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6068 results in European government, politics and policy

Page 190 of 304

  • 7 - EU law and international law

  • 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 208-245

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • The EU is usually considered a special, or sui generis, organization (see Chapter 1). This special status does not only flow from the relationship with its Member States (which indeed differentiates it from other international organizations), but also from its position towards international law. In the early days in particular, the CJEU tended to underline this special position by referring to the ‘autonomous’ legal order that was created in which the relationship between the Member States was no longer primarily regulated by international law, but by EU law. Indeed, the states were first and foremost Member States.

  • Yet, without international law, the EU would not exist. It is based on a treaty concluded within the framework of international treaty law. At the same time, and keeping in mind the rule of pacta tertiis nec nocent nec prosunt, third states are in principal not bound by the EU Treaty since to them it is an agreement between others. This implies that in its external legal relations the EU will have to act under international law and will also have to respect its basic rules. Within the EU legal order, however, this may lead to conflicting norms, and over the years the Court has had quite a task in finding solutions for these conflicts.

  • This leads to a number of questions that will be addressed in this chapter: what is the hierarchical position of international law within the EU legal order? What are the effects of international law (both written and unwritten) in the EU legal order? How did the ECJ solve conflicts between EU law and international law?

  • …

  • 3 - Integration and its modes

  • 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 88-117

  • Summary

    From shallow to deep integration

    The significance of the distinction between ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ modes of economic integration has been increasingly recognized since the 1990s (see in particular Kahler 1995). As we saw in the Introduction to the present volume, shallow integration, at the global or regional level, is economic integration based on the removal of barriers to exchange at the border, with limited coordination of national policies. Under a regime of shallow integration domestic policies are regarded as matters to be determined by the preferences of the nation’s citizens and its political institutions. Such a mode of economic integration imposes minimal constraints on domestic policymaking. Thus, the Bretton Woods regime of the post-war era permitted national policymakers to focus on domestic problems while enabling global trade to recover from the war, and indeed to flourish during the 1950s and 1960s. Governments were left free to run their own independent economic policies and to erect their preferred versions of the welfare state. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the IMF were core global institutions in the management of shallow integration. While the GATT negotiations were responsible for sharp reductions in at-the-border restrictions on trade in goods and services, the problems of using the GATT to govern the increasingly complex world trading system were becoming more and more obvious by the 1980s.

    As economic integration advanced it became clear that domestic, ‘behind-the-border’ policies that had not been previously subjected to international scrutiny, could pose serious impediments to trade. Thus issues of deep integration emerged on the international agenda. Instead of the older agenda of removing barriers that block exchange at national borders, these new agenda items included conflict over domestic regulatory regimes and perceived policy spillovers, as well as concerns over environmental externalities and risk management. In short, the transition to deep integration seemed to require analysis of the economic, political, and scientific aspects of virtually all domestic policies, regulations, and practices. As a consequence the distinction between domestic policy and international trade policy tends to disappear under deep integration since any discretionary use of domestic regulations can be construed as posing an impediment to – and transaction costs on – international trade: ‘Global rules, in effect, become the domestic rules’ (Rodrik 2011: 83).

  • 9 - Integration through cooperative competition

  • 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 266-294

  • Summary

    The ‘European Miracle’

    We normally think of competition as an adversarial process. In the case of economic regulation, for example, adversarial competition is supposed to resolve the contest between different approaches in favour of one particular regulatory regime so as to avoid conflicting rules in a single transaction. But as Paul Stephan (2000) pointed out, regulatory competition can also exist in a cooperative framework that permits different regimes to coexist. Such systems encourage potential subjects of regulation to choose which regime they intend to follow. These choices in turn encourage states or other rule-making bodies to offer regulatory packages that will attract transactions from which they can derive economic and other benefits. The issue then becomes whether competition among regulatory authorities leads to races to the bottom or to races to the top, in the sense of regulations more closely tailored to the specific needs of different parties. This issue will be examined analytically in the next sections. In the immediately following pages I suggest, by way of introduction, that cooperative competition, far from being a new phenomenon, is one of the most characteristic features of European history in the centuries that preceded the rise of nationalism. Unfortunately, such precedents are too often ignored by those who assume that ‘ever closer union’ can be achieved, not through cooperative competition but only through top-down harmonization of the laws and policies of the member states of the EU.

    David Landes, the distinguished economic historian, has even seen in the political fragmentation of the Old Continent one of the roots of its later global dominance. By decentralizing authority, fragmentation made Europe safe from single-stroke conquest – the fate of many empires of the past, from Persia after Issus (333 BC) and Rome after the sack of Alaric (410 AD) to Aztec Mexico and Inca Peru. The American historian concludes his argument with a citation from Patricia Crone’s Pre-Industrial Societies: ‘Far from being stultified by imperial government, Europe was to be propelled forward by constant competition between its component parts’ (Landes 1998: 528). These and other scholars stressing the importance of inter-state competition in European history have been inspired by the arguments advanced by Eric Jones in his well-known book The European Miracle.

  • 14 - The external dimension of freedom, security and justice

  • 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 475-515

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • The AFSJ is a relatively new policy area that was mainly designed to facilitate cooperation between the EU Member States. The further development of the AFSJ followed a traditional pattern: as it started to function well internally, it soon required an external dimension and the Union soon found itself concluding international agreements and formulating policies on the wide range of issues covered by the AFSJ. Like many aspects of EU external relations law, the relatively fast coming of age of AFSJ was triggered by a number of external events and developments, including crime, drug-trafficking and terrorist attacks.

  • In all main areas of the AFSJ (immigration, judicial cooperation in civil and criminal matters, approximation of criminal law, police cooperation and fundamental rights protection) the EU has enacted legislation and concluded international agreements revealing the strong link between internal and external policies. One of the elements that distinguish AFSJ external relations from other areas is that the issues almost always relate to what are perceived as fundamental and sometimes constitutional dimensions or prerogatives of statehood.

    • The AFSJ as an internal, organizational concept

    The AFSJ was primarily created as an internal concept, and therefore its position in EU external relations may not be self-evident. The core Treaty provisions in the TEU and the TFEU underline the inward-focused nature of the AFSJ.

  • 5 - Scope and choice 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 138-188

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • Once we have established that the EU has a competence to act (existence of competence), and know the impact of this competence on the Member States’ capacity to act in the same field (nature of competence), we must also examine the scope (width, or ambit) of the competence which exists, and we may need to make a choice between different legal bases if EU international action may be based on more than one Treaty article.

  • Establishing the appropriate legal basis entails an assessment of the exact scope of EU powers, and classification of the measure as falling within that scope. Given the different procedures tied to competence-conferring provisions, and the different nature as shared or exclusive, the choice of legal basis is a highly politicized and sometimes controversial process.

  • In scope and choice of EU competence, we can distinguish between a vertical situation between the Member States and the Union, and a horizontal intra-EU situation. From a vertical perspective, the question is, can a given external measure be undertaken at all by the Union on the basis of the powers which have been established to exist? The horizontal situation concerns the question, if a measure does indeed fall within the powers of the Union, and if a number of candidate legal bases exist, which is the correct legal basis?

  • The legal methods to establish the scope of Treaty provisions and choose the correct legal basis provide a central role to the Court in arbitrating competing intra-EU power relations. To avoid subjective views deciding the choice of competence, the Court developed an ‘objective’ legal method to ensure legal certainty for the institutions and Member States: the appropriate legal basis, or centre-of-gravity test.

  • 6 - From the democratic deficit to a democratic default? The normative dimension of the euro crisis

  • 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 179-207

  • Summary

    The European Parliament: a formal solution to the EU’s legitimacy problems

    No country can become a member of the EU unless it is recognized by the other member states as being a true representative democracy. The EU itself, however, is not a fully-fledged democracy: it suffers from a serious ‘democratic deficit’ – not a total absence but an incomplete development, or even a distortion, of the practices and institutions of representative democracy. For example, legislation can only be initiated by the non-elected European Commission. Hence the jocular paradox: if the EU were a state it could not become a member of the Union! Despite a vast body of literature trying to explain this paradox, and despite the important place the issue of the democratic deficit has occupied in public discourse for the last twenty or so years, few problems of European integration have been so consistently misunderstood, or deliberately misconstrued. I suggest that a correct understanding of the question must start from the realization that the problem of the insufficient democratic legitimacy of the European project only started to attract attention in the late 1980s, and became increasingly visible with the steady growth of European competences, culminating in monetary union.

    The standard explanation of the limited democratic legitimacy of the EC/EU has been first the absence of a directly elected EP and then – after 1979 when direct European elections took place for the first time – the inadequate powers granted to the supranational parliament. As already noted in chapter 1, the powers of this body have been expanded treaty after treaty without, however, producing the hoped-for results. According to a knowledgeable student of the EP, the driving force in this expansion of parliamentary powers has been the power of the democratic idea. He writes: ‘Governments have found it extremely difficult to resist an increase in the role of the EP, because they have not easily been able to formulate an alternative for addressing the “democratic deficit”’ (Shackleton 2012: 145). In fact, it would be more correct to speak of the unwillingness, rather than inability, to formulate alternatives for tackling the question of insufficient democratic legitimacy.

  • 2 - Instruments of EU external action

  • 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 34-73

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • In this chapter we analyse the instruments through which the EU conducts its external relations. We distinguish between instruments that are adopted within the EU legal order (internal) and those adopted by the Union in the international order (international). These may be instruments adopted by the EU alone (autonomous instruments) or the result of agreements between the Union and a counter-party (conventionally agreed instruments). These instruments can then be legally binding (hard law) or they may be committing in other more indirect or political ways (soft law).

  • International agreements are the EU’s legal external relations tools par excellence. They form the key legal instrument to allow the Union to play along in the global legal order and to establish legal relationships with third states and other international organizations. If the EU lacked the competence to conclude international agreements, its external relations would be the object of study of political scientists and international relations experts only, and not so much of lawyers. The main part of this chapter will therefore be devoted to the conclusion and variety of international agreements (including mixed agreements, association agreements (AAs) and agreements to accede or withdraw);

  • 1 - The EU as a global legal actor

  • 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 1-33

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • This chapter points to the fact that the EU is an international actor. We define this notion as an entity which interacts with third countries and international organizations (and even its own Member States), in ways which are legally and politically distinguishable from its constitutive Member States. In the global context, this entity thus has a stand-alone identity composed of values, interests and policies which it seeks to define and promote internationally as its own.

  • This chapter then indicates the importance of legal rules in organizing EU international action, and shows that EU external relations law consists of an internal and an external dimension. In its internal dimension it consists of the set of rules which govern the constitutional and institutional legal organization of this legal entity in pursuit of its interests in the world. The external dimension comprises the rules governing the relationship of the EU with the international legal order in which it is active.

  • In order to study EU external relations law in all its complexity, this chapter provides an overview of the architecture of EU external relations. It outlines the existence of the EU as an international organization with legal personality, which exists legally distinct from its Member States. It also shows that the EU is based on the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the Union (TFEU), which each contain crucial legal principles constituting the body of EU external relations law.

  • Finally, in order to be an international actor, the EU needs agents to make the decisions and represent the EU on the global stage. These include the EU institutions, but also other key players in the law of EU external relations.

    • An international organization or something else?

    A textbook on EU external relations law is founded on the premise that the EU can have legal relations with third states and other international organizations. Hence, it is an international actor, with a distinct legal existence just like EU Member States, or international organizations such as the United Nations. What does it mean to say that the EU is an international actor?

  • 1 - Monetary union as a metaphor

  • 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 20-57

  • Summary

    The rhetoric of European monetary union

    The agreement on EMU included in the 1992 Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty) represents the most daring move towards fully-fledged integration undertaken by European leaders so far. However, the crisis of the euro zone, its origins and political and economic consequences, cannot be discussed only in terms of that fateful decision, but must be viewed as part of a more general crisis of the particular approach to European integration that has been followed since the 1950s. Piris (2011) distinguished three dimensions of this crisis: the risk of a collapse of monetary union; popular distrust in the European institutions and widespread disenchantment with the very idea of European integration; and dysfunctional institutions and ineffective decision processes in a Union of twenty-eight highly heterogeneous member states. The best way to understand the nature of the general crisis, I submit, is to start from EMU because monetary union, with all its gaps and fragilities, is a metaphor for the entire process of European integration as it has developed so far.

    The essence of metaphor is ‘understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another’ (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 5). In particular, structural metaphors ‘allow us. . .to use one highly structured and clearly delineated concept to structure another’ (ibid.: 61). In the following pages and chapters I shall use EMU primarily as a structural metaphor.

  • Preface

  • 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 xxix-xxxv

  • Summary

    Three guiding perspectives to EU external relations law

    The patchwork of EU external policies and instruments is the result of more than fifty years of European integration, and is in need of a strong sense of collective purpose in order to present a coherent response to challenges for Europe in the globalized world of the twenty-first century. Perhaps more than in any of its Member States, EU external relations law plays a crucial role in attaining that objective. In this introductory chapter, we wish to elaborate on what we consider the three ‘guiding perspectives’ crucial in studying this field of law.

  • First, we must naturally study the law, its functioning, interpretation and application. In substantive terms, EU external relations law is a highly complex subject matter where questions of EU law (institutional, constitutional and substantive) meet questions of international law (public, institutional, trade, etc.). This is the self-evident core of this textbook, and its starting point.

  • Second, while studying these rules, we must be fully aware that EU action in the world is then not neutral from the perspective of ‘political union’, e.g. the project of European integration. While at times the most effective option for the twenty-eight EU Member States would be to join forces and tackle international challenges through a single legal entity, that may raise questions relating to European integration itself: if the EU’s voice is heard on the international scene, what does this mean for the Member States’ individual voices? As a consequence, EU external relations law is often shaped by ‘grand’ debates on the future of European integration. Since international relations pertain to the core of state sovereignty, any legal rule organizing the EU as an international actor has the potential to raise questions as to the sort of political union the Member States desire. Furthermore, European integration itself is the consequence of developments in the global environment. Thus, developments in European and global politics will lead to shifting needs of the EU and its Member States in their global representation. This is often reflected through shaping the legal framework organizing any such action.

  • …

  • 6 - The duty of cooperation

  • 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 189-207

  • Summary

    Central issues

  • As a consequence of the complex raft of rules pertaining to EU exclusive, shared pre-emptive, shared non-pre-emptive, parallel and retained Member State competences, there are many scenarios where the EU and the Member States will conduct external relations in a ‘mixed’ configuration.

  • This chapter revolves around Article 4(3) TEU, which contains the generally applicable duty of loyalty in EU law. Derived from that principle is the duty of cooperation, which is of paramount importance in the relationship between the EU and Member States in their external relations. It is a legal duty which applies across the scope of the EU Treaty, and which legally requires certain forms of behaviour of the EU and Member States in international contexts.

  • Tracing the evolution in CJEU case law, this chapter shows that the Court has judicially constructed a duty of cooperation which has evolved from merely requiring duties of best effort, to now requiring duties of result. In this chapter we conceptualize the duty of cooperation in the form of a policy timeline which is subdivided into two phases: the strategy and preparation phase; and the execution and implementation phase. This conceptual framework will explain that the duty of cooperation imposes different obligations of action or inaction on the EU and Member States, depending on which phase of the policy timeline they are currently in, and on the ‘intensity’ of collaboration and state of affairs within each phase.

  • 7 - ‘More 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 208-235

  • Summary

    The crisis as opportunity

    ‘“More Europe” is a mindless slogan, not the answer to all problems’ wrote Samuel Brittan in the Financial Times (2011). The solution to problems, the noted publicist went on, is not more Europe, but less. Integrationist leaders naturally think otherwise. Some of them even see the sovereign-debt crisis of the euro zone as a blessing in disguise – a unique opportunity to complete the process started with monetary union with full political and economic union. In the words of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, as reported by the International Herald Tribune (Castle and Erlanger 2011): ‘In recent months it has become clear: the answer to the crisis can only mean more Europe. . .Without. . . further steps toward stronger European institutions, eventually Europe will lose its effectiveness. We have to look beyond the national state.’ Other members of the Berlin government, possibly including the Chancellor herself, seem to share the view that the crisis could, paradoxically, bring the EU much closer to a political union. The crisis, they argue, cannot be resolved without a much tighter coordination of the fiscal and social policies of the members of the euro zone, even if this implies additional limits on national sovereignty. Also the leader of the opposition Social-Democratic Party, Sigmar Gabriel, is of the opinion that the crisis calls for political union.

    Some intellectuals are even more radical than the politicians. Sociologist Ulrich Beck claimed that the euro crisis was actually a great opportunity (Beck 2009). Two years later Beck went as far as suggesting that the ‘predictable problems’ of monetary union without political union were anticipated and even intended by the fathers of monetary union as a way of forcing national governments to move towards closer political integration. In an article in The Guardian (Beck 2011) he went as far as hailing the crisis as an ‘opportunity for democracy’. Not even the worsening economic conditions of members of the euro zone like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy have dissuaded Beck from the vision of the euro crisis as the instigator of a Habermasian ‘Europe of the Citizens’.

  • 3 - Politics and Religion in a Global Age

  • Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
  • Book:
    Religion and Politics
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    23 April 2014, pp 37-58

  • Summary

    How does globalisation change our understanding of the relationship between religion and politics – beyond the general idea that the core of globalisation is to imply greatly increasing interdependence between states and peoples, with what happens in one part of the world affecting what occurs elsewhere? Yet this is to overestimate the extent to which people agree on what globalisation is and how it affects them. One common focus is to claim that many religious people – especially in many developing countries – regard globalisation as a thoroughly malign and comprehensive Westernising process, as it brings them into sustained contact with values, ideas and norms which many find on the whole unwelcome. This perception of globalisation is to judge it inherently undesirable, a flattening process whereby Western – especially American – capitalism and culture increasingly dominate the globe, including the countries of the developing world. A second aspect of this view is that the Western world keeps itself rich at the expense of the rest of the globe, especially non-Western territories, with poor people, who are often also religious, bearing the brunt of this damaging relationship. This is possible, it is asserted, because Western interests determine trading terms, interest rates and dominance of highly mechanised production, via control of important international institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

  • 11 - Arab Revolutions and Political Islam: A Structural Approach

  • Edited by Johann P. Arnason, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
  • Book:
    Religion and Politics
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    23 April 2014, pp 183-209

  • Summary

    The Middle East and the modernisation process: too rapid, too slow, or rather uneven?

    This chapter builds upon an alternative notion of a modernization process which stresses the uneven character of social change in the Middle East and its political consequences in the second half of the twentieth century. From this perspective, the proposed chapter deals with (1) the root causes of the rise of social and political tensions leading to the so-called ‘Arab revolutions’ and with (2) the origins of the rise of mainstream political Islam. That is, it addresses the roots of the conflict between a corrupt and highly unpopular political and economic elite and its challengers recruited from various social and political groups, first of all mainstream Islamic movements.

    Regarding the root causes of the growth of political Islam and the rise of social and political tensions in the Middle East, at least three different explanations related to the modernisation process, its character and consequences can be identified: that they are (1) the unintended consequence of rather too rapid social change and modernization (see for example Arjomand 1986, 1995, 2006), (2) the result of unsuccessful and failed modernisation projects or development strategies usually pushed from above by secular governments (for example Lewis 2003a, 2003b), or (3) that they are the result of rather too slow modernisation, and thus the persistence of problematic religious traditions and old-fashioned ways of thinking (for example Lerner 1964, AHDR 2002).

Page 190 of 304