The aim of this book has been to restate and develop the original neofunctionalist theory as an approach for explaining outcomes of EU decision-making and to assess the usefulness of the revised neofunctionalist framework in explaining (1) the emergence and development of the PHARE programme, (2) the reform of the Common Commercial Policy and (3) the communitarisation of visa, asylum and immigration policy.

The analysis has indicated the general utility of neofunctionalist insights as a theoretical basis for such an assessment. However, for an adequate understanding of EU decision-making in the above cases, a number of original neofunctionalist assumptions had to be clarified, dropped and reformulated. Taking early neofunctionalism as a starting point, the revised framework departs from it in several ways: a more explicitly ‘soft’ constructivist ontology has been formulated (and combined with the ‘soft’ rational-choice ontology of Haas's neofunctionalism) along with a more equal ontological status between structure and agents. Integration is no longer viewed as an automatic and exclusively dynamic process, but rather occurs under certain conditions and is better characterised as a dialectic process, i.e. the product of both dynamics and countervailing forces. In addition, instead of a grand theory, the revised approach is understood as a wide-ranging, but partial, theory. Moreover, the ‘end of ideology’ and ‘unabated economic growth’ assumptions, which were particularly time sensitive, have been buried.

Neofunctionalism as a Starting Point

Neofunctionalism is the most refined, ambitious and criticised theory of regional integration. It was developed mainly by Ernst Haas and Leon Lindberg in the 1950s and 1960s in response to the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Community (EC). Its intellectual roots can be found in functionalist, federalist and communications theories as well as in the early ‘group theorists’ of American political science. Haas and Lindberg, the two most influential and prolific neofunctionalist writers, mainly combined functionalist and federalist thinking by tying functionalist methods to federalist goals. Neofunctionalism shares with functionalism a focus on technocratic decision-making, incremental change and learning processes. However, although the theory has been dubbed neofunctionalism, this is in some ways a case of ‘mistaken identity’, since it departed significantly from Mitrany's functionalism. Whereas functionalists held that the form, scope and purpose of an organisation would be determined by the task that it was designed to fulfil, neofunctionalists attached considerable importance to the autonomous influence of supranational institutions. While functionalists did not limit integration to any territorial area, neofunctionalists gave integration a regional focus. Moreover, unlike Mitrany, the neofunctionalists did not attach much importance to the change in popular attitudes, but focused instead on the change of elite attitudes.

Another important precursor to neofunctionalist theory was Jean Monnet. Apart from his federal aspirations, he influenced neofunctionalism in other ways.

This book seeks to explain outcomes of EU decision-making. It aims at identifying the factors most relevant for such explanation. For this purpose, the study analyses the interplay of the various supranational, governmental and non-governmental actors involved in decision-making along with supranational, domestic and international structures influencing the process. In the last decade many researchers have shifted their attention to questions such as the nature of the EU political system, the social and political consequences of the integration process and the normative dimension of European integration. However, the issue of explaining outcomes of EU decision-making, which has occupied scholars since the 1950s, is still a very important one. The ongoing salience of this question partly stems from the continuing disagreement among analysts as regards the most relevant factors accounting for the dynamics and standstills of the European integration process and certain segments of it. In addition, this question is of particular interest since the integration process is moving into areas which are commonly referred to as ‘high politics’, spheres that some researchers had factored out of their theories.

Political processes cannot be viewed in a theoretical vacuum since our analysis is always based on certain assumptions and concerns. Hence, empirical findings are always inspired by some theoretical perspective, perhaps without the researcher being aware of it. Theoretical frameworks structure our observations and are useful in terms of choosing variables and collecting data for conducting empirical research.

Visa, Asylum and Immigration Policy

Visa, asylum and immigration which form part of the wider policy field of justice and home affairs (JHA) are relatively new areas of European policy-making. The original text of the Treaty of Rome did not contain any provisions on the co-ordination or harmonisation of visa, asylum and immigration matters. The necessity to deal with these issues in a European context was first mentioned in the Tindemans Report of 1975. However, it received more significant attention during discussions concerning the elimination of internal border controls, following the European Council in Fontainebleau in June 1984. As a result, the Single European Act of 1986, which mandated the creation of an area without internal frontiers, was accompanied by a political declaration stipulating co-operation in matters of entry and stay of third-country nationals. To continue discussions on compensatory measures necessary for the abolition of frontier controls, the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration was set up in 1986 which, as its greatest success, conducted negotiations leading to the signing of the Dublin Convention of 1990. With the Maastricht Treaty, asylum and immigration as well as most of visa policy came into the Union framework, which attributed this policy to the sphere of intergovernmental co-operation within the third pillar of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). Only two aspects of visa policy in Article 100c came into the EC Treaty.

The Common Commercial Policy and Article 113/133

The Common Commercial Policy (CCP) is one of the oldest and most integrated policy areas of the European integration project. It was named in Article 3 of the Treaty of Rome as one of the main policies of the European Economic Community. As Member States were linked in a customs union, it was essential for them to draw up common policies regarding their commercial relations with the rest of the world. The Treaty of Rome was revolutionary in the sense that it granted the new supranational entity an external personality with the authority to set out, negotiate and enforce all aspects of trade relations with the rest of the world. This was to be achieved through a common trade policy based on the principles of a common external tariff, common trade agreements with the rest of the world and the uniform application of trade instruments across the Member States. The core elements of the CCP and the mechanisms through which it is to be conducted were set out in Articles 110 to 115 of the Rome Treaty. Although the Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice as well as the Constitutional Treaty made some amendments, the main principles of the CCP have largely remained the same.

Article 113, the centrepiece of the external trade policy, provides that the Council will give a mandate to the Commission to open negotiations with third countries, in which the Commission acts as the sole negotiator.

The PHARE Programme

Initiated originally to assist Poland and Hungary, and later other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, PHARE (Poland and Hungary: Aid for Restructuring of the Economies) has undergone considerable change over the years and became the most important pre-accession instrument financed by the Union to support the applicant countries of that region in their preparation to join the European Union. The PHARE programme became operational in January 1990. Before that, in December 1989, the Council of Ministers had adopted – on the basis of Article 235 EC – the PHARE regulation which forms the legal foundation of the programme. The origins of the PHARE programme, however, go back even further. It originated in the Community's responsibility for the co-ordination of G24 aid to Poland and Hungary. This mandate, which the European Commission obtained at the G7 summit in Paris in July 1989, was until then ‘the highest foreign policy accolade the Commission has ever had bestowed on it’. Never before had the Commission been responsible for the aid co-ordination of its Member States and third countries.

From 1989 to 1997 the programme's aim was mainly to provide support for the process of transition towards a market economy and towards democratic institutions in the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC). It focused on technical assistance at government and ministry level in the areas of public finance, agriculture, the environment and privatisation.

The Preamble to the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe contains the expressions ‘transcend’, ‘common destiny’, ‘rights of each individual’ and ‘responsibilities towards future generations and the Earth’, and these words are framed by a conception of Europe as a ‘great venture which makes of it a special area of human hope’. While this does not quite attain the exalted level of an American belief in a ‘manifest destiny’, the intentions of the Président de la Convention, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and his colleagues are nonetheless apparent. The ‘new Europe’ is not to be understood merely as bureaucracy or as an expanded market, but as a vital entity, the bearer of intellectual, cultural and spiritual continuities. In this chapter, I explore some of the dimensions that such aspirations touch upon, once they are emancipated from high-flown intention and anchored in the matrix of tensions and contradictions that afflict all efforts to define and defend identity in an era of globalisation and religiously inspired terror.

The enlargement of the European Union (EU) to include ten new states prompted an immediate debate centring on such questions as migration, border controls, labour regulation, the common agricultural policy, the costs of regional subsidies and defence. Such debates are as important as they are inevitable. But enlargement also raised issues that go beyond the agenda of economic, monetary and political integration, issues that concern the limits and integrity of European culture as such. While the accession of Finland, Sweden and Austria during the 1990s increased the size of the EU, membership for the new states which joined in 2004 and for those seeking membership in the future raises questions more profound and far-reaching than those concerning the feasibility of the EU's current decision-making procedures. For most of those new states, membership of the EU is at the same time part of a ‘return to Europe’ in a broader sense. The fact that some of these states have Slavic populations, that some have immature democratic polities, or large peasant populations, or populations which have for centuries been within the orbit of orthodox Christianity or Islam, raises questions about Europe's internal cultural identity. Such questions have become more sharply focused as a result of the larger geo-political and cultural realignments of which Europe is a part.

To be sure, there is no logical reason why debate about European culture and identity should be dependent upon shifts in geopolitics.