The Emerging European Union

Birol Yesilada, David Wood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317343394
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Surveying the European Union's evolution from the Rome Treaty to the present, The Emerging European Union captures the full story of Europe's ongoing integration, its changing identity, and its increasing importance as a global actor in the 21st Century.

This text's concise but comprehensive overview of the history, institutions, and policies of the European Union lays out the major elements of the European integration and explain how the European Union functions. Emphasizing competing intergovernmental and supranational forces, The Emerging European Union explains the origins and future of the European Union as well as its political uniqueness.

Chapter 1

Introduction

---

The subject of this book is the European Union (EU), which came into being in 1993, when the Maastricht Treaty (Treaty on European Union) went into effect. Each significant development in the evolution of the EU has involved the pooling of some governmental functions and powers by the Western European member states. During the 1950s, three regional European organizations were formed: the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC), and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). Initially, six states were involved in the formation of these organizations: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany (the German Federal Republic). Today there are 27 members, 10 of whom became members together in May 2004 and another two joined the Union in January 2007. The members are listed alphabetically in Table 1.1.

In this introductory chapter, we provide a brief overview of the EU from two points of view: (1) how the EU governing institutions collectively make policies designed to be implemented by the 27 member states and (2) how the domestic politics of the member states are related to the politics of the EU.

THE FRAMEWORK OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

The EU has emerged as something more than an organization of regional economic cooperation. It is both an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a political union. EMU has opened the way for common fiscal and monetary policies jointly developed by and for all member states. A common central banking system, akin to the U.S. Federal Reserve System, now exists for member states, and on January 1, 1999, 11 of the then 15 EU members adopted the euro as their common currency, replacing the separate currencies of those states. Coins and bills in euro denominations were introduced into circulation at the beginning of 2002. At the time EMU came into being, three of the 15 member states—Britain, Denmark, and Sweden—did not join it, while Greece, one of the newest members at the time, joined at the beginning of 2001, after satisfying the economic criteria for membership. So far, the 10 newest members of the EU remain outside EMU, while their economic policies reflect varying degrees of progress toward fulfilling the criteria for EMU membership.

The meaning of political union is a combination of what the EU is at present after approximately 50 years of evolution and the aspirations for future political integration leading to the creation of a European federated state. Currently, political union takes the form of specific institutions that are either intergovernmental or supranational in character. This distinction is similar to that between a confederation and a federation. A confederation makes decisions through a process of intergovernmental bargaining, whereas a federation has decision-making bodies that are independent of the member states. For example, one of the legislative bodies of the EU is the Council of Ministers, which consists of ministers of the governments of the 27 EU countries. But the other legislative body, the European Parliament, consists of members elected by the voters in the member states in much the same way as the U.S. Congress is elected. The Council of Ministers is an intergovernmental body, whereas the Parliament is a supranational one. Decision making is a balancing act in the EU, which operates sometimes as a confederation and sometimes as a federation. Supranational bodies can act independently of individual national governments, but their acts can be overridden by intergovernmental bodies, which generally have the upper hand. However, overriding supranational decisions is not necessarily easy and, even if accomplished, may give rise to new supranational decisions with intended effects similar to those earlier rejected.

Table 1.1 ■ Eu Member Countries

Country	Year Joined	Country	Year Joined
Austria	1995	Latvia	2004
Belgium	1958	Lithuania	2004
Bulgaria	2007	Luxembourg	1958
Cyprus	2004	Malta	2004
Czech Republic	2004	Netherlands	1958
Denmark	1973	Poland	2004
Estonia	2004	Portugal	1986
Finland	1995	Romania	2007
France	1958	Slovakia	2004
Germany	1958	Slovenia	2004
Greece	1981	Spain	1986
Hungary	2004	Sweden	1995
Ireland	1973	United Kingdom	1973
Italy	1958

Intergovernmental bodies bring together political leaders or delegates of the 27 member governments. The principal intergovernmental body is the Council of Ministers: a group of 27 ministers who meet to adopt policy measures applicable to all member states. At its apex is the European Council, which consists of heads of state and government. This body meets four times a year to make the EU’s most important decisions, setting the agenda for other legislative bodies to implement. When new institutional arrangements, the admission of new members, or major departures in EU policy are under consideration, the European Council will find the unanimous consensus to give direction to the Council of Ministers, or the new steps will not be taken. Leadership of the Council of Ministers (called the presidency) is rotated from member to member every six months. While the presidency has some agenda-setting powers, decisions are made by the Council as a collective body. Intergovernmental conferences are held from time to time, functioning somewhat like constitutional conventions to consider revisions to the treaties on which the EU is based. Intergovernmental conferences preceded the four major revisions of the Rome Treaty, in 1985, 1991, 1996–1997, and 2000. Then, in 2003, such a body—drawn more broadly from portions of all EU members’ polities, not only from the governments—wrote a “constitutional treaty,” which required ratification by all 25 members before it could take effect. In fact, rejection in 2005 by voters in two of the original member states, France and the Netherlands, was enough to bury the treaty and its innovations, at least temporarily, only to be revised under a new document called the Lisbon Treaty in December 2007. (See Chapter 5.)

Supranational bodies bring together nationals of the member states that are not accountable to their governments, but deliberate in the name of the European citizenry as a whole. The principal supranational institutions follow the threefold separation of powers familiar to students of U.S. government. The European Commission is the executive body. It consists of 27 commissioners, one of whom is separately chosen the president by agreement among the 27 member governments, while the other 26 are chosen individually by governments of each of the other 26 countries and then formally chosen by the Council of Ministers. The separately chosen president assigns responsibilities to the other commissioners. The European Parliament can reject the proposed Commission as a whole, but cannot stop the appointment of individual commissioners.

The other two supranational bodies are the European Parliament (EP) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The 732 members of the EP are directly elected by voters in “Euro elections” every five years. The formal powers of the EP have been growing since the 1970s, but it still shares its legislative power with the Council of Ministers. The ECJ has 27 judges, who, like the commissioners, are nominated by their member governments and formally chosen by the Council of Ministers. The ECJ interprets the treaties of the European Union and has established its authority to declare actions of EU bodies and member states to be in violation of EU law. Its power is akin to the judicial review exercised by the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the European Council and the Council of Ministers act as 27-member intergovernmental bodies that try to find common ground among all member states before making decisions, in the 1980s and 1990s the practice grew, with the encouragement of three treaty revisions, to decide matters in the Council of Ministers by qualified majority vote (QMV).¹ Historically, as QMV advanced, the sovereign independence of the member states, especially the smaller ones, receded, making the EU increasingly, but not exclusively, a supranational arrangement of institutions. The Commission, the ECJ, and the EP are supranational bodies, but they remain dependent on the intergovernmental bodies to register the consensus among member states necessary to move the EU ahead. Clearly, the member states, individually as well as collectively, are major actors in the EU political process. But some are more “major” than others, and there are important differences between them that are relevant to the ways they act at the European level.

This, then, is a brief outline of the EU’s institutional framework. In Chapter 7, we will examine in more depth the respective powers of these institutions and the degree to which they collectively meet the criteria for a democratic system of governance. We will also consider the degree to which the EU is departing from a confederal (i.e., intergovernmental) mode of power sharing and moving toward a federal (i.e., supranational) pooling of sovereignty.

THE MEMBER STATES

Each of the 27 member states (see the list in Table 1.1) encompasses a political system with its own set of laws, governing institutions, political parties, elections, interest groups, and subnational levels of government. Increasingly, developments within the EU have affected these domestic political systems. For example, with the evolution of the European Council as the EU’s principal agenda-setting body, the influence of heads of state and government in their own national political systems has grown at the expense of other elected officials. Summit meetings generate a great amount of media attention, and national-level political actors are dependent on the president or prime minister to negotiate effectively with other heads on behalf of the member country’s interests. Successful negotiations of European Community (EC) package agreements in the 1980s added to the stature of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, French President François Mitterrand, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, all of whom cultivated an image of toughness combined with tactical adroitness in knowing when to make concessions, while retaining the principal advantage. Such image management at the EU level undoubtedly contributed to the exceptional longevity in office of all three of these national leaders. However, as we will see in Chapter 5, the more difficult decisions on the EU agenda in the opening years of the twentyfirst century have made it harder for current leaders to elevate their prestige through the bargains struck in high-level intergovernmental negotiations.

In most of the 27 member states, the domestic government operates within a parliamentary, or semi-parliamentary, system. In such a system, the head of government and the ministers (department heads or cabinet) chosen by the head of government are responsible to a majority in the legislative body, or Parliament. If the government in power loses a vote of confidence in Parliament, it means that its members no longer have the support of the majority, and they must resign in order to allow the Parliament to choose a new government. In some parliamentary systems, as in Britain, they may instead call new elections in order to get the support of the electorate for a new Parliament with a favorable majority.

Britain is usually cited as the classic example of a parliamentary system. British voters choose between candidates of political parties in single-member districts. The winner of the most votes (plurality) in each district gains a seat in the House of Commons. The leader of the party that gains a majority of House of Commons seats becomes the prime minister. He or she then chooses a cabinet from among the elected members to govern the country with the support of the House of Commons majority. The party that wins the election stays in power until defeated in a subsequent election or in a vote of no confidence.

With some specific differences, the other EU members that have parliamentary systems operate under similar rules. The main distinguishing feature of the British system is that one or the other of its two main parties is strong enough to win a majority in its own right. In this, the main parties are helped by the single-member district plurality electoral system, which encourages voters not to waste their votes on smaller parties, but instead to vote for the candidates of parties with a chance of winning a majority of seats, enabling them to form a government. British voters know that the parties that do not get a majority of the seats in Parliament will be on the outside looking in as far as policy making is concerned. In other European parliamentary systems, coalition governments are usually formed because it is rare for one party to have a majority. In all of the parliamentary EU countries other than Britain, the electoral system is one or another variant of proportional representation, which gives parties a share of seats in parliament roughly proportional to their share of the popular vote. Such electoral systems do not penalize voters for voting for smaller parties, although there are thresholds to keep out very small parties, such as the 5 percent barrier in Germany. Most of the members who joined in 2004 have mixed systems, similar to those of France or others discussed below.

Britain is one of a minority of member countries in which issues relating to the EU have been sufficiently divisive that they can affect political contests at the national level. In Chapters 3–5, we discuss some of the British debates over Europe that have occurred over the past 40 years. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, the fights were over the question of whether or not Britain should join or, later, stay in the EC. Sinc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Contents
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• About the Authors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Theories of European Integration
• 3 The Rome Treaty and Its Original Agenda: 1957–1975
• 4 The Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty (1975–1993)
• 5 Efforts to Reach the Next Level (1994–2008)
• 6 Enlargement of the European Union
• 7 Institutional Dynamics in the European Union
• 8 Electoral Politics and Public Opinion
• 9 Economic and Monetary Union
• 10 The EU Budget, Common Agricultural Policy, and Cohesion Policies
• 11 External Economic Relations of the European Union
• 12 Pillar II: Common Foreign and Security Policy
• 13 Justice and Home Affairs
• 14 Conclusion
• Index