Continuing European integration, and more broadly global economic integration, has exposed the increasing discrepancy between nationally grounded tax policy and transnational economic affairs. Economic, political and cultural integration creates competitive pressures that challenge the fiscal and political sustainability of national policies, creating winners and losers (Genschel and Schwarz, 2011). National tax policy, in a transnational context, has significant distributional implications, both intranationally and internationally. Inside the EU, the highly uneven fiscal and political effects of integration in areas such as budget policy (see Chapter 6), monetary policy (see Chapter 9) and trade policy (see Chapter 14) are clearly visible.

Although the financial and economic crisis have ushered in a decade of lasting damage to the European economy, the political consequences have also been severe. Conflict among member states has threatened the progress of European integration, while polarisation and unrest have unsettled domestic politics in a host of European countries. The crisis has brought into question the ability of the single market to weather the pressures of the past decade as national governments have sought to address the slow economic growth and recovery by instituting a variety of protectionist measures to stimulate their economies. While such measures can shore up key industries, protect jobs and maintain a strategic international advantage in the wake of the financial crash, it puts the viability and effectiveness of the single market at risk.

‘Take back control’: in the lead up to a June 2016 plebiscite on whether to remain in or leave the EU, this was the rallying cry that framed the predominant narrative on the pro-Brexit side. Whatever might explain the determinants of individual voter choice in the eventual decision of the British electorate to leave by a majority of 52 per cent to 48 per cent, public debate during the campaign crystallised around the proposition that the UK should reclaim its sovereignty. The content of this cry for sovereignty was not empty. It was understood to mean the return of powers to the UK government for unilateral decision-making – powers that had been previously ceded to the EU, even though UK representatives are integral to EU decision-making processes. While the supposed material advantages of greater sovereignty outside the EU were emphasised, including the ability for the UK to adopt a more sustainable migration regime and to strike its own trade deals, a more principled case for national self-government undergirded the case to leave the EU. Reviewing the final pre-plebiscite statements of prominent publications and political figures who advocated a vote to leave the EU is telling in this regard. The editorial of a weekly conservative magazine, The Spectator, referred to ‘the EU’s fundamental lack of democracy’, an EP that ‘represents many nations, but with no democratic legitimacy’ and ‘the unelected President of the European Commission’ for whom ‘even the notion of democratic consent’ seems a distant concern. The article concludes: ‘To pass up the chance to stop our laws being overridden by Luxembourg and our democracy eroded by Brussels would be a derogation of duty … democracy matters. Let’s vote to defend it’ (The Spectator, 2016). Boris Johnson, a prominent Conservative politician who was a leading voice in the leave campaign, wrote in his broadsheet op-ed: ‘If Britain votes to Remain in the EU, then we continue to be subject to an increasingly anti-democratic system’; ‘we believe in democracy … and we are mad to throw it away’ (Johnson, 2016).

Prior to the end of the Cold War, Europe’s security and defence depended critically on the United States’ commitment to NATO. The EU, under its successive guises, had no role whatsoever in this policy area. This was in part because most EU member states preferred the Union – as a self-styled ‘civilian actor’ – not to dabble in matters of war and peace; and in part because ‘Atlanticist’ countries like the UK refused to allow it. All this changed in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall (see Box 16.4), for three main reasons. First, Europe ceased, in the 1990s, to be at the centre of the US radar screen. Washington had new and more important demons to chase in the Middle East and Asia. Second, the EU was gradually emerging as a global player and was eager to emerge as a foreign and security policy actor in its own right. Third, eruptions were occurring all around the EU’s periphery, from the Balkans to the Black Sea and from the Bosporus to the Atlantic. The need to engage in ‘crisis management’ in the neighbourhood became compelling. The US saw no reason why such a task should be assumed by Americans. A European agent was required to step up to the plate.

‘Schengen’ refers to an agreement signed between five member states of the EC – the Benelux countries, France and Germany – in June 1985 in the Luxembourgish town of the same name. The 1985 Schengen agreement and its implementing convention signed in June 1990 (the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement, hearafter CISA) are best known for establishing the Schengen area, where systematic, internal border controls between participating countries have been removed. For the best part of the 1990s, Schengen operated as an intergovernmental framework that involved EU member state representatives, but outside of the Community legal order and Union institutions. This situation came to an end with the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam on 1 May 1999, which incorporated the Schengen framework in EU law and policy.

Agriculture is one of the oldest and most developed policy domains in the EU. Approximately 40 per cent of the EU budget is spent on the CAP. Current EU farm policy is very encompassing, affecting all types of agricultural issues ranging from production quota to food safety and animal welfare. Due to agriculture’s increasing multidimensional character – based on its interconnectedness with trade, environmental, development and social policies – a multitude of actors now mobilises and seeks access to decision makers when CAP reforms are negotiated. Despite the enhanced involvement of non-agricultural actors, an important point of critique on the CAP still focuses on the environmentally polluting effects of the intensive agriculture that it supports. Although the Commission has been trying to give the CAP a greener image for more than a decade, its efforts have only had mixed results.

Adopted by 152 countries on 19 December 2018, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is the first meaningful attempt to organise global migration governance and to diminish the negative consequences of restrictive migration policies by calling explicitly for the creation of humanitarian visas and improved migration statistics and encouraging stakeholders and in particular states to respect migrants’ rights. It also makes international cooperation between countries of origin, transit and destination a central pillar of a global strategy.