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6068 results in European government, politics and policy

Page 189 of 304

  • 8 - The limits of leaderless Europe

  • Giandomenico Majone, European University Institute, Florence
  • Book:
    Rethinking the Union of Europe Post-Crisis
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 236-265

  • Summary

    The principle of equality in the EU

    A key element of the ideology of European integration is the basic equality and equal dignity of all the member states, from the smallest to the largest: no leader but a ‘collective leadership’ as the principle of equality of all member states has sometimes been characterized. This principle of formal and (to the extent possible) substantive equality has inspired all the European treaties and also the day-to-day practice. It is reflected in the design and modus operandi of the European institutions. Indeed an important, if tacit, responsibility of the Commission is to ensure that the interests of the smaller member states are sufficiently taken into consideration – which explains why the smaller countries have always been the strongest supporters of the supranational executive. Clear evidence of the importance these member states attach to membership in the Commission is the promise made by the European Council after the failure of the first Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (in June 2008) to abandon the planned reduction of the number of Commissioners – a promise meant to facilitate the success of the second referendum. The price of the concession is not negligible, however: as Piris (2011) points out, a Commission with twenty-seven, or more, members is hardly capable of taking decisions.

    A direct consequence of the principle of equality is the fact that nobody can claim to govern the Union and, as a corollary, the absence of the traditional government–opposition dialectic. The European Commission, which many Euro-enthusiasts used to see as the would-be kernel of the future government of a politically united Europe, in fact looks more and more like an international bureaucracy and less and less like a proto-government. Even the European Council – the most likely candidate to provide leadership at the supranational level – is only able to achieve what the member states want it to achieve, with agreements hammered out – often bilaterally – beyond its walls (Peterson and Shackleton 2012). There are good reasons to believe that, short of a radical transformation, political leadership will always be an extremely scarce commodity in the EU. The belief in the equality of all the member states and in unanimity as the optimal decision rule, at least in the case of politically sensitive decisions, has deep ideological roots.

  • 10 - EU development policy

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 311-345

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • Development cooperation policy is as old as the European integration project itself. Objectives in this policy area have evolved from associating EEC Member States’ colonies with focus on trade and aid, to a progressively broader development agenda incorporating human rights, sustainable development aspects such as environment and social issues, and most recently links to (common foreign and) security policy.

  • EU development policy can be defined through the three C’s which have been expressly incorporated into the competence-conferring provisions of the TFEU: complementarity, coherence and coordination.

  • Complementarity is laid down generally in Article 208(1) TFEU, and broadly implies that the exercise of EU and Member State competences shall complement and reinforce each other. From the perspective of the nature of the EU’s development competence, it means that EU action does not pre-empt Member State action (Article 4(4) TFEU), thereby making coherence and coordination between these levels crucial.

  • Coherence is also contained in Article 208 TFEU and is composed of three aspects: first, coherence of EU development cooperation with the more general principles and objectives of EU external relations (Article 21 TEU); secondly, poverty reduction as the primary policy objective providing intra-policy focus on how diverse development initiatives cohere to the central goal; thirdly, the obligation to take account of development objectives in other policies which are likely to affect developing countries.

  • Coordination is laid down in Article 210 TFEU, and entails that EU and Member States must proactively collaborate and consult in order to ensure complementarity and coherence of their respective EU development policies. Article 210 TFEU gives the Commission a central role in ensuring coordination of EU and Member State development cooperation initiatives.

  • Introduction: varieties of regional integration

  • Giandomenico Majone, European University Institute, Florence
  • Book:
    Rethinking the Union of Europe Post-Crisis
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 1-19

  • Summary

    Regionalism, old and new

    The revival of regional integration in the 1980s – which Jagdish Bhagwati (1993) labelled the ‘Second Regionalism’, in contrast to the ‘First Regionalism’ of the 1960s – raises a number of issues, starting with the question why the first regionalism failed (with the notable exception of the European Economic Community (EEC)), while this time regionalism is likely to endure. The conversion of the United States (US) to regionalism is of major significance in this respect. As the key advocate of multilateralism through the post-war years, its decision to travel the regional integration route seems to have tilted the balance at the margin from multilateralism to regionalism. A second important factor has been the widening and deepening of the European Community/Union (EC/EU). Thus, the fear that European investments would be diverted to Eastern Europe was cited by President Salinas of Mexico as a factor decisively pushing him toward the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He felt that a free trade area embracing all of North America would enable Mexico to get the investments needed from the US and Canada, as well as from Japan (Bhagwati 1993; Vega Cànovas 2010). In his comment on Bhagwati’s article, Robert Baldwin considered the likelihood of a gradual drift of the North American regional bloc to include a number of other Latin American countries. This enlargement would be driven by pressures from these countries to tap into the US market but another important factor that might drive the expansion of an American-centred bloc, according to Baldwin, ‘would be the growing influence of the European Community in trade, macroeconomic and foreign policy matters. US political and economic leaders may adopt the view that it is necessary to expand such a bloc in order to match the increasing political and economic power of the Community’ (Bhagwati 1993: 54).

  • 12 - Common Security and Defence Policy

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 400-437

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • For almost fifty years, security and defence cooperation was excluded from the EU and in fact enjoyed ‘taboo status’. Member States were hesitant to hand over powers in this sensitive area to the ‘supranational’ EC and many preferred to give priority to cooperation in NATO. Yet, since the beginning of the third millennium, CSDP has developed into a fully fledged policy, as part of the CFSP (see Chapter 11), but increasingly as a stand-alone policy field with its own rules, procedures and bodies.

  • This chapter will address decision-making in CSDP as well as the role of the institutions and the available legal instruments. We will also go back in time to trace the origins of CSDP, in order to explain its current nature. Over twenty-five missions have been established since the creation of CSDP, and in this chapter we will look at the different types of missions as well as at their (international) legal ramifications.

    • Introduction

    In the previous chapter we referred to the origins of the Union’s foreign, security and defence policy. As we have seen, during the 1950s and 1960s far-reaching proposals were tabled to establish a common defence policy with supranational features. These proposals were never accepted, and a security and defence policy developed partly as part of the CFSP and partly autonomously. Over the last decade, the EU has launched over twenty-five civilian missions and military operations on three continents deployed in response to crises, ranging from post-tsunami peace-building in Aceh, to protecting refugees in Chad, to fighting against piracy in and around Somalian waters. The CSDP has developed into a major policy area in EU external relations. Like CFSP, it is formed on the basis of specific rules and procedures, but at the same time we have witnessed a development from a largely intergovernmental policy area to a ‘Brussels-based’ cooperation in which EU preparatory organs play a leading role.

  • 9 - Common Commercial Policy

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 276-310

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • This chapter deals with a policy area that is traditionally seen as forming the heart of EU external relations law. The CCP not only formed the start of the development of EU external relations, it still forms a key example of a policy area in which internal and external policies are inextricably linked.

  • In this chapter we will analyse the principles and instruments of the CCP. Irrespective of the scarce references in primary law, the Union has developed several instruments to shape this policy area. We also look at the roles of the Union institutions and the applicable decision-making procedures.

  • Finally, this chapter will analyse the relation between the internal market and the external trade, and address the question of how this relationship influenced the development of CCP.

    • Introduction

    The CCP is ‘the mother of all EU external relations policies’. In the early days, many authors would even have a tendency to equate EU external relations law to CCP, and still many textbooks would explain basic notions underlying EU external relations law with extensive references to CCP, so as to illustrate the development of the scope of an existing competence. It is true that the existence, nature and scope of external competences (see Chapters 3–5) have largely been defined by reference to early cases in the area of CCP. In this chapter we will occasionally return to these basic notions, but will predominantly look at CCP as an institutional and substantive policy area.

  • 4 - Nature of EU external competence

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 99-137

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • Once it is established that competence for the Union to act exists, we must examine the impact this will have for the Member States’ ability to act internationally. This is the question of the ‘nature’ of EU competence, and is subdivided into two main categories according to how they impact the Member States’ powers: exclusive EU competence, or shared with the Member States.

  • In the category of exclusive competences, we distinguish between a priori exclusivity, conditional exclusivity and exclusivity through necessity. In the first instance, EU primary law expressly states that a given competence is to be exercised by the EU alone. In the case of conditional exclusivity, Member States are pre-empted from acting when their international action may affect common rules adopted by the EU. The third is a minor sub-category of conditional exclusivity.

  • In the category of shared competences we distinguish between: shared pre-emptive competences, shared non-pre-emptive (complementary) powers, supplementary powers and parallel powers. In each category the scope for the EU and the Member States to act alone or alongside each other differs, depending on the fulfilment of certain conditions. Much of this chapter is focused on the first category, namely the conditions under which the exercise of a shared competence will pre-empt Member State international action, and the legal justification given by the CJEU.

  • 10 - The nation state between globalization and regional integration

  • Giandomenico Majone, European University Institute, Florence
  • Book:
    Rethinking the Union of Europe Post-Crisis
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 295-322

  • Summary

    As globalization of competition has intensified, some have begun to argue a diminished role for nations. Instead, internationalization and the removal of protection and other distortions to competition arguably make nations, if anything, more important. National differences in character and culture, far from being threatened by global competition, prove integral to success in it.

    (Porter 1990: 30)

    Efforts at European unification are raising questions about whether the influence of nations on competition will diminish. Instead, freer trade will arguably make them more important While the effective locus of competitive advantage may sometimes encompass regions that cross national borders. . .Europe is unlikely to become a ‘nation’ from a competitive perspective. National differences in demand, factor creation, and other determinants will persist, and rivalry within nations will remain vital.

    (Ibid.: 158–9)

    Nations can reconcile social purpose with individual aspirations and initiatives and enhance performance by their collective synergy. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. Citizens of a nation will respond better to state encouragement and initiatives; conversely, the state will know better what to do and how, in accord with active social forces. Nations can compete.

    (Landes 1998: 219)

    Farewell to the nation state?

    According to the federalists of the immediate post-WorldWar II period, it was impossible to rebuild a democratic, prosperous and powerful Europe starting with the nation states: only a strong federation could solve the great problems of the post-war period. The establishment of a federal super-state, the Italian federalist Altiero Spinelli argued, would have to precede the political and economic reconstruction of the national states, the former being the necessary foundation of the latter. The government of the future European federation was supposed to be responsible not to the national governments but directly to the peoples of the states of the federation. Indeed, since the construction of a European federal state was supposed to precede the reconstruction of the national governments, the federalist ideology would necessarily supersede the ideological divisions of the past.

  • 13 - The external dimension of the internal energy market

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 438-474

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • Collaboration in the energy sector goes back to the ECSC, yet to this day no full-blown EU external energy policy exists. In this chapter we first examine the development of the EU internal energy market, focusing on how an external dimension has recently started to develop to serve EU internal needs.

  • Substantive dimension: the Lisbon Treaty had the purpose of strengthening coherence in EU external relations, and expressly conferred an energy competence onto the EU (Article 194 TFEU). This chapter examines policy coherence in EU external energy policy from the substantive, institutional and vertical dimensions. Here the focus lies on the relationship between energy diplomacy, security of supply and the law-based market-orientated approach. The chapter queries whether the new competence will permit a more integrated approach between different objectives of EU energy policy.

  • In the current setting, there is disagreement on the respective roles of the HR and the EEAS; and the Commission and the Energy Commissioner. These bodies have different perspectives on what EU external energy policy is about, with significant impact on the external dimension of the internal energy market. The strengthened role of the EP in EU external energy policy is also to be taken into account.

  • The progressive advancement of the internal energy market has suffered from a limited political recognition by the Member States that there was the need for a fully fledged external dimension. This is due to the continued priority of Member State national interests over the common EU interest, leading to a significant lack of Member State compliance with Union law on the path to completing the internal market. Similar processes can be observed in the external dimension of the internal energy market, and this chapter therefore pays significant attention to the duty of cooperation as it has been formalized in a legally binding instrument at the end of 2012.

  • 2 - A political culture of total optimism: its rise and fall

  • Giandomenico Majone, European University Institute, Florence
  • Book:
    Rethinking the Union of Europe Post-Crisis
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 58-87

  • Summary

    Fait accompli and total optimism

    According to the Treaty on European Union (TEU), Article 107 (1), ‘The ESCB [European System of Central Banks] shall be composed of the ECB and of the national central banks.’ This wording makes clear that the authors of the treaty had assumed that all member states of the EU would join the monetary union – an overly optimistic assumption, as it turned out. As we shall see in the present chapter such a priori optimism is (or was until recently) a characteristic feature of the political culture of European integration – and one reason why crises always find EU leaders unprepared. When the euro was introduced, an American political economist wrote: ‘Prudence might have counselled that the European Union take certain steps well before the creation of the euro area’ (Henning 2000: 41). He was referring to what economist Charles Wyplosz has called the ‘dark secret’ of monetary union: the fact that the relevant article of the Maastricht Treaty is so ambiguous that it is not clear who is actually responsible for the exchange rate of the euro, see chapter 1. Even Wim Duisenberg – who as (first) president of the ECB should have been better informed about the financial conditions of would-be members of the monetary union – was absolutely delighted when, in January 2001, Greece adopted the euro. Like many other Euro-enthusiasts the Dutch central banker was convinced that for the sake of European integration it was important to have as many countries as possible in the monetary union. Thus, possible risks were totally ignored (Lévy 2012). These are only few examples of the unconcerned, not to say reckless, attitude which until recently prevailed among EU leaders – not just in monetary policy but in all areas of European competence. Henning, like the majority of American experts, counselled prudence, but the truth is that prudential reasoning is foreign to the Monnet strategy of fait accompli which, as mentioned in chapter 1, goes back to the beginnings of European integration.

  • 8 - The EU and international institutions

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 246-275

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • This chapter explores to what extent the EU Treaties, secondary legislation and case law regulate the position of the EU in international institutions, understood as both formal international organizations and the less formal treaty-regimes. As highlighted by the position of the EU in the WTO in particular, the division of competences between the EU and its Member States forms an important part of this legal framework.

  • The Treaties list a number of general and specific competences related to the participation of the EU in international institutions. This chapter will list and analyse those provisions in order to assess the legal possibilities in this area.

  • The EU participates in many international organizations and other international forums. In which international institutions does the EU have a formal position, and which different forms of representation can be discovered?

  • Two examples deserve special attention: the WTO and the UN. On the basis of the participation of the EU in these two major organizations, we will further analyse the complexities related to this international role of the EU.

  • Finally, the active participation of the EU in international institutions leads to a number of normative effects of these organizations on the EU. What is the influence of international institutions on the EU?

    • Introduction

    As explained in Chapter 1, with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU has entered a new phase. No longer is the world confronted with both the EC and the EU as actors on the international stage; since 1 December 2009 the EU acts as the legal successor to the EC (Article 1 TEU), while maintaining one of its original policy fields: the foreign, security and defence policy (see Chapters 11 and 12). The EU has thus also replaced the Community in international institutions. In addition, the Lisbon Treaty increased the number of references to the role of the Union in the world and to its relationship with the United Nations (Article 21 TEU).

  • 15 - The EU and its neighbours

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 516-569

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • This chapter examines the wide ranges of policies and means through which the EU engages with the countries in its neighbourhood: first, EU enlargement policy, which is sometimes considered the most successful of all EU external policies; second, the EU has developed the ENP for those countries that are not eligible for membership either permanently or in the short to medium term; third, the Stability and Association Process (SAP) with the Western Balkan countries; fourth, EU relations with the EEA/EFTA countries; fifth and finally, EU relations with the Russian Federation.

  • The EU has gone through seven rounds of enlargement. At present, we can speak of a true EU enlargement ‘policy’ with its own legal basis, rationale, objectives, instruments and decision-making dynamic. This chapter explains the key criteria and soft and hard legal instruments that make up this policy. It utilizes the 2004 ‘big bang enlargement’ to explain how this policy has grown in a piecemeal fashion. Looking to the future, the chapter indicates how future enlargements may raise novel questions, and how the EU’s response will almost certainly be influenced by individual Member State interests.

  • The ENP originated from the fifth enlargement in 2004, and aims to create a special relationship with those third countries to the south and east that were not included in that process. From an instrumental perspective, this policy provides an excellent case study of the use of soft law in EU external relations law. From a methodological perspective, it illustrates how the EU has drawn on objectives and processes from EU enlargement policy, and applied them in a non-accession context, with commensurate difficulties. As regards instruments, it builds on binding bilateral frameworks, and then utilizes a plethora of soft legal documents to reorientate them towards new neighbourhood objectives.

  • The SAP applies to the Western Balkans countries, and has an express EU accession perspective: Serbia, FYROM, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatia emancipated from this policy upon its accession in July 2013. The policy is based on Stabilisation and Association Agreements (SAA) which have been concluded specifically to stabilize the region, utilizing conditionality and legal approximation to attain their accession objective.

  • …

  • 5 - European integration and the decoupling of politics and economics

  • Giandomenico Majone, European University Institute, Florence
  • Book:
    Rethinking the Union of Europe Post-Crisis
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 149-178

  • Summary

    Rise and decline of a liberal principle

    The possibility of separating economics and politics was a key, if implicit, assumption of the founders of the EEC. It was not a new idea, but rather a return to a classic liberal tenet which in the nineteenth century and up to World War I had made it possible for the world economy to develop in such a fashion that ‘between national and international economic integration there was only a difference in degree but not in kind’ (Roepke 1954: 219). During the mercantilist era of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the relationship between state power and international trade was seen as a problem of exceptional importance, one which was formulated as a debate about the interventionist obligations of rulers rather than as a matter of free trade (Brewer 1989). Against the mercantilist promotion of the power of the state, state regulation of trade, and the subordination of economic goals to political power, liberalism advocated the widest possible separation of the two spheres of politics (government) and economics. By aid of this principle of separation it was possible to reduce to a minimum the economic implications of the coexistence of sovereign states with their different legal orders and systems of administration, their frontiers, and separate citizenship. Applying this same principle of separation between politics and economics to the monetary field, it was possible to create an effective international monetary order: the gold standard. Absent a world government, there could not exist a genuine de jure world money system guaranteeing the possibility of payments at stable exchange rates, but the gold standard made it possible to achieve, in practice, the same result: if not a de jure at least a de facto world monetary system. As Roepke (1954: 225) has argued, in no area can the significance of the principle of the de-politicization of the economic sphere be seen as clearly as in the case of money. In the heyday of the international gold standard, the 1870s to 1914, surrender of national monetary sovereignty was considered not only acceptable but positively beneficial. On the one hand, no serious problems seemed to arise from the application of the essential conditions, or ‘rules of the game’, for operation of a gold standard – including the condition that within each country of the system there must be a high degree of wage flexibility.

  • 11 - Common Foreign and Security Policy

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 346-399

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • The Union’s foreign and security policy is based on a set of compromises. From the outset, Member States have been hesitant to hand over powers in this area. Yet, the strong links with other policies as well as the single institutional structure caused an integration of CFSP into the Union legal order. While its distinct nature remains clearly visible, CFSP has become part and parcel of the EU’s external relations regime.

  • In this chapter we will address the historical explanations for the current place of CFSP in the EU legal order. We will analyse the attempts to start political cooperation before the 1990s and will assess the current provisions in that context. We will also address the role of the institutions (including the role of the CJEU) in CFSP as well as the decision-making procedures. Finally, we will assess the legal nature and function of the CFSP instruments.

    • Introduction

    The CFSP of the EU has for decades been the ‘odd one out’. It emerged separately from the EEC in an incremental, pragmatic fashion at the beginning of the 1970s. The process was stimulated through the realization that the coordination of the different foreign policies of the (six, then nine, etc.) Member States was helpful, and occasionally even necessary, for the Community to pursue its goals. At present CFSP objectives have become an integral part of the overall objectives of the Union. Thus, this policy area has developed from a purely intergovernmental form of information exchange, coordination and cooperation in the days of the EPC, to an EU competence in its own right and an area in which the Member States have accepted significant forms of institutionalization and legalization.

  • 3 - Existence of EU external competence

  • Bart Van Vooren, Ramses A. Wessel, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
  • Book:
    EU External Relations Law
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014, pp 74-98

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • The EU possesses legal personality and capacity to act as a legal subject in international relations. However, the EU cannot undertake whatever international action it wishes. Its capacity is governed by the principle of conferral laid down in Article 5 TFEU, which states that the Union shall act within the powers conferred on it by the Member States. As regards external competence of the Union, we distinguish between the existence, nature and scope of that power.

  • In this chapter we examine the conditions under which competence to act externally will exist for the Union. First, this is the case when the Treaty expressly confers such external competence on the Union. Second, such competence may also be implied when, pursuant to the ERTA principle, the EU has adopted internal rules on the basis of expressly conferred internal powers; or when, pursuant to the complementarity principle, in the absence of internal rules, it is necessary to attain an EU Treaty objective for which the Treaty confers upon the Union an internal power. Third, when none of the above-mentioned sources are available, recourse to Article 352 TFEU is possible if this is necessary to attain objectives set for the Union in the EU Treaties.

  • Political battles between the institutions and Member States over international presence and representation have regularly translated into litigation concerning the question of whether the EU actually has competence at all. In resolving these conflicts, the CJEU has shown itself sensitive to the legal–political context of European integration in which the legal proceedings took place. At times borderline activist, at other times protective of Member States’ sovereignty, the role of the CJEU in this area of law, and consequently in the development of the EU as an international actor, cannot be understated.

Page 189 of 304