, an overlapping consensus at European level does not need to fall prey to the contextualist deviations of the ‘second Rawls’.3 In any case, the overlapping takes place at such an abstract level that it cannot plausibly specify what the EU ought to do and how (Lord and Magnette 2004: 196). The onus will always be on the institutional actors and political leaders to decide.

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But then, what can be the role of ‘the public’ in the necessary process of making reasoned decisions about Europe? Ferry argues that instead of overlapping consensus we should look to a ‘consensus through confrontation’ inspired by what he sees as a ‘cosmopolitan republicanism of Kantian inspiration’. In this case, the republic is conceived as ‘the framework for all reasonable confrontation between doctrines’ within which citizens enter into ‘publicly led reasonable discussion’ rather than relating to the political space each in their private capacity (Ferry 2005: 62). Conflicts of interest are sublimated into ‘conflicts of legal interpretation’ through debates and learning processes drawing on the principles of civility, legality and publicity (Ferry 2000). Clearly, such a ‘confrontational’ understanding of the transnational consensus requires a serious commitment from individual and collective actors, including a commitment to revise their original perspectives and their own past certainties if need be. It requires them to accept decisions which may ‘shock’ their axiological commitments but seem acceptable as the result of a procedure which ‘would in so far as possible take into account all points of view, convictions or interests in question’ (ibid: 78). Ferry adds that citizens ought to adhere to constitutional principles ‘for the same morally significant reasons, whereby the ‘ethical substance’ of the polity is merely a guide for action rather than a communitarian definition of the group (Ferry 2005: 211). Why does it matter anyway to define the character of the minimal transnational consensus, which we believe is the only viable goal for a sustainable EU? Our own bias here is normative: to guard against the temptation, including from within the ranks of the postnational constellation, to indulge in Euro-nationalism and thereby awaken nationalist counter-reactions, while at the same time discrediting the EU’s nascent attempts to carve a role for itself in global affairs. In this way, normative and positive concerns do merge. In this regard, while Ferry distinguishes between different emerging tendencies within the confines of the postnational constellation, namely, ‘liberal postnationalism’ and ‘republican cosmopolitanism’ (Lacroix and Nicolaïdis 2002; Ferry 2006, Lacroix 2006, Nicolaïdis 2006)4 , we deem it preferable to concentrate on an objective on which both of these tendencies might easily converge – forging a consensus about the right process to preserve narrative diversity in Europe and avoid the narrative of ‘Europeanness’, which makes norms, principles or political ideals mandatory as ‘European values’. Under such a processual and pluralist approach, the EU would in no way be a traditional ‘community’ in the sense that it would be ‘governed by a shared comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral doctrine’

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(Rawls 1993: 42), seeking a ‘common good’, nor would it be a simple association governed by purely instrumental rules, where conflict of interest is only stabilised through a modus vivendi based on agreements between governments.5 The EU’s originality lies in the fact that its unity and stability are based on a type of consensus which leaves a considerable amount of room for a reasonable pluralism of visions of Europe with a ‘post-unanimist’ political life in the sense that ‘unity is what one quarrels over; it is the hub of controversy’, while ‘everybody comes together unanimously around the fact that a fair and democratic struggle is being waged over the destiny of the people’ (Taylor 1993: 130). Moreover, putting the search for consensus under the aegis of public reason means emphasising process over substance and admitting once and for all that Europe is a union of peoples, a ‘demoi-cracy’ where ‘national demoi are more together than the mere sum of many distinct democracies with their different national demoi because all of them are distinctly European’ (Nicolaïdis 2004; Cheneval 2005; Besson 2007). What then are the plausible contours of the confrontation of the Euro-stories emanating from these different demoi?

European debates, European stories: Drafting a pluralist heuristics We cannot here retell the myriads of stories which make up the collective fears and desires of European peoples. But we can try to illustrate the heuristics we propose, by sketching what we consider to be three of the most important current EU debates. For each of these themes, there has been a convergence towards ‘what one quarrels over’ and agreement on the nature of the controversy. But perhaps even more importantly, the kind of reasonable pluralism we call for entails debates that would focus on how these core controversies have evolved in the post ColdWar era and ask what changes it would take in different member states for these evolutions to lead to acceptable and compatible conflicting views. In short, agreement on what each issue of contention is ‘really about’ would not be quite enough, we believe, to provide the glue that binds us together. In addition, and to define a transnational EU consensus that overlaps or confronts national consensuses, we need to start from a genuinely shared acceptance of mutual recognition as the basis for debating on ‘reasonable disagreements’. The question is in each case whether public opinion is converging around such a consensus or not.

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What? The nature of the EU The first strand of debate is simply about how to characterise the EU as a polity and its telos. For this debate to be carried out in a spirit of mutual recognition, European citizens need to be aware of the unconscious national projections and mimetic tropes in which they collectively indulge. They need to be aware of their general tendency to attempt to reproduce their national model at a European level (e.g. German federalism, Spanish regionalism, French Jacobin centralism) and perhaps their tendency to protect their national model as if Europe were in a position to replace it (e.g. parliamentarianism in Westminster) (Nicolaïdis and Weatherill 2003). It is essential, therefore, to understand in what way the effect of having grown up and been educated in the political culture of one’s own country, within the implicit and explicit principles of a given national contract, necessarily colours our neighbours’ judgements and indeed our own on Europe. Moreover, we are affected differently by ‘changing times’. National communities and social classes do not have the same perceptions of the way in which globalisation and enlargement should drive change in Europe. For some, these factors have combined in shifting their preferred versions of the EU – and the ideal associated with it – from a federal state in the making (whether good or bad) to a federal union dedicated to horizontal coordination rather than a hierarchy ill-adapted to the challenges at hand (Zielonka 2006). For others, ‘ever closer union’ cannot be abandoned in favour of ‘unity in diversity’ but combined with it. But the common underlying basic principle ought to be, more explicitly than ever before, that the EU is not and should not be a nation state in the making, whether a grande France or even a translation of German constitutional patriotism at the continental level, even if some nationals are prone to dream it that way. Most importantly, unlike nations, it should not define itself against another, be it the United States or Islam. Beyond this minimum, and as a single community defined by the persistent plurality of its peoples, the EU can take on all sorts of variants between a democratic Euro-UN (e.g. simply a union of national democracies) and a Euro-nation. Where it locates itself on the spectrum is to be adjusted over time and is the stuff of European politics. Is this an emerging new version of a minimal overlapping European consensus? Or are various national tropes in particular still far from such a basic understanding? Of course, the spectrum of national sensitivities varies widely, depending on the form taken by the projection of national models, including familiarity with federalism, the centralising/decentralising tendencies of national cultures, the

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attachment to sovereign symbols, or the depth of anti-hegemonic ethos. Through the kind of deliberative dynamics we call for, we could confront these different attributes and ask how close are different ‘member state sensitivities’ to a possible consensus. Are, for instance, national concerns regarding basic national political bargains, such as those of the Dutch public for sovereignty as control (over progressive policies on euthanasia or drugs) rather than sovereignty as independence (from foreign influence), likely to be accommodated? Arguably they can be, if pluralities of citizens understand that the EU is not a zero-sum-game. Not only must it distribute power away from its centre, but also the power it keeps must serve to empower its citizens. The same question obtains for the Left’s bias in favour of the necessary empowerment of the weak and disadvantaged – the others in our midst – of those who otherwise suffer from trends like globalisation that advantage majorities. If a majority of French citizens believes Europe should do more to protect them against globalisation, and while other Europeans would need to challenge the French to revisit their obsession with harmonisation and central bureaucracy, the EU must also reflect their particular version of solidarity and commonness. And what about citizens from small and bigger states? No European country is very big in today’s world. Can they reach a consensus on the extent to which EU institutions ought to reflect or mitigate power imbalances on the continent? Within these different domains, the limits of reasonable disagreement have yet to be negotiated.

For whom? The scale of the EU project This brings us to a second strand in defining an overlapping European consensus, namely, the scale of the European project. Should the EU move its horizon from the regional to the global? If it is above all, again and always, about peace and prosperity, do we need to redefine the scale of European ambitions to pursue and achieve these lofty goals? Here again Europeans must constantly pause to consider each other’s tradition of ‘presence in the world’, their respective colonial history or lack thereof, and their respective comfort with playing on the global scene or yearning to cultivate their own garden. Polls seem to indicate an across-the-board move in public opinion towards global responsibility – from the pursuit of peace within to peace without and from global economic efficiency to economic justice. But again, are the paradigms in our heads those of global superpower, global citizen and

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Samaritans or those of a Kantian island which can remain passive if joyful in the face of attempts to emulate it around the world? Citizens depending on their national culture may feel more or less comfortable and indeed credible in selling Europe as a so-called moral or transformative power. They may have different understanding of shared leadership or different degrees of comfort with the gap between what we do inside and outside and what we preach outside. And, if atonement for our European past is our greatest moral acquis, citizens might disagree on which past and on whose terms? Between the non-colonial ethos of Scandinavians, the neo-colonial temptations of many in France and Britain and the post-colonial ambitions of the Brussels institutions, one can well imagine that a ‘consensus through confrontation’ may require real confrontations and reality checks with the world outside Europe.

To where? Defining Europe’s ends A third major debate among Europeans today is about the ends of Europe, that is to say about the relations between its borders and its goals, its nature and its deeds, and its (temporary!) geographic and historical teleologies. In this respect, what does minimal agreement correspond to, and what might reasonable disagreement be? Can there indeed be an ‘overlap’ between such black and white visions of Europe corresponding to its mythical geographical core on one hand versus a euro-sphere extending from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea on the other? It has been said for a long time, and indeed continues to be said, that the fundamental disagreement in Europe opposes those who favour a deepening to those who favour widening. This disagreement is supposed to oppose partisans of a so-called political or federal Europe (supported by the French and Mediterranean countries) to those in favour of a so-called commercial Europe (supported by the British, the Danes and the Irish). The disagreement can be qualified as reasonable to the extent that it is one of emphasis while the basic compatibility between widening and deepening is recognised – deepening of the EU usually precedes enlargement, the former being called for as a result of the latter. But such a deeper tension is between those who believe that there is a fundamental conflict between the two and those who do not. Reasonable disagreement can be envisaged as long as confrontation in the search for minimal consensus leads a majority of citizens in each member state to recognise a shared interest in evaluating each teleology according to its own merit.

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In this respect, the case of Turkey is emblematic. In order to be simply able to reach a European consensus which makes room for reasonable disagreement, while providing Turkish citizens with a clear perspective for the future, it will above all be necessary by means of debate to break the debilitating dichotomy between these two visions of Europe. Is it reasonable to pit Europe-with-Turkey as a commercial project bent on stabilising its neighbours’ democracies against Europe-without-Turkey as a political project faithful to its own destiny as a political project? We believe not. This does not make the issue of membership less controversial. It is only after having overcome this dichotomy that we will be able to agree on persistent disagreements on the status, rights and transition periods which should characterise relations between Europe and Turkey in the decades to come and indeed the range of privileged partnerships the EU is in the process of building with its neighbourhood.

Conclusion The elites responsible for ‘telling the story of Europe’ have above all borrowed from law and politics to do this with a minimum of success, as seen in Article 2 of the Constitutional Treaty and the revised version of Article 1 of the Treaty on European Union in the Treaty of Lisbon detailing Europe’s ‘values’, which are, in reality, norms and principles pertaining to a political organisation.6 But today, we need to do better than hoping to rally some Euro-sceptics. Ours is a call for a real European debate on what it is we can and cannot disagree about reasonably. Everyone can agree that the many variants of the European story are evolving, that it would be illusionary to seek to ground it in valeurs éternelles. There is no European narrative to speak of on a continent which ought to define itself through the Enlightenment ethos of self-doubt and reflexivity. Why not assume then this fact of reasonable pluralism in visions of Europe? And why not build on the ‘fertility of antagonism’ (Lacroix 2006: 23) by inviting citizens to tell their unavoidably plural stories of the EU publicly? Far from being a hindrance to the elaboration of a minimal transnational agreement, the public expression of reasonable disagreements about what the EU is, or should be, can serve as an incentive to nourish and revitalise a European public arena still in its infancy. We can wager that public controversy involving a diversity of European narratives can act as a motivating force for the development of a European citizenship. Ours is a time when citizens increasingly feel that their divergent visions of Europe are not sufficiently taken into

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account and are even hidden under the bushel of intergovernmental negotiations. If we want the involvement of citizens in the ever-evolving political building of Europe to be more than just a simple petition of principles, why not try, in this way, to take European diversity seriously?

Notes ∗

An earlier version of this chapter was published as Nicolaïdis and Pélabay (2007). We would like to thank Chantal Barry for her input.

1. Rawls himself envisages an even more minimal ‘social union of social unions’ (Rawls 1993: 320). 2. The following shows how Taylor illustrates deep diversity (Taylor, 1993: 183): Someone of, say, Italian extraction in Toronto or Ukrainian extraction in Edmonton might indeed feel Canadian as a bearer of individual rights in a multicultural mosaic. His or her belonging would not “pass through” some other community, although the ethnic identity might be important to him or her in various ways. But this person might nevertheless accept that a Québécois, a Cree or a Déné might belong in a very different way, that these persons were Canadian through being members of their national communities. Reciprocally, the Québécois, Cree, or Déné would accept the perfect legitimacy of the ‘mosaic’ identity. 3. The ‘second Rawls’ conceives the liberal democratic principles as part of an American ‘heritage’ that has to be ‘articulated’. Many commentators have interpreted this contextualist shift as his moving closer to ‘communitarianism’. 4. For a discussion of the major differences between liberal and republican concepts of public reason, see Habermas and Rawls (1997). 5. In this sense, Rawls affirms that ‘a well-ordered society is neither a community nor, more generally, an association’ (Rawls 1993: 40). 6. The wording of the two articles is identical: ‘The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.’

11 The EU and its Member States: From Bottom Up to Top Down Vivien A. Schmidt

The history of scholarship on the European Union (EU), much as the history of the EU itself, is one in which the focus of attention has moved from European integration, which I define here as the bottom-up influence of the member states on the EU, to Europeanization, understood as the top-down influence of the EU on its member states, along with a feedback loop into the bottom-up process of European integration. Although there are a great many definitions of Europeanization (Featherstone and Radaelli 2003) – ranging from ones that separate out European-level decision-making and institution-building from its domestic impact (Ladrech 1994; Kohler-Koch 1997; Börzel and Risse 2000; Héritier et al. 2001; Schmidt 2002a; Radaelli 2003), as does this one, to ones that put the two together (Rometsch and Wessels 1996; Cowles et al. 2001) or that concentrate primarily on the European level (Caporaso and Jupille 1999) – the formulation used here is most suited for the analysis of EU scholarship. This move in scholarship from the study of European integration to Europeanization is natural, since the EU in its early days was all about building cooperation and creating a European space in which issues which could not be adequately solved individually at the national level could be resolved jointly at the supranational level. But as the EU has grown in size and scope, it has also grown in impact, in particular since the 1990s with the exponential growth in the number of members – from 12 to 15 to 25, now 27, and how many more? – and in EU competencies with the completion of the Single Market and the Single Currency, not to mention the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) in social and employment policy, the move of immigration into the first pillar, the European Neighbourhood Policy, and much more. It, therefore, should be no 194

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wonder that scholarly interest has shifted from an exclusive focus on the process of constructing a supranational politico-economic community to one that also considers how the very institutional presence of the EU, together with the EU-generated policies which member states must implement, have altered national policies and patterns of governance and, thereby, challenged national ideas about sovereignty, identity, and democracy. Scholarly theorizing about the EU and its member states has tended to divide into four main questions: First, how did the member states manage to build cooperation through the process of European integration? Second, how can (or should) one characterize the resulting supranational institutions of the EU and their relationship to the member states? Third, how have the EU’s supranational institutions themselves affected member states’ institutions through the process of Europeanization? Fourth, how did (and do) the policies produced by the EU alter member states’ policies through that self-same process of Europeanization? While the first and second questions address the interrelationship of the EU and its member states at the EU level, the third and fourth questions address that interrelationship at the national level. The theoretical debates surrounding the first question, related to the process of European integration, largely divide over the drivers of the process – whether these are primarily the member states through ‘intergovernmental’ cooperation or EU institutional actors through ‘neofunctional spillover’, supranational decision-making, or multi-level governance. This debate reached its limits by the late 1990s. Scholars focused on the EU level have largely moved on to the second question, related to the EU’s institutional design, and ask themselves what it is and where it is going rather than how it is moving forward. The debates surrounding this second question divide over how to characterize the EU and whether the EU’s specific architecture produces a ‘democratic deficit’. This continues to be a vibrant topic of discussion, in particular insofar as it links up with very real concerns about the future of the EU in the light of enlargement fatigue and constitutional blues. While large numbers of EU scholars have remained focused on the EU level, a growing number of EU scholars have shifted their attention from the process of European integration to that of Europeanization, joined by country experts who recognize that they can no longer study any European country without taking account of the EU. Although the impact of the EU on member state polities and policies is necessarily less concerned with headline-grabbing EU events, it is at the very core of the problems faced by the member states with regard to the EU

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today. The debates surrounding the third question, related to the Europeanization of national polities, have explored the impact of the EU on national institutional structures, policy-making processes and representative politics. The debates surrounding the fourth question, related to the Europeanization of national policies, have sought to define Europeanization as a process and to identify the factors that influence policy outcomes. In what follows, I consider each of the four questions about the relationship between the EU and its member states in turn, beginning with the drivers of European integration, following with the design of the EU, moving on to the Europeanization of national polities, and ending with the Europeanization of national policies.

The drivers of European integration The biggest question for the visionary builders of the EU, especially in the early days, was how to ensure that it moved forward. For the member states, the question was how much forward movement to allow. For scholars, the question was how to explain that there was any movement at all. So who or what are the drivers of European integration? Scholarly answers have not only been divided substantively – with one side privileging the role of the member states through some form of intergovernmentalism, the other highlighting the role of EU actors alone, or with other actors, through some form of neo-functionalism – but also methodologically, with the intergovernmentalists citing rationalist motives linked to member states’ national and/or economic interest and the neo-functionalists emphasizing historical institutional developments linked to European integration. The ‘founding fathers’, men like Paul-Henri Spaak, Altiero Spinelli or Jean Monnet, knowing that their federal visions threatened national leaders’ attachment to the integrity of the nation states, chose not to specify what they were building but to name instead the process of building itself. This they identified as the ‘functionalist’ process of ‘spillover’ from one functional policy area to the next in the European Steel and Coal Community (ECSC) and, later, the ‘Community Method’ for the European Economic Community (EEC). Scholars picked up on this, beginning with Haas (1958) followed by Lindberg (1963) and Schmitter (1970), and theorized about the ‘neo-functionalist’ process of regional integration. But when the ‘empty chair crisis’ occurred in 1966, precipitated by France, it put a damper for a time not only

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on the neo-functionalist process but also on neo-functionalist scholarly theories; the most prominent neo-functionalist (Haas) even threw in the towel as a result. Events had seemingly proven the validity of the intergovernmentalist scholars’ rationalist view of nation state power and the primacy of national interests which was put forth by an international relations theorist who was (perhaps not surprisingly) also a student of France, Hoffmann (1966). Subsequently, the eurosclerosis of the 1970s and early 1980s ensured that neither EU building nor EU theorizing went very far. Only in the late 1970s, with the European Monetary System, and then in the mid1980s, with the launch of the Single Market, did Europe begin to move forward again. Innovative scholarship on the drivers of European integration came even later, however, mainly beginning in the 1990s. And again, there was a split in views. On one side have been the ‘liberal intergovernmentalist’ successors to the intergovernmentalists, such as Moravcsik (1993) who focuses primarily on the negotiation of the treaties and maintains that member states continue to predominate. But now the member states are seen to express the concerns of national interest groups rather than just national interests. And they are assumed to be motivated primarily by economic interests – epitomized by Moravcsik’s (1998) argument that de Gaulle’s agreement to participate in the EEC was due to agricultural side-payments – rather than any wider interpretation of national interests encompassing, say, ideas about national grandeur, concerns about national defence, and hopes for greater power through regional integration, which is Parsons’ (2003) argument. To explain how the member states drive the integration process, moreover, the liberal intergovernmentalists’ answer has been to turn to principal-agent theory, arguing that the member states do so as the principals for whom the other EU institutional actors are the delegated agents. The problem with this approach is that there are too many principals, as well as too many agents, with those technically definable as agents often acting as principals and vice-versa (Marks and Hooghe 2001; Schmidt 2006a: 53–54). Similarly, although the ECJ and the national courts can certainly be seen as the ‘agents’ of the member states, they are less and less effectively controlled by these ‘principals’ from whom they have gained increasing autonomy (Stone Sweet 2000). When all is said and done, while the principal-agent theory is useful for descriptive purposes – to illustrate the difficulties of sorting out who delegates to whom on what, with which kinds of tools and sanctions (Pollack 1997) – it cannot answer such questions as who is in the driver’s

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seat, why principals might willingly give up control (Marks and Hooghe 2001: 71–77), or what decision-making traps follow from the wide range of principals (Scharpf 1998, 2000). On the other side of the divide have been the ‘supranationalist’ successors to the neo-functionalists like Sandholtz (1996; also Stone Sweet and Sandholtz 1997). Supranationalists are more concerned with everyday policy-making than with the treaties and argue that the institutions and actors of the EU have been increasingly in charge. As a result, instead of explaining the process of integration in terms of the rationalist, interest-based motives of member states or using rational choice institutionalist methods like principal-agent theory, the supranationalists tend to explain integration in terms of the institutional developments of the EU using historical institutionalist methods. They therefore centre their attention on the actual institutions, or ‘macro-structures’, in which political action occurs and emphasize the ‘path dependencies’ that serve to lock in the increasing power of EU institutional actors (Pierson 1996). These supranationalist critics of intergovernmentalism were soon joined by theorists of ‘multi-level governance’ such as Marks and Hooghe (2001; see also Marks 1993; Marks et al. l996), who argued that decision-making was even more complex as EU institutions gave access to a wide range of state and societal actors from EU, national, and subnational – read regional – levels. Seeing the EU as a system of ‘multi-level governance’ represents a useful corrective to intergovernmentalist theories focused exclusively on member states’ powers or supranationalist and neo-functionalist ones which privilege EU institutions. But it is no substitute for them. It is much more of a framework within which to identify the actors involved in the EU system than a theory about the drivers of change, especially since the expected rise in regional power did not materialize. Not only have the regions’ powers remained relatively modest but they also differ across member states, as well as within them (Börzel 2002; Keating 1998; Hooghe 1996). Moreover, the vast number of studies of interest groups show that the Commission retains the upper hand (Greenwood 2003), since it strongly monitors interest groups’ access in a form of ‘elite pluralism’ (Coen 1997), while EU-level associations are often split off from the national groups they allegedly represent, as in immigration policy (Guiraudon 2001). Thus, whereas the intergovernmentalists over-determine the drivers of European integration, by specifying only the member states, the neofunctionalists of various stripes under-determine them. By positing such

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a wide range of actors, the neo-functionalists’ problem is that it becomes difficult to identify any specific drivers at all. Importantly, these debates about the drivers of integration have lost their lustre and seem increasingly to look like empty academic exercises. If one considers the EU’s history, it becomes quite clear that in the big initiatives the member states have to take a leadership role if innovative change is to occur, although EU institutional actors generally play a strong behind-the-scenes role; but in everyday policy-making, state and societal actors of all levels and types are constantly involved, and it is impossible to pinpoint any one set of actors as the principal ones, whether from the member states or the EU. Most importantly today, however, exercising leadership has become so complex in the EU of 27 that debating who is the driver of EU integration seems pointless. This is why scholarly attention naturally, and necessarily, shifted from the drivers of the EU to its design.

The design of the European Union What is the EU? And how does this affect European democracy? These questions of institutional design have moved to the forefront of scholarly discussion as the EU has matured into a major world player and a regional governance body with jurisdiction over an increasingly wide range of issues and areas, including a single currency, a single market, a single voice in international trade negotiations, a single competition authority, policies on environmental protection, worker safety and health, a common foreign and security policy, and even the beginnings of a common defence policy. But for all this, the EU bears little resemblance to a nation state. Much to the contrary, it has long been called sui generis, identified as an ‘unidentified political object’ according to Jacques Delors (cited in Schmitter 1996: 1), seen as ‘less than a federation, more than a regime’ for Wallace (1983), or maybe even ‘the first truly postmodern political form’ for Ruggie (1993: 139–140). Moreover, when seeking to define its institutional structures, it has been described as most akin to a federal system (Scharpf 1988; Sbragia 1993), having ‘quasi-federal’ institutional structures (Schmidt 1999a, 2006a: Chapter 2), and called a ‘federal union’ (Pinder 1994) or ‘co-operative federalism’ (Wessels l990). But although its development from confederal to federal system greatly resembles that of the United States (Sbragia 1993; Fabbrini 2004), its institutional set-up is closer to that of Germany, as Scharpf (1988) has argued, not only because of its interlocking federal institutions but also

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because of its ‘joint-decision trap’. With regard to its policy-making processes, by contrast, when it has not been described as indefinable, as a ‘garbage can model’ (Cohen et al. 1972), it has been compared to the pluralism of the United States and seen as a model of ‘transnational pluralism’ (Streeck and Schmitter 1991) or as a system of ‘semi-pluralist’ policy-making (Schmidt 1999b, 2006a: Chapter 3). Most recently, new ways of conceiving of the EU have emerged. The EU has been portrayed as a ‘neo-medieval empire’ (Zielonka 2006), which nicely evokes the indeterminateness of the EU’s borders but does not do justice to its formalized internal governance system. It has been projected as a future republic (Collignon 2004) or a future superstate (Morgan 2005), both of which are admirable pleas for possible futures but which do not reflect the present. And it has been identified as, in my own terms, a ‘regional state’ characterized by shared sovereignty, variable boundaries, composite identity, highly compound governance, and fragmented democracy, in which the creative tension between the Union and its member states ensures both ever-increasing regional integration and ever-continuing national differentiation (Schmidt 2006a: Chapter 1). But whatever it is called, there is general agreement on the EU’s distinguishing characteristics, which make it very different from any nation state. Nation states are, first of all, generally defined by their indivisible sovereignty. By contrast, the EU has a shared sovereignty in which member states ‘pooled’ their sovereignty in the process of European integration, as Keohane and Hoffman (1991) put it, by agreeing by treaty to share certain responsibilities that in the past were the purview of individual nations alone. Here, as authority has drifted upward in the process of European integration, as the countries making up the EU have moved from ‘sovereign nations’ to ‘member states’ (Sbragia 1994: 70), the EU itself has been transformed from a federation of sovereign nations to a new kind of regional sovereignty. Such sovereignty depends not only upon the EU’s recognition from the outside, from other sovereign nation states, but also upon its acceptance on the inside, by its member states, policy area by policy area. Nation states, secondly, have notionally fixed boundaries. The EU, by contrast, has variable boundaries, both in terms of territory and policy. Not only do we not know where the EU’s finalité will be – will it stop at the Balkans, the Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey? – but the EU’s policies other than those related to the Single Market have highly variable geometry, whether Schengen borders, ESDP, or the eurozone. Even more significantly for the nation state integrity of the EU’s member states,

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as Bartolini (2005) has argued, European integration has led to a ‘process of nation state boundary transcendence, resulting in a process of de-differentiation of European polities’ after a history of five centuries of progressive differentiation into nation states. This also applies to the very boundaries of the welfare state, as Ferrera (2005) has shown, despite the clear lack of EU jurisdiction in this area. Third, nation states tend to have coherent identities, whereas that of the EU is, at best, composite. Eurobarometer polls have shown time and again that European citizens maintain a stronger identification and sense of belonging within the member states than with the EU, even though close to a majority have a composite European identity, with the European second to the national. The EU lacks the nation state’s ‘thick identity’ in terms of a shared sense of collective identity and loyalty or ‘the kind of homogeneity of the organic national-cultural conditions on which peoplehood depends’ (Weiler 1995). But although the EU’s being may be quite weak, its doing is strong, as Howorth (2000a) has noted, given how much member states have engaged in building the EU through policy-making in an ever-increasing number of domains. Similarly, Habermas (1996: 495) has argued that a political community need not be based primarily on ethno-cultural identity but rather on ‘the practices of citizens who exercise their rights to participation and communication’. The major problem for the EU’s identity, however, is not so much its being or its doing as its saying, because the EU depends upon the member states to speak for it. This they have neither done very well, given widespread blame-shifting and credit-taking on policy issues, nor very much, given silence on the ‘polity’ issues (Schmidt 2004, 2006a). This said, a European public sphere is nonetheless developing, albeit very slowly (Koopmans 2004), as European publics increasingly concern themselves with issues in other member states, making for overlapping European public spheres rather than a single one (Risse 2003b). Fourth, nation states, have established governments. By contrast, the EU has ‘governance’ (Kohler-Koch 1996; Jachtenfuchs 2001). This means governing without an established government, through multiple authorities in highly complex sets of interrelations with state as well as societal actors – which also makes member state governments part of the EU governance process in EU-related policy areas This diffusion of the EU’s governing activities among multiple state authorities and societal actors makes for a highly compound governance system (Schmidt 2004, 2006a; Fabbrini 2004). This is because the EU is not only multilevel (Marks and Hooghe 2001), since it includes EU, national, and regional levels, it is also ‘multi-centred’ (Nicolaïdis 2001), as a result of

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the geographical dispersion of its governing activities, and it is ‘multiform’ (Schmidt 2001). This latter characteristic results from the differing institutional designs of its member states, which sit along a continuum from more ‘simple’ polities where governing activity tends to be channelled through a single authority via a unitary state design, statist policy-making processes, and majoritarian representation systems, as in France or the United Kingdom, to more ‘compound’ polities, where governing activity is more dispersed across multiple authorities as a result of federal or regionalized states, corporatist policy-making processes, and/or proportional representation systems, as in Germany and Italy (Schmidt 2005, 2006a). Finally, democratic nation states have cohesive democracies. Democracy in the EU, by contrast, is fragmented. Unlike nation states’ mature democracies, which have a full range of democratic legitimizing mechanisms – including political participation by the people, citizen representation of the people, effective government for the people, and, adding a preposition to Abraham Lincoln’s famous dictum, interest consultation with the people – the EU has a fragmented democracy in which legitimacy is split between governing effectiveness for the people and interest consultation with the people at the EU level and political participation by the people and citizen representation of the people at the national level (Schmidt 2004, 2006a). Although the European Parliament (EP) does provide for direct citizen representation, it does not make the grade as governance by and of the people, given the ‘secondorder’ nature of its elections, in which citizens’ voting has long focused more on national than on European issues (Reif and Schmitt 1980; van der Eijk and Franklin 1996) and the fact that it does not elect an executive. For Scharpf (1999), the weakness of representative politics in the EU is key to understanding its democratic deficit, in which ‘output democracy’ through effective governance cannot make up for the lack of ‘input democracy’ through political participation. Only a few scholars see little problem with this fragmentation, including Majone (1998), who defends the EU as providing ‘output democracy’ through effective regulatory governance, and Moravcsik (2002), who sees it as no worse than national democracies, given its checks and balances and delegated authorities. But although the EU may be no worse than national democracies with regard to the structural bases for democracy, given its institutional balancing of powers, or even the procedural bases, given its openness to interest consultation, the EU is a lot worse than national democracies when it comes to the representative bases for democracy. This is

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because the EU lacks the direct connection with the electorate which makes it possible for citizens to express their views about national policies directly, through voting, and which forces national elected political leaders to respond or be voted out of office. It is little wonder that the debates preceding the Constitutional Treaty referenda in France and in the Netherlands in 2005 focused on EU policies and their national impact, rather than on the question at hand regarding EU institutional reform, since this was one of the few times that these electorates had had a chance to express their views on EU policies. Many scholars see the main solution to the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ in the development of EU level institutions that are more participatory and representative (Magnette 2003; Hix 2005). But this is not easy. Establishing a European government is currently out of the question given the lack of a collective will and identity or a common political space (Weiler 1995; Habermas 1996; Greven 2000; Scharpf 2000). Institutional design also makes for difficulties in responding to the political input demands of the people. For example, the EU decision-making system makes ‘negative integration’ through market-making easy, whereas it makes any market-correcting through ‘positive integration’ extremely difficult, since this often requires agreement by all the member states (Scharpf 1999). But introducing more politics into the EU as a remedy to the democratic deficit is problematic. This is not only because it might undermine what the EU does well, i.e., governing for and with the people. It is also because there is very little real politics in the EU, at least as it is understood at the national level. Rather than having the kind of political competition, partisanship, and party politics typical of the national political arena, the EU has more interest-based politics – whether the national interest politics of the Council, the public interest politics of the EP, or the organized interest politics of the Commission. This results in what I call policy without politics at the EU level, since the EU carries on making policies without much ‘politics’. And this, in turn, leads to politics without policy at the national level, where ‘politics’ continues but without much sway over EU policies (Schmidt 2006a: Chapters 1 and 4). But more on the implications of this below.

The Europeanization of national polities Given the institutional design of the EU and its implications for democracy in Europe generally, the next question scholars have naturally asked

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themselves is: what is the EU’s impact on national polities, i.e. what effect has the EU’s highly compound governance system, with institutional structures most akin to a federal system, policy-making processes closest to the United States’ pluralist system, and representative politics like no national system at all, had on its member states? The answers have tended to be quite particularistic, as scholars have examined different aspects of Europeanization in terms of the top-down effects of the EU on national institutional structures, policy-making processes, and representative politics. EU impact on national institutional structures Among the few generalizations produced about the EU’s impact, one of the most cited has been the argument that the EU strengthens the state. While Milward (1992) showed that the EU served to rescue the nation state in the post-war years, by reinforcing state capacity to enact necessary reforms, Moravcsik (1994) made a more universalistic argument, maintaining that the EU strengthened the state against domestic interests. The latter argument has been more problematic because of its very generality. Although it is intuitively appealing, and fits with liberal intergovernmentalist assumptions about continued nation state power in the EU, the reality is too complex to fit the generalization. Even if states may appear to be strengthened in EU treaty negotiations with regard to domestic societal interests, societal actors have increasingly made their voices heard during the more everyday policy-making process through lobbying, as well as in referenda. Moreover, the basic strength of the state – read executive autonomy – is generally diminished compared to the past, when executives made decisions solely within the national context, although it is also true that the state has gained in capacity from the exercise of shared authority at the EU level. The loss of autonomy is comparatively higher in those states where executive autonomy has traditionally been greater – in unitary states like the United Kingdom or France – than in those where it has traditionally been low – in federal states like Germany (Schmidt 1999a, 2006a). The generalization does hold, however, in a few states, such as regionalized Italy or unitary Greece, because the state gains in capacity what it loses in autonomy (Featherstone 1998). National executives have not only lost autonomy in consequence of the shift of decision-making upwards to the EU. But they have also lost some control as a result of the shift of decision-making power downwards to sub-national authorities – the result of internal processes

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of devolution as well as of EU-related multi-level governance – and outwards to independent regulatory agencies. The move to regulatory agencies in particular, whether EU-related or the result of internal dynamics, has produced a weakening of the state-qua-central actor although at the same time it could be seen as a strengthening of public action and effective governance for the people. Moreover, scholars have shown that such agencies increasingly constitute a Europe-wide force, independent of national governments, as a result of the EU’s creation of formalized networks of national regulatory authorities, which provide regulators not only with new ideas through the creation of ‘epistemic communities’ but also a set of allies for support against national governments and the businesses they regulate (Coen and Héritier 2005; Coen and Thatcher 2005b). National parliaments are, in fact, the only national institutional actors which have clearly lost power vis-à-vis the executive, given that the executive makes decisions in the Council to which national legislatures have little access. But much more importantly, national parliaments have lost power to the EU as a whole, since the EU has taken over powers of initiative and approval that had been the domain of national legislatures (Maurer 2001; Maurer and Wessels 2001). Again, however, the loss of parliamentary power to the benefit of the executive has been highly differentiated, depending upon the traditional powers, as well as the responses of national legislatures (Norton 1996; Maurer and Wessels 2001). This said, national parliaments still have a role to play – new ones as ‘regulators of society’ (Duina and Oliver 2004) and reinforced ones with regard to oversight – as part of a process of ‘reparliamentarization’ (Raunio and Hix 2001). The European Court of Justice represents a further source of encroachment on the powers and prerogatives not only of national executives and legislatures but also of the judiciaries. However, at the same time that the ECJ has served to subordinate national judicial authorities to itself, it has increased their independence from national executives as well as from one another, with lower courts emancipated from their hierarchical superiors through their recourse to the ECJ (Burley and Mattli l993; Weiler l994). It is national courts, in fact, that do the ECJ’s work, by acting as ‘agents of the Community order’ to ensure conformity with EC law (Stone Sweet 1998: 163–164; 2004: 69). The national courts do this not only by following the ECJ’s rulings but also by seeking preliminary rulings from the ECJ, thus establishing a unitary system of judicial review Weiler 1991: 243).

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EU impact on national policy-making processes The EU has not only had an impact on member states’ national institutional structures, by disrupting the traditional balance of power among national institutional actors, it has also had an impact on national policy-making processes by altering both the traditional ways in which state actors formulate and implement policy and the routes by which societal actors gain access to, and influence in, policy-making. In laying its semi-pluralist pattern of policy-making on top of those of its member states, the EU has effectively ‘pluralized’ its member states’ policy-formulation processes by opening up interest access and influence. It has also ‘juridified’ their implementation processes with its turn to regulatory enforcement. But again, it has had a differential impact on the member states. For member states with statist policy-making processes, the EU has introduced interests into policy-formulation processes from which they have been formerly excluded as illegitimate, while it has excluded interests from flexible policy implementation processes in which they were formerly included, whether through derogation of the rules, as in France, or self-regulatory arrangements, as in the United Kingdom. By contrast, for member states with corporatist policy-making processes, the EU has mostly only further opened up interest access in corporatist formulation processes, while reinforcing corporatist or legalistic implementation processes (as in Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Italy) and denying clientelistic processes (in Italy and Belgium) (Schmidt 1999b, 2006a: Chapter 3). Further complicating this is that, whatever the EU’s generalized impact on member states’ ‘macro-patterns’ of policymaking, different sectors have ‘micro-patterns’ which may differ from the ‘macro’ pattern at EU or national level (Falkner 2001; Schmidt 2006b), with differing effects. The EU may have a direct effect where EU-mandated processes impose change in national policy-making processes, as in EU mandates for pluralist consultation or legalistic enforcement in environmental policy (Knill and Lenschow l998; Haverland 1999; Jordan 2002). They may have a diffuse effect where EU-related learning experiences or suggested rules lead to the diffusion of new ideas, as in lobbying or in the OMC (De la Porte and Pochet 2002; Mosher and Trubek 2003; Zeitlin and Pochet 2005). But they may instead have a ‘knock-on’ effect in cases where EU policies act as incentives for state and/or societal actors to break the policy-making rules, as for example in agricultural policy and in competition policy related to banking, electricity, and transport (Héritier et al. 1996; Eising and Jabko 2002; Grossman 2006).

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EU impact on national politics Finally, representative politics in the member states has also been affected by the EU’s policy without politics. At the EU level, national partisan politics have been marginalized, as party differences and Left-Right political contestation have been submerged by the general quest for consensus and compromise in the EU’s interest-based politics (Ladrech 2002). At the national level, as the EU has removed more and more policies from the national political arena, the resulting politics without policy has led to a number of direct, indirect, and knock-on effects (Schmidt 2006a: Chapter 4). The EU’s direct effects come from EP elections which complicate national electoral politics by acting as referenda on government performance (van der Eijk and Franklin 1996; Gabel 2001; Mair 2001), while the EU’s very existence has added another potential source of cleavage in national party politics, even if it remains for the moment a ‘sleeping giant’ (van der Eijk and Franklin 2004: 47). The indirect effects have been even more significant, as Mair has shown (2004, 2006), with the Europeanization of policy sector after policy sector serving to ‘depoliticize’ national politics by reducing political parties’ policy options and repertoire, by hollowing out party competition, and by devaluing national electoral competition. Such Europeanization also serves to impoverish national political debate, because once these Europeanized policy sectors are taken off the national political agenda, they are no longer the focus of national leaders’ communicative discourse (Schmidt 2006a: Chapters 1 and 4). And all of this in turn may have knock-on effects on national citizens, who may become demobilized on the one hand, demoralized by their lack of direct input into the decisions that affect them, or radicalized on the other, and pushed to vote for the political extremes in protest. Again, moreover, Europeanization may have a differential effect on national representative politics, with greater potential disaffection on the part of the electorates of majoritarian systems, which have come to expect more clearly politically demarcated policies and positions, than the electorates of proportional systems, which are used to more ambiguous policies and positions based on compromise (Schmidt 2006a: Chapter 4). Generalizations about the EU’s effects Given this great mix of general and differentiated effects, the main question we are left with is: Are there any generalizations to be made that can explain without over-generalizing or over-simplifying? Wessels (1997,

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2005) has talked about the ongoing process of ‘fusion’ of the EU and national levels in which EU and national institutional practices are gradually melding together. But this is more descriptive of what is happening than an explanation of how or why. I have offered an intermediate kind of generalization, by arguing that the institutional logic of the EU, as a highly compound polity, makes for greater problems of institutional ‘fit’ for simple polities like the United Kingdom and France, by diffusing the traditional concentration of governing activity in the executive of unitary states with statist policy-making and majoritarian politics, than for compound polities like Germany and Italy, where governing activity has been traditionally already diffused among the multiple authorities of federal or regionalized states with corporatist policy-making and/or proportional representation systems (Schmidt 2005, 2006a). But while the top-down impact of Europeanization may have negative consequences for simple polities and positive ones for compound polities, the opposite is often the case in the bottom-up process of European integration where institutional misfit ensures that simple polities are better able to project their preferences on the EU than more compound polities (Schmidt 2006a: 57–59). As Kassim et al. (2000, 2001) have detailed, UK and French executives are much better able to project their preferences than the German and Italian executives, although it is important to note that a lack of administrative capacity is another important factor not only for Italy but also for a more simple polity like Greece. This said, in practice, other factors beyond institutional design, such as politics, political will, and administrative capacity play an important role, as Falkner et al. (2005) show in their study of the three ‘worlds’ of compliance in social policy. Institutional design is not destiny, however. We cannot explain member states’ responses to Europeanization solely in terms of institutions. Even if institutional logics help constitute ideas about the organizing principles of democracy, other political, social, and economic values may be in play, let alone political, social, or economic interests. Thus, even though the EU’s very presence may clash with French ideas about the ‘one and indivisible’ Republican state, French political values emphasizing the country’s grandeur and the universal rights of man together with its political interests of leading in Europe led it to accept increasing European integration. Moreover, even though the EU clashed not only with the United Kingdom’s institutional ideas of ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ but also with its political values emphasizing the historical rights of the British, economic interest won out

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(Schmidt 2006a: Chapter 5). This speaks to the importance of adding discursive institutionalist explanations in terms of ideas and discourse, as well as rational choice institutionalist explanations in terms of interests to the more purely historical institutionalist explanations of institutional logics and path dependence, which predominate in work on the Europeanization of national polities.

The Europeanization of national policies We are left with the question of the impact of the EU on national policies. This is an immense field in itself, so I will focus here only on the major theoretical question, which is how to generalize at all. The theory in this area actually begins with the definition of what we mean by Europeanization, which throughout this essay I have differentiated from European integration as a top-down versus a bottom-up process. But although this definition has become by now the generally accepted one (Börzel and Risse 2006), this has come only at the end of a long debate in which, as noted earlier, while some have always defined Europeanization as a top-down process, others have defined it as a bottom-up process, and yet others as both top-down and bottom-up. To attempt to generalize about the Europeanization of national policies is even more complicated than to do so about the Europeanization of polities. Although one of the key factors highlighted in the Europeanization literature has been the question of ‘fit’ with policy legacies, whether discussed as ‘misfit’ Börzel 1999; Börzel and Risse 2000), ‘mismatch’ (Héritier et al. 1996), or ‘goodness of fit’ (Cowles et al. 2001), this can only be a starting point for study. First of all, it is important to take note of the kinds of decision rules which frame the EU policy – whether highly specified rules that impose certain policies, as in the Maastricht criteria in the run-up to stage III of economic and monetary union; less specified rules that allow leeway in the transposition of EU policies, as in the deregulation of the telecommunications or electricity sectors; suggested rules such as in the OMC; or no rules at all, as when DG Competition demands only opening to competition. But there are a whole range of other nationally specific factors that may affect national responses. While fit or misfit with policy legacies may set the stage, policy preferences dictate whether misfit is seen as a problem or an opportunity, political institutional capacity affects whether state and societal actors can respond effectively, and discourse enhances the capacity to respond by altering perceptions of legacies and by influencing preferences (Schmidt 2002a: Chapter 2; 2002b). As a result, while

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in some sectors, the interaction effects of the EU and national policies may be significant, entailing the transformation of national practices, in others the EU may have only a minor impact, with the absorption by national practices of any EU-related changes, and in yet others the EU may have almost no impact at all, as national practices show inertia with regard to the EU (Héritier et al. 1996, 2001; Schmidt 2002b).

Conclusion EU scholarship has developed in breadth and depth over the years in tandem with the widening and deepening of the EU. From an early focus on the bottom-up process of European integration by EU member states, scholars have increasingly turned to questions about the nature of EU level governance and to the impact of Europeanization on member state polities, politics, and policies. Moreover, as EU scholarship has moved from a primary focus on international relations, where the EU is considered an international organization of nation states, to a more integrated approach including comparative politics, with the EU considered as a supranational organization of increasingly interdependent member states, it offers lessons for both international relations and comparative politics. But so far, its impact on the wider discipline in either field has been surprisingly small although this is beginning to change. In international relations, the EU, so long treated as unique and/or as a supranational or intergovernmental body little different from other international organizations, has not only begun to be taken seriously as a new form of supranational regional organization, it has also fuelled cross-regional comparisons as the most advanced form of regional integration (Katzenstein 2005; Duina 2007). ‘Lesson-drawing’ has been occurring not only in theory, as scholars portray the EU as a model for regional development, as the first of many developing regional governance entities, from Mercosur to APEC to NAFTA or the African Union. It is also occurring in practice, as policymakers in those regional associations seek advice, as well as aid from the EU in deepening their intra-regional ties. Moreover, the EU’s very presence in the world, as a ‘regional state’ that is ‘doing international relations differently’ (Howorth 2007, and this volume), represents a challenge to traditional realist theorizing. However this kind of explicit dialogue between EU studies and international relations theory or the ‘new regionalism’ literature is very new. For too long, EU scholars have been parochial, content to see the EU as sui generis and their studies as having little to do with international relations. They have thereby missed the opportunity to

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demonstrate to their international relations colleagues not only how their theories about world politics could be enriched by the example of the EU but also how their empirical descriptions of world politics could gain from deeper knowledge of domestic politics and from the additional use of the methods of comparative politics to link the domestic arena to the global (Warleigh 2006). But while scholars of international relations have much to gain from comparative politics, scholars of comparative politics similarly have much to gain from international relations. Most importantly now no scholar of any individual country can do it justice without considering the EU’s impact, while no study of the EU can do without considering the impact of member states on the EU (as the above discussion of the Europeanization of national polities and policies attests). Our distinction between European integration and Europeanization, while useful as a way of dividing up the field of study analytically, as well as methodologically, in no way suggests that either is independent of the other. Much the contrary, since one cannot fully understand the top-down impact of the EU’s policies on member state policies without also tracing the member states’ bottom-up policy-making influence. Moreover, one cannot fully appreciate the problems of democracy at the EU level without also considering how EU governance impinges on member state democracies, as well as how national politics affect EU ‘democracy’. Equally importantly, however, there is no longer mainly a two-level game between the regional EU level and the national level (or three levels, if we add the sub-national level). In increasing numbers of policy areas, a three-level game between global, the EU, and the national (or four-level with the sub-national) is being played, especially since the EU has increasingly been called upon, and has been seeing itself, as a global strategic actor. As a result, even though EU studies have done more to bring together international relations and comparative politics than any other field of study, its new challenge is finding new approaches that can deal with the added complication of sorting out the interdependent processes linking global, regional, and national (plus sub-national) levels.

12 Conclusion: Reflections on the Past and Future of European Union Studies Alex Warleigh-Lack and David Phinnemore

Fifty years after the ink dried on the Treaty of Rome, in what kind of world, and what kind of academic situation, do EU studies scholars find themselves? The geo-political context is messy, uncertain and contingent: Washington is struggling with its imperial burden, China and India are rising, and Russia is adamant about reclaiming its place at the global ‘top table’. The so-called ‘war on terror’ rumbles on with, at the time of writing, potential to provoke tensions and maybe even armed conflict between the US and Iran, and Turkey and Iraq. Alongside this, the complex, multi-faceted processes of globalisation are contributing to the transnationalisation of political life (Slaughter 2004). The expansion of international law – both private and public – is creating a new ‘lex mercatoria’ which governs the operations of transnational and multi-national businesses (Shapiro and Stone Sweet 2002). Regional organisations outside the European continent have once again proliferated or revived, contributing an often-unexpected feature to the emerging global governance system and economy (Farrell et al. 2005). The EU has become a major economic power, and an increasingly important, if still limited, diplomatic and peace-keeping actor (see Howorth, this volume). It is also, however, still mired in an internal crisis of legitimacy and utterly dependent upon the domestic politics of its member states in terms of its major internal decisions (e.g. treaty change). Thus, the EU is like a mirror with two faces: stunning progress in terms of economic and political union across a wide range of policy areas, legal integration to an extent which is commonly hailed as pathbreaking, and yet also struggling to evolve a sustainable raison d’être for the post-Cold War era, and performing ever more intricate balancing acts with national sovereignty. The EU is a model of supranational 212

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governance in some views, mastering the context of a globalising world much more effectively than traditionally minded actors such as the US (Leonard 2005b). In other views, it is doomed to ineffectual dependency on other more important players, as its lack of an army limits its capacity to assert its preferences effectively in global politics (Kagan 2004). Determining the relative accuracy of these views will be a fascinating task in the coming years. The academic context is equally challenging and exciting. Although the EU has not perhaps developed entirely as its founders intended (see Christoffersen, this volume), the scholarship it has generated has certainly been pioneering. In this age of at least partial transnationalisation, it is analytically necessary to throw out the notion of a non-porous boundary between the ‘international’ and the ‘domestic’. In terms of normative theory, the challenge to this divide goes back, of course, at least as far as Kant. However, at the turn of the twenty-first century, the questioning of this domestic/international binary divide is widespread from a more empirical perspective too, with a range of scholars questioning ‘methodological territorialism’ (Scholte 2007). If the salience of the domestic/international boundary is significantly reduced in terms of how the world really works, can it still continue to shape the basic assumptions of how social scientists study their fields of enquiry quite so centrally? Is it still really possible to think of, say, national legal studies without paying more than lip service to the impact of international law? Is it still appropriate for scholars of politics to think in terms of ‘comparative politics’ and ‘international relations’ as separate branches of study, or even separate disciplines? For scholars of the EU, these questions are sources of opportunity, not only in terms of our own work but also in terms of our ability to export our concepts, methods and findings: no other group of scholars has such a creditable track record of exploring the untidy evolution of national sovereignty as those in EU studies (Warleigh 2006). Indeed, particularly via its work on governance and Europeanisation issues, EU studies already reaches beyond the EU itself to the wider European context and even, to some extent, further afield, thanks to its blurred and fuzzy boundaries (Smith 1996; Friis and Murphy 1999) and the false dichotomy of membership and non-membership. In this final chapter of the volume, we sketch an agenda for the future of EU studies. Our question here is: how can we ensure that EU studies capitalises on the opportunities before it? Our argument is that EU studies itself needs an active policy of ‘external relations’ and that, by reorienting itself as one consistently engaged with a richer mix of

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disciplines and issues than has often been the case to date, EU studies can ensure that it will have as much to be proud of in its second halfcentury as in its first. In order to achieve this aim, we first reflect on the development of EU studies in general and the opportunities that exist for EU studies scholars not simply to build on existing work but also to make a significant contribution to the broader academy. Subsequently we address the implications of the previous chapters in this volume for the future of the field, with particular regard to how work in EU studies might contribute to the development of either other fields of enquiry or its primary disciplines. Finally, we set out a vision of where we think EU studies might usefully direct itself in order to take advantage of the opportunities we discern. In doing this, we are aware that our own disciplinary background must colour our perceptions – we are both, for want of a better term, political scientists. However, we are also committed to the development of EU studies as a pluralist, multi- and inter-disciplinary field of enquiry, and intend this chapter to be seen in that context.

What does EU studies have to offer? Before setting out why we think the EU studies community is faced with important new opportunities that it would do well to seize, it is appropriate to establish what we mean by ‘EU studies’. It is also necessary to set out more fully, albeit with a broad brush, what we think EU studies has to offer other scholars, and what would be required for this process of academic import-export to be undertaken. As stated above, the concrete application of the general case we make in this section is to be found at a later stage in this chapter. EU studies could of course be defined in a variety of ways, but we propose it to mean the scholarly investigation of what is now the EU in terms of its history, identity, politics, law, economics, sociology and anthropology – although as Cini (2006) points out, not all of these disciplines have been equally active in their engagement with EU studies. EU studies is, therefore, a kind of area studies, but one which is certainly capable of producing theoretically informed, and even theory-forming, work (Bourne and Cini 2006). It is also by definition not a single discipline, i.e. it is not a discrete area of academic enquiry unified by shared understandings of the most salient questions to ask, the most important variables to explore and the most useful methods to employ (Klein 1990). Thus, in comparison with an ideal-typical discipline EU studies is somewhat unruly. However, as the meeting point of scholars from a

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range of disciplines interested in the transnational and supranational, EU studies is also a very fertile intellectual territory. This is particularly evident in the wealth of material that has been produced in EU studies, as it explores the transformation of the nation state through the processes initially understood as ‘integration’ and, later, as ‘Europeanisation’. By exploring the mechanics, implications and limits of these phenomena, EU studies scholars have generated a wealth of data and a useful conceptual toolkit to illuminate similar investigations by scholars of both other regions in the global polity and the emerging global governance system itself by adapting the tools of comparative politics for application in a transnational context – even if these tools will of course require further adaptation to be applied in their new contexts (Warleigh 2006). EU studies has also demonstrated the ability to undergo meaningful internal review and re-articulation. Empirically driven as well as theoretically informed, EU studies has responded to developments in the EU itself by recasting its core approaches and central research questions if ‘real-world’ events have taken unexpected turns – as will be clear to anyone familiar with integration theory (Rosamond 2000; Wiener and Diez 2004). This has not always been easy – paradigm adaptations rarely are – and it would be fatuous to deny that advocates of perspectives with clear links to a modified ‘realist’ international relations tradition, for example, have played a significant role in EU studies (Moravcsik 1998). Such scholars do not tend to support the claim that the EU has any fundamental impact on national sovereignty, and often find ingenious ways to recast this scepticism. Nonetheless, EU scholars’ general willingness to match the perceived ‘sui generis’ nature of their subject with an ability to innovate academically is a matter of record, as demonstrated both by the wealth of perspectives in contemporary integration theory and by the large numbers of studies of policy networks and the EU political system, which are ultimately based on the application of comparative politics tools and concepts to the evolving EU. Still more importantly, many, if not most, EU studies scholars are prepared to live with ambiguity. Although there are many labels for, and models of, the EU, the great majority of these accept the ontological diagnosis that the EU, while still potentially evolving, is a ‘partial polity’ (Wallace 2005) – and thus of course a challenge to conventional categories in both international relations and comparative politics. While we do not claim that the EU and emerging global or extra-European regional polities are the same – this would demonstrably be false – the habit of accepting and exploring the ambiguous and potentially novel is

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a helpful default position that scholars of these other polities might usefully adopt in order to generate fresh empirical evidence and conceptual insights (Kelstrup and Williams 2000). As a scholarly community, EU studies is also increasingly reflexive, with several recent works charting the development of the field (Keeler 2005) and providing incisive analyses of its achievements and shortcomings (Cini and Bourne 2006; Jørgensen et al. 2006). This signals maturity as a field of enquiry and is to be welcomed heartily, not least because it will deepen a collective sense of strengths, weaknesses and potential. Thus, and in sum, EU studies has much that it could ‘export’ – including a vast body of empirical work undertaken to explore postnational/transnational governance processes, a rich body of conceptual literature, habituation with studying a moving and only part-formed target – and at least the beginnings of an awareness of this fact.1 Nonetheless, and as is to be expected, all is not rosy in the garden. This is not because of the danger of entropy – ‘perfect situations must go wrong’. Rather, it is because EU studies is not in a perfect situation. Despite its achievements, there are several weaknesses in EU studies of which it would be wise to take cognisance: ‘exporting’ to other scholarly communities is only likely to be successful if we understand not only our comparative advantage, but also where we might usefully either reinforce strands of our own collective work or learn from those outside EU studies. A first issue for EU studies to address is its uneasy relationship with international relations scholarship. Originally developed by the neofunctionalists among international relations scholars, EU studies has at times been treated as the poor relation of that field – not least by many of the latter’s protagonists. In addition to obscuring many international relations scholars’ understanding of the value of EU studies work, this hierarchical relationship has also impacted on EU studies in two main ways. First, it has been significant by allowing the application of comparative politics tools in EU studies to be interpreted as an alternative to, rather than a corrective of, international relations approaches, even if the most systematic elaboration of the comparative politics approach never quite made that claim (Hix 1994, 1998). Second, by creating a wagon-circle mentality, it reinforced the view of many EU studies scholars that the study of other global regions was of no inherent interest or utility – an unfortunate démarche which contributed to the theoretical ‘n = 1’ problem and also enabled the study of secondwave regionalism initially to be undertaken generally without reference to, or interest from, EU studies scholars (Söderbaum and Shaw 2003;

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Warleigh 2004). Neither of these attitudes is helpful, if EU studies is to shift its gaze outwards. Nor are they useful if EU studies is to understand how globalisation impacts upon the EU empirically and on EU studies epistemologically (Murray and Rumford 2003; Rosamond 2005b). Furthermore, we are concerned about the claims to intellectual hegemony made by certain scholars in EU studies, or at least in EU political studies. The argument made by proponents of this view, critically summed up by Ben Rosamond (2005b, 2007), is that EU studies can only mature and punch its full weight, if it engages with the dominant form of political science on its own terms – i.e. a fairly positivist, quantitatively driven form of enquiry – because this is the way both to distance EU studies from an inadequately theoretical or rigorous past and to ensure it is taken seriously in the US academy. We hold instead that such approaches should be welcome as part of a range of methodologies, and that epistemological pluralism is of value in its own right. Indeed, it might be argued that EU studies is not interdisciplinary or pluralist enough. Cini’s survey of the political science work on the EU suggests this conclusion (Cini 2006). Moreover, Manners’ survey of critical perspectives on the EU shows that they have much potential value (Manners 2006), and yet such contributions are not routinely part of the mainstream. Perhaps the recent addition of works from a neo-Gramscian perspective (Cafruny and Ryner 2003), or from a critical social theory perspective (Delanty and Rumford 2005) will begin to change this, but at present EU studies does not match the range of perspectives that are present in non-realist international relations (Ashworth 2009, forthcoming). It also seems to us that, in becoming much more theoretically informed than in its early days, more recent work in EU studies by political scientists is sometimes insufficiently engaged with the longue durée (see Kaiser, this volume). Are we really sure that theoretical models are sufficiently tested or draw on sufficient empirical historical evidence? Do they fall into the trap of ‘present-ism’, i.e. assuming that what may be the case today has always been that way? If so, should EU studies scholars consciously advocate a new range of empirical and historically based studies, or politics-history collaboration? There are also reasons to consider that the EU studies community may not be open enough. As is common in global academia, the Englishlanguage literature tends to dominate, even when its authors are not native speakers. This risks cutting off interesting sources of ideas and critiques. Can we afford to think that, for example, every work by a Spanish-speaker which fails to receive a translation into English is of no potential value to the scholarship in the English language? This

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point is not merely a whinge; some disciplines communicate across borders rather more effectively in others. Rather it is part of a wider problem about inclusion and exclusion in the scholarly community. All such entities have their own quirks and oddities as well as world views and hierarchies; but in EU studies, are views of acceptable forms of knowledge-generation and approaches to the subject also too exclusively the preserve of a select group of scholars in the Western half of the continent and the US? For example, could – should – there be a distinct Russian, Arab or Chinese contribution to EU studies beyond agendas driven by their governments’ respective strategic priorities? If no work or little such work is published in English, how would we, in the mainstream, find out? As a result, active outreach to other languages and territories is essential if EU studies is to develop optimally. Finally in this section, and following on logically from the above, it must be admitted that EU studies has not always been quick enough to challenge its own established wisdoms and shibboleths. We have already mentioned the frequent lack of interest shown by EU studies scholars in other global regions; its close cousin is the view that such regions are only worth studying if they follow the EU ‘model’ (Haas 1961). However, it should also be noted that well after the sometimes rather cheer-leading early works in the field, which often sought to justify European integration as much as to explain it, it has often been difficult to question certain idées fixes. Thus, for EU lawyers, the EU may rather shallowly be seen as an obviously federal entity without due regard to the politics of integration, and the law itself may be seen as either an inherently neutral tool or as a heroic device to be used to deepen the integration process in the face of political dithering (see the criticisms made by Hunt and Shaw in this volume). Political science discussions of flexibility (i.e. differentiated integration), to give another example, often betray excessive nostalgia for the Monnet Method (Warleigh 2002). In part, these and similar problems are normal in any developing field of enquiry and can be seen as part of its evolution, which is in turn not necessarily on a Hegelian model (Rosamond 2007; Hooghe and Marks 2008). In part, however, such problems are concerning, as they indicate that EU studies may have more introspection to undertake than has so far been managed.

Reflections on this volume: the future of EU studies as seen through its past Given this potential, but also these shortcomings, what can we learn about the future of EU studies from the chapters in this volume? Some,

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of course, are chronicles of events rather than analyses of the scholarship in the field, and they are all designed to be largely retrospective. However, taken together, the chapters do indicate much interest for the present discussion – to gain an informed idea of where, figuratively speaking, EU scholars may go, it is useful to tease out the implications of some of the contributions to understanding where they have already been. Indeed, several cross-cutting themes emerge – a striking outcome given that they were written in relative isolation from each other by scholars from different countries and various disciplines. The first theme is the at least superficial similarity between the development of EU studies work in several of the disciplines represented here. The contributions by Kaiser, Hunt and Shaw, and Nicolaïdis and Pélabay show how EU scholars in history, law and politics, respectively, have tended to move from grappling with the challenges of a novel phenomenon, using existing concepts and methods, to epistemological innovation in order to capture their subject of study with sufficient accuracy and then on to the ability to show other scholars in their disciplines how they might adjust their own approaches to study in a globalising age. Importantly, these chapters also show how it is often developments in EU governance itself – for example, the advent of ‘soft law’ and ‘new governance’ mechanisms – which prompt EU scholars to question scholarly orthodoxy in their own sub-field or discipline. Thus, there is certainly scope for the EU to catalyse innovation in many areas of academic study, whether or not it serves as a model for other regions or even as the most developed indication yet that political systems will develop beyond the national and perhaps towards the global (see Howorth, this volume). A second strand running through many of the contributions is the importance of questioning established wisdom in EU studies. Narratives may be established but only partially accurate (e.g. that on the ‘heroic’ role of the Court of Justice and EU law itself) or accurate only for a certain period of time (e.g. Pollack and Ruhman’s demonstration that the activist era of major EU system change is probably over). Thus, some of the original toolkit used by the early actors in European integration may have a limited shelf life, as Dyson’s chapter reminds us is the case regarding the early emphasis on uniform patterns of integration whose abandonment was necessary to achieve economic and monetary union. This constitutes a clarion call for scholars to engage with the intellectual archaeology of the field. The chapters by Bulmer and Kaiser are very instructive here. The former demonstrates both that promising ideas may be established early on and then not taken forward for many years (the near 25 year gap between pioneering studies of the EU as a political

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system) and also that without such an engagement with established literature, scholars may risk reinventing the wheel. This is for reasons both epistemological and ontological. Paradigms can be slow to change, but in an area of enquiry such as EU studies, where links between the academic and the ‘real world’ are so vital, it may be that if the EU, or the world system more generally, goes back to the future, then perhaps so should scholars. We can be too quick to consign ideas and approaches of the past to an unloved life in dusty books on library shelves. Bulmer cites the work of Deutsch as a case in point. From a different angle, Kaiser reminds us of the importance of history in shaping the present and that what scholars in some disciplines – perhaps particularly political science – are quick to assume as established or universal truths often appear very different when historical evidence is investigated. A further epistemological issue is raised by many of the chapters here: namely, the importance of ideas, the accidental and, as notoriously plagued Harold Macmillan, ‘events’ in shaping what happens in the EU – as well as in EU studies. This is particularly clear in the chapter by Kaiser but also emerges as of iterated importance in the contributions by Dyson and Hunt and Shaw. Thus, while, as Pollack and Ruhman’s contribution ably demonstrates, a ‘normal science’ approach to many EU studies questions can be extremely useful, it is also best considered one among several useful approaches to study in the area. Perhaps the major epistemological issue thrown up by the contributions, however, is their demonstration of the value of our claim earlier in this conclusion that EU studies can help scholars in other disciplines or areas move beyond Scholte’s ‘methodological territorialism’. Dyson shows how scholars of international economics would benefit from engagement with their opposite numbers in EU studies, and similar arguments are made by Kaiser, Hunt and Shaw, and Nicolaïdis and Pélabay. If we, as EU studies scholars from whatever perspective and discipline can accept that the messy, seemingly partial Europolity is what actually gives us this potential, instead of considering it as evidence of failed spillover or nation state ‘obstinence’, we will be able to help others in our home disciplines adapt more successfully to a globalising world, which they too often study through ‘national’ lenses (see, especially, Kaiser’s chapter here). However, our contributors also show that such work will be difficult and may suffer from the fact that EU studies is still marginal, or ghettoised, in certain disciplines such as history or, if we can call it a ‘discipline’, international relations. Thus, while there is certainly potential for the slow impact of EU studies on comparative politics and international relations to be mirrored in other disciplines,

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such work may not in fact flower even though the roots are there. Time will, as always, tell. Finally, it is worth saying something about interdisciplinarity. This is crucial for the success of EU studies as an ‘exporter’ of concepts and evidence, not least because without such an intellectual stance there will not be the necessary flow of ideas or potential for cross-fertilisation within EU studies itself that must serve as the catalyst for its utility in shaping other disciplines. Space does not permit a major discourse on this topic here,2 but we must note the signals from some of the contributors that such work may well be problematic. Hunt and Shaw point out, for example, that political scientists and legal studies scholars often have profoundly different understandings of law or legal actors, and these may sometimes be incommensurable even if sometimes their very difference is extremely fertile ground for innovation. We hope, nonetheless, that our suggestions for future research can be understood as potentially of interest to scholars from many disciplines and not simply our own.

Suggestions for a future research agenda for EU studies So far we have argued that EU studies has the potential to develop still more richly than to date but to achieve this it must address its weaknesses, as well as harness its strengths. We have charted some of the contributions EU studies has made to the understanding of the EU itself but also to the development of the study of its component disciplines. It remains to set out some suggestions regarding a programme of research that could usefully be undertaken in order to realise this potential, as well as to shed more light on some of the problems with which EU studies is already grappling. These suggestions perhaps reflect our particular awareness of the political science literature but are intended as means to reinforce the interdisciplinarity and pluralism of EU studies. They are also intended as means to understand the EU more holistically, i.e. as an entity ‘co-constituted both by its actions and (by) the reactions of the global milieu’ (Manners 2003: 77). A first useful project would be to consider how to address the challenges of moving beyond ‘methodological state-centrism’. EU studies has made much progress here through the introduction and adaptation of comparative politics methods and tools, but sociology of knowledge variables such as the troubled relationship with international relations must mean that there is potential to ‘learn’ as well as to ‘teach’. A team project based on different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives on this question would be an important first step to establish exactly how

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the multi-disciplinary study of transnational politics and polities might best be pursued or perhaps to establish a range of suitable approaches. A second project is to compare the EU with other global regions in order to help ascertain what is particularistic and what is generalisable in second-wave regionalism. Some such work has been undertaken, but there is certainly room for more, particularly where such work is open to conceptual, as well as empirical cross-fertilisation (Warleigh 2004). Such research could very usefully focus on the development trajectories, governance styles and mechanisms, and impact (both material and ideational) of the various organisations. This would facilitate dialogue between EU studies scholars and those of the ‘new regionalism’. It would also add a further range of comparators to those generally used in EU studies (federal states) and has the potential to expand the scope of those interested in policy-learning: might the EU pick up policy and policy-style lessons from successes in, for instance, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN)? A third useful project would be exploring the links and feedback loops between three inter-twined levels of governance: the global, the regional (by which we mean macro-regions such as the EU, not sub-state regions such as Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur) and the national. Exploring these links economically, historically and legally as well as politically would generate a holistic understanding of the context in which the EU operates and bring attention to the global back into mainstream EU studies from its purdah in EU ‘foreign policy’ studies. A fourth useful project would be comparative in a different way: a sustained comparison of different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives on the EU, particularly those which have not yet received much attention in the political science community. To what extent do disciplines such as anthropology, geography, sociology or history generate unique perspectives on the EU which are useful across the disciplinary barrier? Looking at the EU through the lenses of critical, post-modern or feminist theories – which as Manners (2007) points out has successfully been done, albeit not as often as it could be – could we not ask more helpful and different questions of the EU than those we tend to ask in the mainstream, such as the role of capital in European integration or the structuring function of patriarchy? When we examine persistent problems in the EU, such as legitimacy crises or the politics of the EU budget, through these prisms could we find more convincing explanations for them, or more promising solutions to them? Will scholars of EU studies be interested in such research? Instrumental factors such as the chance to increase citation rates may be

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insufficient to counter the difficulties of such research, not least because in its call for greater interdisciplinarity it implies a greater shift towards collaborative research rather than the ‘lone scholar’ model. It may, furthermore, face unfavourable prevailing winds in the various disciplines and even the orthodox parts of EU studies itself – gate-keeping can frustrate new research, by omission as much as by commission. There are also, and of course, many other research projects on the EU which could be carried out extremely profitably. Nonetheless, we argue that the time has come for EU studies to take steps such as those set out here. Pursuing such studies of European integration would generate worthwhile and original understandings of the EU – a remarkable phenomenon that owes much to 50 years of the Treaty of Rome.

Notes 1. For a discussion of exactly what could be ‘exported’, see Warleigh 2006, pp. 35–41 where it is argued that EU studies can be of use to those re-thinking international relations in the era of globalising governance processes through its work on, inter alia, the possibilities of international organisations, the use and location of authority, the domestic impact of international organisations, the potential of such bodies to impact upon policy-making processes, styles and networks, democracy/legitimacy, and the role of law. 2. For an overview of the potential for the interdisciplinary study of politics, see the essays in Warleigh-Lack and Cini (2009).

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Index 9/11, 130–1, 157 acquis, 44, 59, 64 Action Committee for a United States of Europe, 146 Adenauer, Konrad, 28, 31, 128, 131 administrative cooperation, 45 Adonnino Committee, 17 advocates general, 104 African Union (AU), 136 Agenda 2000 (1997), 77–8, 81 agriculture, 14, 47, 62–4, 91n, 206 see also Common Agricultural Policy Algeria, 31 America, 20 see also United States anthropology, 122, 222 appointments, 83–4 area of freedom security and justice, 45, 62–4 Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 136, 150 assent procedure, 51–4 Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), 136, 222 Atlantic Alliance, 34, 129, 134 Austria, 160, 206 Aznar, José Maria, 135 Balkans, 132 Barre Plan (1969), 146 Barroso, José Manuel, 84 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 17 Belgium, 13, 29, 206 Benelux, 160 Berlin Declaration (2007), 2 Berlin Wall, 82, 130 Berlusconi, Silvio, 135, 169 Blair, Tony, 39n, 135, 138 Brazil, 20, 127, 140 Bretherton, Russell, 11 Bretton Woods, 146, 148–50, 166 BRICs, 20

Britain, 27, 191 see also United Kingdom Brittan, Leon, 92n Brussels, 16, 19, 21, 38, 191 budget, 14, 44, 66–8, 70, 75–6, 77–8, 81–2, 90 see also financial packages budget treaties, 53 Bundesbank, 31, 145–7, 149 Bush, George H.W., 130, 137 Bush, George W., 131, 137 business interests, 30–1 candidates, 19 Catholic Church, 22, 30, 33 Charter of Fundamental Rights, 72, 90 Chatham House, 2 China, 20, 127, 139–40, 141n, 157, 212 Chirac, Jacques, 135, 138, 169 Christian Democrats, 29 Churchill, Winston, 128, 132 citizens, 32 citizenship, 45, 179 civilian crisis management, 140 civil protection, 45, 48, 71 climate change, 84 Cockfield, Lord, 16 co-decision procedure, 51–4, 56, 72 Cold War, 13–14, 19, 31, 129, 132–4 College of Europe, Bruges, 11 comitology, 55 Commission, 13–15, 17–18, 24, 26, 33–4, 38, 44, 52–6, 72, 87–9, 104–5, 122, 139–40, 146 Commission Legal Service, 105 Commission President, 83, 87–9 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), 12, 14, 26, 28, 33–4, 45–6, 56, 81, 92n, 119, 140, 146 Common Commercial Policy, 45 see also external trade

248

Index 249 Common Fisheries Policy, 45 see also fisheries Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), 45, 56, 62–4, 71–2, 84, 130, 133, 138 Community method, 18 competences, 48, 69, 71 competition policy, 12, 33, 45–7, 62–4, 112, 206 constitutionalisation, 94, 105–6 constitutionalism (new), 121–2 constitutional patriotism, 18, 59 Constitutional Treaty, 43, 45, 69, 71, 78, 80, 88, 101–3, 192 constructivism, 29, 119–20 consultation procedure, 51–4 consumer protection, 45, 47, 62–4 Convention on the Future of Europe (2002–2003), 29, 80, 90, 121 cooperation procedure, 51–4, 56 Cooper, Robert, 136 Copenhagen criteria, 92n core Europe, 27, 29, 169 COREPER, 87, 92n Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard, 128 Council, 18, 46, 49–56, 71, 75, 87, 115 Council Secretariat, 76–7, 87–9, 133 Court of First Instance (CFI), 57 Court of Justice (ECJ), 25, 44, 53, 56–8, 71, 93, 99–106, 112, 114–15, 205 Costa v ENEL, 99, 105 Internationale Handelsgesellschaft, 105 Parti Ecologiste ‘Les Verts’, 99 Van Gend en Loos, 99, 105 criminal justice, 48 culture, 45, 62–4 customs union, 12, 45, 62–4, 146 Davignon Report (1970), 75 defence, 18, 48 de Gasperi, Alcide, 28, 128, 131 de Gaulle, Charles, 11, 13–14, 26, 31, 197 Delors Committee/Report (1988), 80, 153–4 Delors I and Delors II budget packages, see budget

Delors, Jacques, 16, 34, 59, 74, 77, 82, 131, 147, 169, 199 democracy, 19, 195, 199, 202 democratic deficit, 195, 202–3 democratic legitimacy, 183 Deniau, Jean-François, 11 Denmark, 19, 28, 75, 79, 82, 144 Deutschmark, 18, 147, 149 development aid and cooperation, 45, 48 direct effect, 112 diversity, 179 Dondelinger, Jean, 79 Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, 90 Duisenberg, Wim, 83 economic and monetary union (EMU), 18, 56, 61–4, 75, 80, 135, 143–71 economic policy, 45, 85–6 see also Economic and Monetary Union economic and social cohesion, 45 The Economist, 1 education, 45, 47, 62–4, 69, 85 employment, 18, 45, 66, 69, 85, 154 empty-chair crisis (1965–1966), 13–14, 26, 111, 141–2n, 196 energy, 45, 47, 61, 62–4, 84 enlargement, 15–16, 68, 73n, 77–8, 82–3, 88, 90, 135, 191 environment, 15, 45, 47, 51, 59, 62–4, 70, 81, 84 Ersbøll, Niels, 77, 79 euro (¤), 18 see also Economic and Monetary Union, single currency Eurogroup, 144, 163 Euronationalism, 183 European Atomic Energy Community (EEC), 11 European Central Bank (ECB), 18, 53, 83, 144, 151–3, 155, 160, 167, 170–1 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), 27, 33, 59, 110, 196

250

Index

European Council, 15, 17, 74–92 Copenhagen (1993), 83, 85, 92n Dublin (1990), 80 Fontainebleau (1984), 75, 81 Hampton Court (2005), 84 Hanover (1988), 80 Helsinki (1999), 91n Luxembourg (1991), 80 Madrid (1989), 80 Milan (1985), 78–9 Nice (2000), 80 Rome (1990), 80 Seville (2002), 76, 87, 91n Strasbourg (1989), 80 Tampere (1999), 84 European Court of Justice (ECJ), see Court of Justice European Courts, 70 European Defence Community (EDC), 12, 27, 31–2, 133 European Economic Community (EEC), 11, 14–15, 22, 33, 44, 196 European Employment Strategy, 143–4 European Free Trade Association (EFTA), 31, 82–3 Europeanization, 35, 38, 100, 168, 194, 203–11, 213 European Monetary Institute (EMI), 143 European Monetary System (EMS), 75, 147, 197 European Movement, 28 European neighbourhood, 20, 192 European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), 141, 194 European Parliament (EP), 14–15, 18, 25, 44, 49–54, 56, 89–90, 202, 206 European Payments Union, 146 European Political Cooperation (EPC), 115 European Regional Development Fund, 15 European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), 131–2, 138–9, 194 European Security Strategy, 131, 139 European Union design, 199–203 as a federal system, 49

as international actor, 127–42, 190–1 as a mature polity, 69–71 as a regulatory state, 43–4, 58–66, 70 European University Institute, 97 Europe des patries, 27 eurosceptics, 19, 192 eurosclerosis, 15, 197 EU studies, 212–23 and comparative politics, 211, 213, 215, 220–1 and international relations, 210–11, 213, 215–16, 220–1 Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), 144–5, 147–8, 150 executive politics, 55–6 External Action Service, 72 external relations, 62–4 external trade, 34, 48, 55 see also Common Commercial Policy federalism, 28 Ferry, Jean-Marc, 176 financial packages, 77–9, 81–2 see also budget financial services regulations, 47 Finland, 19 fisheries, 62–4 see also Common Fisheries Policy Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), 2 foreign and security policy, 18, 47 see also Common Foreign and Security Policy, external relations Fouchet Plan (1962), 14 France, 14, 19, 25, 32, 34, 73n, 137, 141n, 155, 160, 182, 191, 204, 206 Assemblée nationale, 32 Fourth Republic, 11, 27 Franco-German motor/axis, 13, 15, 132, 145, 149, 155 free movement of capital, 47, 62–4 of goods, 47, 62–4 of persons, 47

Index 251 of services, 47 see also internal market Freiburg School, 30 fusion thesis, 110, 122 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 135 Kennedy Round, 14, 15 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 154 geography, 222 Georgia, 200 German Democratic Republic, 31 German unification, 67, 149–50 Germany, 13, 18, 23, 31, 32, 49, 116, 130, 137, 141n, 148–50, 160–1, 170, 204, 206 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 75, 80, 131, 169 global governance, 38 globalization, 20, 22, 30, 33, 117, 135, 164 Gonzalez, Felipe, 131 good governance, 103, 117 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 133–4 governance, 116–17, 201–2, 213 Greece, 16, 79, 141, 147, 204 Habermas, Jürgen, 176 Hague Programme, 84 Hague Summit (1969), 75, 146 Hallstein, Walter, 13–14, 111, 131 Havel, Vaclav, 134 health, 45, 59, 62–4, 69 health and safety, 47 Heath, Edward, 131 Helsinki Headline Goals, 84, 141 High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, 72, 83, 89 historical institutionalism, 24–5, 30, 198 horizontal separation of powers, 49–58 Howe, Geoffrey, 134 humanitarian aid, 45, 48 Hungarian Uprising (1956), 11 identity, 182, 195, 201 immigration, 48

India, 20, 127, 139–40, 141n, 157, 212 industrial policy, 45, 62–4 Integrated Mediterranean Programme, 81 intellectual property, 71 interdisciplinarity, 22, 34, 217, 221 interest groups, 111, 198 intergovernmental conference (IGC), 79, 154 intergovernmentalism, 113, 196–7 internal market, 45–6, 51, 59, 62–4, 85 see also single market International Monetary Fund, 135, 141n internet, 123 Iran, 132, 137, 212 Iraq, 148, 212 Ireland, 19, 75, 78–9, 147, 161 Islam, 33, 189 Italy, 13, 141n, 147, 155, 206 Japan, 17, 20 joint-decision trap, 115, 200 judicial politics, 56–8 justice and home affairs (JHA), 18, 56, 71–2, 84 Kennedy, John. F., 129 Kissinger, Henry, 132 Kohl, Helmut, 31, 88, 130, 149, 154 Korean War (1950–1953), 32 Kwasniewski, Aleksander, 134 Lafontaine, Oskar, 31, 170 Lamfalussy process, 162 Lamy, Pascal, 77 League of Nations, 128 legal approximation, 59, 69 legal scholarship, 93–108 legislation, 58–66 legislative politics, 49–55 liberal intergovernmentalism, 24, 197–8 Lisbon process/strategy, 85–6, 91, 135, 144, 153–4, 158, 162, 167, 169–70 lobbyists, 16 Luxembourg, 16

252

Index

Maastricht Treaty, 36, 39n, 50 see also Treaty on European Union Macmillan, Harold, 31, 132, 218 Major, John, 145 Marshall Plan, 129–30 membership, 18 member states, 194–211 see also individual member states Mercosur, 136 Merkel, Angela, 85, 88, 165 Messina Conference (1955), 12 Middle East, 132 Milosevic, Sloboan, 135 Mitterrand, François, 26, 88, 130, 149, 154 monetary policy, 45, 48 see also Economic and Monetary Union Monnet, Jean, 128, 130–1, 196 multi-level governance (MLG), 117, 121, 185, 195, 205 narrative diversity, 175–93 narrative truth, 184 national courts, 102, 205 national parliaments, 205 negative integration, 203 neo-functionalism, 30, 37, 110–11, 195–9 Netherlands, 23, 29, 73n, 147, 182 network governance, 33 new governance, 98, 122 new institutionalism, 118 new regionalism, 222 Nixon, Richard, 148 Noël, Emile, 11, 77, 79, 111 non-state actors, 23 Nordic cooperation, 18 normative (political) theory, 122, 177 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 136 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 13–14, 82, 129, 133 Norway, 19, 28 ode to joy, 17 open method of cooperation (OMC), 61, 98, 117, 194, 206 optimum currency area, 160

Padoa-Schioppa Report (1987), 147 Paris Summits (1972–1974), 75, 146 pensions, 47 people’s Europe, 62–4 Petersberg Tasks, 139 PHARE, 82 pillars II and III, 54, 56, 69 Pleven Plan (1950), 32 pluralism, 184–8 Poland, 31 policing, 48 policy network analysis, 120 political economy, 122 Portugal, 16, 81, 141, 147 positive integration, 203 post-Westphalianism, 136–7 Powell, Colin, 131 preliminary references, 56 Prodi, Romano, 131 product standards, 47 public housing, 47 public opinion, 31, 175, 188 qualified majority voting (QMV), 16, 44, 50–1, 54, 56, 59, 70–1 rational choice institutionalism, 24, 28, 118–19 REACH directive, 90 Reagan, Ronald, 133–4 referenda, 182 regional development, 47, 62–4 regional integration, 38, 141, 212 regional policy, 58–66 regulatory agencies, 205 regulatory politics, 121 research and development, 45, 47, 55, 81 Resistance movement, 28 right of establishment, 62–4 Rumsfeld, Donald, 129 Russia, 20, 127, 212 Santer, Jacques, 83 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 163 Scandinavia, 22 Schengen, 18

Index 253 Schiller, Friedrich, 17 Schiller, Karl, 150 Schmidt, Helmut, 75–6, 131, 169 Schroeder, Gerhard, 135, 165, 169 Schuman Plan, 25 Schuman, Robert, 26, 28, 31, 128, 130–1 science, 62–4 securitization, 20 Services directive, 90 sherpas, 76 single currency, 18, 85, 135, 194 see also euro Single European Act (SEA), 16, 45–6, 50–1, 53, 56, 70, 78–9, 81, 115, 133, 135, 147 single market, 16–17, 133, 142n, 146, 194 see also free movement, internal market social policy, 18, 46, 51, 85–6 social security, 71 sociological institutionalism, 24, 29, 119 sociology, 38, 222 soft law, 98 Solana, Javier, 84, 89, 131, 136 Solemn Declaration on European Union (1983), 75 Soros, George, 134 South American Community of Nations (SACN), 136 sovereignty, 190, 195 Soviet Union, 17, 19, 129, 133–4 Spaak Committee/Report (1955–1956), 11–12, 146 Spaak, Paul-Henri, 28, 131, 196 space, 46, 71 Spain, 16, 81, 141, 147, 161 Spinelli, Altiero, 131, 196 sport, 46, 71 Stability and Growth Pact, 144–5, 153, 155, 159, 162, 171 Stalin, Joseph, 32 Strategic Defense Initiative – Star Wars, 133 Structural Funds, 119

structural policy, 62–4, 81 subsidiarity, 22, 29n, 33, 106 Suez Crisis (1956), 11 supranationalism, 44, 198 supremacy, 102–3, 112 Sweden, 19, 31, 36 Switzerland, 28, 31 symbols, 13, 15, 17–18, 20 taxation, 46, 48, 62–4, 71 territorial cohesion, 46 Thatcher, Margaret, 17, 81, 117, 133, 139, 142n, 145 Tindemann Report (1975), 75 tourism, 46, 71 trans-European networks, 46 transformation, 18–19 transnational networks, 29, 38 transport, 46–7, 62–4 Treaty of Amsterdam, 18, 25, 45–6, 50–1, 54, 56, 59, 78, 80, 85, 154 treaty change, 15 Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, see Constitutional Treaty Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, 7n Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (TECSC), 25, 50 Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC), 44–8, 45 see also Treaty of Rome Treaty on European Union (TEU), 16, 25, 29, 45–6, 53, 56, 69–70, 78–9, 82, 116, 143, 145, 154, 192 see also Maastricht Treaty Treaty of Lisbon, 20, 43, 45–6, 69, 71–2, 73n, 88–90, 103, 178, 192 Treaty of Nice, 19, 45, 50–1, 54, 56, 78, 80 Treaty of Rome, 7n, 11, 13, 44, 46, 53, 55–6, 77–80 50th anniversary, 1–2, 43, 175 see also Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (TEC) Triffin, Robert, 146, 148

254

Index

Trojan, Carlo, 77 Turkey, 33, 83, 141, 192, 200, 212 UACES (University Association for Contemporary European Studies), 2, 123 Ukraine, 200 United Kingdom (UK), 12, 15, 22, 26, 31–2, 75, 78–9, 116–17, 137, 141n, 144, 204, 206 United States (US), 17, 23, 32, 34, 46–9, 127, 130, 137–8, 140–1, 148, 157, 189, 212 Uri, Pierre, 11–12

Verhofstadt, Guy, 169 vocational training, 46 von der Groeben, Hans, 30 Walesa, Lech, 134 welfare state, 47–8, 201 Werner Report (1970), 150, 153 Williamson, David, 77 World Trade Organization (WTO), 139 World War II, 22, 128, 132 youth, 46 Yugoslavia, 17–18