How the EU Really Works

Olivier Costa, Nathalie Brack

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351249218
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Decision Making
• Index: Business

The European Union is facing a profound crisis and is confronted with multiple challenges. Over the last two decades, it has experienced a series of dramatic changes to its powers, its institutional design, its constitutional framework and its borders. The current political, economic and financial crisis puts the EU's legitimacy further under pressure and creates the impression of a turning point.

This book provides a concise analysis of the EU and its dynamics by paying particular attention to its day-to-day operation. It aims to help students and scholars understand its evolution, its institutions, its decision-making and the interactions between the EU and various actors. Avoiding abstract theorizing, the authors propose an easy to read analysis of how the Union works while recognizing the complexity of the situation. Throughout the book, the key issues of European integration are addressed: democratic deficit, politicization, the role of member states, institutional crisis and citizen involvement.

This edition has been fully updated to include:

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• Brexit, the migration crisis as well as the consequences of the 2014 EP elections for all the EU institutions;

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• An in-depth analysis of the 2014 EU elections;

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• More empirical data across the board;

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• New developments in EU decision-making such as the trialogues, and differentiated integration;

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• More in-depth discussion of the role of interest groups in EU policy-making.

This text is of key interest to students, scholars and readers interested in European Union politics and studies.

Introduction

One faces the threat of banality when writing the introductory chapter of a book on the European Union (EU). We are indeed constrained to acknowledge the success of this form of regional integration, unprecedented in both scale and intensity, and yet also admit the limitations and shortcomings of this process. It is especially so since the Brexit vote in June 2016, which highlighted even more the risk of regression of the integration process and underlined the extent to which the EU’s legitimacy is questioned amongst the population. Despite its lack of originality, both paths – the success and limitations of European integration – will be explored in succession.

1 An original construction, an undeniable success

European integration is an unprecedented and unparalleled success. However, the history of Europe is ambivalent. On the one hand, the true concept of Europe has emerged since the shared values of ancient Greece that provoked continued reflection on the conditions, opportunity and virtues of regional integration. On the other hand, Europe’s history has been punctuated by countless conflicts that have seen nations exhaust themselves in endless wars. European countries contributed to global unrest twice in the twentieth century. Nonetheless, the Community experience has succeeded in rapidly and completely pacifying relations between Member States. Even though its leaders still experience friction and national sentiments endure, the EU has had no internal diplomatic crises or any form of economic, symbolic or armed conflict amongst its members. While citizens do not necessarily demonstrate strong affiliation to the EU, they no longer imagine going to war with their neighbours. Until the Brexit vote, it was also considered unthinkable that they could lose the benefits of free movement or the protection of their human rights. European citizens’ support for the EU institutions, its actors and its policies is limited, but the European integration project is most often not disputed. Moreover, opinion polls show that the Brexit vote has acted as an electroshock, and has sparked a renewed commitment to European integration in all Member States, including the United Kingdom.¹ From an economic perspective, even if the current crisis creates mixed assessments as to the pertinence of its policies, it is clear that European integration allowed national economies to recover after the war or, for the more recent Member States, to have a rapid transition to a market economy. Today, the EU is the world’s largest economy and by far the leading aid donor to developing countries. Despite the essentially ‘civil’ nature of its power, it is also a key player in international relations and, as such, the EU contributes to the promotion of peace, democracy, human rights and multilateralism at the global level, and plays a central role in issues such as the fight against global warming.² Even though the EU is often described as being ‘in crisis’, it remains a strong magnet for its neighbours. Of the approximately 200 existing regional integration organizations, the EU is the most advanced in every way (integration, institutions and policies) and is also the largest in terms of wealth, population, territory and number of Member States.

It is the only organization that has seen the emergence of independent supranational institutions endowed with authority, which involves citizens directly in its actions and which has developed a full repertoire of values, goals and government standards.³ After more than 65 years of European integration, we must acknowledge the undeniable success of this singular experience. This being the case, no one can ignore the difficulties the European Union faces today. Euroscepticism has become a stable component of political life in most Member States and European integration now seems to lack any plan or direction. Moreover, for the first time in EU history, there is a fear that certain policies will be dismantled, or even that one or more Member States will leave. How can this be explained?

2 An integration experience faced with a crisis of trust and growth

Generally, since the early 1990s, developments in European integration no longer seem to fit a coherent project. Instead they seem to reflect partial reactions towards a series of unforeseen crises. Thus, the integration process appears to be more reactive than proactive. It seems that institutions deploy all their energy in reacting to current events and crises rather than defining a medium- and long-term strategy. While the innovations contained in the Single European Act emerged from a long evolution and a widespread desire to revive an integration process that had lost its momentum, more recent innovations (Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, draft European Constitutional treaty and the Lisbon treaty) have been directly dictated by two kinds of constraints.⁴

Reform was primarily driven by the need to address the upheaval in Central and Eastern Europe. The collapse of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s forced EU officials and heads of state to consider the prospect of extending European integration to the entire continent much earlier than expected. After some uncertainty, they agreed on a strategy of simultaneously deepening and broadening the EU (European Council of Copenhagen, June 1993). The goal was, first, to rapidly deepen European integration in order to provide the EU with the ability to respond to events in the East (through the establishment of a common foreign and security policy and cooperation on justice and home affairs) and to anticipate the likely difficulties of treaty reform in an enlarged Europe (through the institution of the Euro, expansion of Community jurisdiction and institutional reform). Meanwhile, the decision was made to open negotiations without delay for the integration of Central and Eastern European countries so as to stabilize the region as soon as possible, end a senseless East–West divide and support the transition of these candidate countries towards democracy and a market economy.

Second, Community reform since the early 1990s has been motivated by growing concerns in the general public over European construction. After a long period of relative indifference towards this process (rather hastily described as a ‘permissive consensus’),⁵ successive reforms of various treaties provoked strong reactions in national politics and public opinion.⁶ Upon ratification of the Maastricht Treaty (1992–1993), many people discovered the extent of European integration and the constraints it imposed on Member State governments. Many politicians, opinion leaders, civil society actors and ordinary citizens stated their strong opposition to European integration even while this treaty sought to establish a link between the EU and its citizens in order to better justify the extension of its powers (European citizenship, strengthened powers of the European Parliament, creation of the European ombudsman, etc.). These protests have varied over time depending on the period and the individual Member States but different forms of resistance to Europe have become stable components of EU political life and now form the major forces in many states.⁷ In their attempt to resolve these difficulties, treaty negotiators have opened Pandora’s Box: they have attracted attention from both political leaders and citizens on issues such as the democratic deficit or European citizenship and have gradually made the functioning of the Union and its institutional reform important political issues. This contributed to repeated treaty revisions born from the desire to better reflect citizens’ expectations in matters of public policy and pursue the ‘democratization’ of European construction, a process that goes back to the decision, in 1976, to elect the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage.⁸ In the early 2000s, this concern for democracy even generated an entirely new process at the supranational level, with the institution of the Convention on the future of Europe, which drafted a constitutional treaty for the EU. However, the constraints of intergovernmental negotiation have limited the ability of Member State representatives to achieve their goals. Successive treaties have thus suffered a great deal of criticism and have faced more pronounced difficulties in ratification.

The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon put an end to all wide-ranging reforms by providing two clear texts: the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The European sovereign debt crisis that started at the end of 2008 has since led to the negotiation of new texts (the Stability and Growth Pact, the Twopack, the Sixpack) and to the Fiscal Compact – formally, the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union. This new intergovernmental treaty has been signed, in March 2012, by only 25 Member States but the discussions on the coordination of national fiscal and budgetary policies have also reactivated the reflexions on the opportunity to build a Federal Union, for instance, during the European Council of June 2012. However, no concrete initiative has been taken and the extreme tensions arising from the debates over the multiannual budgetary perspective (2014–2020) have shown that national leaders are reluctant to make further sacrifices of sovereignty to the EU.

In June 2016, the decision of the citizens of the United Kingdom to demand the exit of their State from the European Union, through the activation of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, led to an unprecedented confidence crisis and raised strong questions about the fate of Europe. National leaders have been slow to come up with solutions to overcome this crisis, but they are also slow to take initiatives to challenge the nature of European integration. The EU therefore remains functional but failing, a construction in which all the most recent elements are relatively adequate answers to pressing issues but which struggle to form a legible and coherent whole.

The Treaty of Lisbon thus remains the main frame of the EU political system. Despite its weaknesses, it provides answers to a number of outstanding issues that have arisen since the Maastricht Treaty. It introduces a simpler system of majority voting in the Council (in application since the 1st of November 2014), which is also better adapted to future enlargements as it generalizes the use of the co-decision procedure (now called ‘ordinary legislative procedure’) and of qualified majority voting within the Council. It also merges the three ‘pillars’ introduced by the Maastricht Treaty and gives the EU a single legal status. It establishes a permanent President of the European Council and clarifies, to a certain extent, the division of powers between the national and European levels. The Treaty opens the door to the theorization of a European regime by devoting a chapter to the issue of democracy. It also defines the limits of integration. However, far from the ambitious goals of the Constitutional Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty confirms the hybrid character of the EU, at the crossroads between intergovernmental and federal perspectives. This is mirrored by how, through the Council and the European Council, Member States not only remain significant but even gain importance. The treaty also regulates the European institutions’ use of their powers through the principles of attribution, subsidiarity and proportionality. It finally opens, for the very first time, the possibility for a Member State to leave the EU. While some considered it to be a symbolic concession to the most Eurosceptic national officials, intended to compensate the expansion of EU powers and the strengthening of its supranational aspect, with the Brexit, it will lead to a regression of European integration. The first decisions taken after the entry into force of the new Treaty, particularly regarding the choice of the Presidents of the Commission, the European Council and the High Representative for Foreign Policy, reinforced the sense of a sustainable balance between intergovernmental and supranational logic.

The page has been turned on institutional reforms, which had proved particularly laborious. Today, it is hard to see where an effective revival of the federal project could come from, apart from declarations of good intentions and initiatives that have no lasting benefits. The strategy of constitutionalizing the EU, launched in the 2000s, has demonstrated its limits and perverse effects: it sought to address citizens’ concerns, but has increased the reluctance of many of them towards European integration.⁹ After a very long sequence of institutional reforms, the EU must once again demonstrate its utility by focusing on policies. This is the course of action followed under Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the Commission since 2014, who intends to reduce the number of legislative initiatives but focus on themes that are at the heart of citizens’ concerns, i.e. growth, employment, global warming, security.

The sovereign debt crisis did not serve as a demonstration of that, since it was mainly managed in an intergovernmental way by the European Council and the Eurogroup – i.e. the meeting of the finance ministers of the Eurozone. As noted by Copsey, the Eurozone crisis has confirmed the ‘powerlessness of the EU’s collective leadership’ and should not hide the fact that the EU still faces significant challenges that need to be addressed.¹⁰ Similarly, the refugee crisis in 2015 highlighted the shortcomings of the free movement of persons, which was not designed to deal with such a possibility, and made the EU a priority target for populist and extremist movements opposed to migrants. For if, more than ever, the legitimacy of the unusual system of the EU has been called into question, opinion polls (including Eurobarometer surveys) demonstrate that people remain committed to the principle of European integration: a survey of December 2016 shows that the citizens of any Member State – including the United Kingdom – are not willing to leave the EU.¹¹ On the other hand, European citizens expect the EU to be particularly enterprising regarding issues related to globalization such as off-shoring, climate change, social dumping, migration, international security issues, energy supply, regulation of capitalism and of financial system, etc. Indeed, recent surveys also show that citizens feel the EU should focus on their concerns regarding the economy, unemployment and immigration as well as on tackling poverty and social exclusion.¹²

The European integration crisis is not unique: it is only the most visible and most evident aspect of a crisis affecting contemporary democracies – in Europe and elsewhere. It is a multiple crisis: economic, social, environmental, political. Contemporary states are undermined by autonomist or independent movements (as evidenced by renewed regionalist claims in Scotland and Catalonia), by phenomena of political dislocation, and by frontal oppositions within society. Societies are increasingly divided according to territories, religions, lifestyles, ethnic origins … There is a general decline in the citizens’ loyalty towards institutions and parties as well as a rejection of elites which are not specific to the European Union, but are even more acute and visible at that level.

3 A political system under constraints

Under the present circumstances, and pending a potential revival of European integration through public policy (or in-depth reforms as promoted recently by several scholars),¹³ the functioning of the EU is strongly dependent on a series of tensions and difficulties. Methodologically speaking, it is crucial to analyse its progress within the global context. The European integration process has long been studied mainly by focusing on EU’s capitals (Brussels, Luxembourg, Strasbourg) and, at best, taking into account the influence of national permanent missions to the EU. It is, however, advisable to emphasize the interactions that currently exist between European institutions and society in general, and to propose a more encompassing view. The issue of public opinion, which, in the 1980s, did not yet really impact the EU, now weighs significantly on the determination of its agenda and decision-making.¹⁴

Three paradoxes specific to the EU stem from this situation.

1 First, one must recognize that even if the EU is usually seemingly absent from national public arenas and even if it seems remote to citizens, the EU is now an inescapable reality. The relative weakness of EU media coverage does not preclude an actual awareness of citizens of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Boxes
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 An original construction, an undeniable success
• 2 An integration experience faced with a crisis of trust and growth
• 3 A political system under constraints
• 4 The importance of taking Euroscepticism seriously
• 5 The pitfalls of a political analysis of the European Union
• 1 A political system forged by history
• 1.1 Motivations for European integration: returning to an old idea
• 1.2 A reasoned chronology of European integration
• 2 The main theoretical approaches in EU studies
• 2.1 The grand theories of European integration: neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism and federalism
• 2.2 A ‘normalization’ of EU studies
• 2.3 Europeanization
• 2.4 How can we theorize the EU institutional system?
• 3 Executive power
• 3.1 The European Council: the impetus
• 3.2 The European Commission, a central actor after all?
• 4 The legislative power
• 5 Organs of control
• 5.1 The Court of Justice of the European Union
• 5.2 The Court of Auditors
• 5.3 The European Ombudsman
• 5.4 The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF)
• 6 Other organs involved in EU policy making
• 6.1 The consultative bodies
• 6.2 Financial agencies
• 6.3 EU agencies
• 6.4 National parliaments and European integration
• 6.5 Non-institutional actors in the EU
• Conclusion
• 7 Decision-making in the European Union
• 7.1 The EU’s competences
• 7.2 Decision-making procedures in the EU
• Conclusion
• 8 EU decision-making models
• 8.1 The plurality of decision-making styles
• 8.2 Two distinctive features of EU decision-making
• 9 The EU decision-making process from a public policy network perspective
• 9.1 A sequential analysis of public policies
• 9.2 Communities and networks of actors
• 9.3 Emergence of consensus in a network: advocacy coalitions
• 9.4 EU decision-making: between openness and conservatism
• Conclusion
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index