EUROPEAN INTEGRA-TION, EUROPEAN

UNION AND

EUROPEANIZATION

Introduction to Contemporary European Studies

I33004 Seme Park

CONTENTS European Integration European Union Europeanization Conclusion End of Part 1

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION Definition of European Integration1. Intergovernmental Approach① The basic assumption is that the main actors in the EU are the gov-

ernments of the member states.

② National governments have a clear set of preference about what policies they would like to see allocated to the European level, and the content of the policies should be.

③ Also the governments ‘bargain hard’ with each other on the basis of these preferences, and only agree to outcomes at the European level if these outcomes promote their preferences.

④ Well explains why the process of integration stalled in the 1970s, as governments preferred national to European solution to the economic problem in that period.

⑤ Also explains how a convergence of governments’ preferences in fa-vour of a continental-scale market, and the careful design of a set of new decision-making rules enable European integration to be re-launched in the 1980s and 1990.

⑥ However, cannot explain the increase in the powers of the European Par-liament (EP) in the treaty reforms since the mid-1980s.

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION2. Supranational Approach

① There is a basic assumption that European integration is a deterministic process driven by underlying political, economic, and social forces.

② Ernst Haas proposed ‘neo-functionalist’ theory of economic and political integration. (concept of ‘Spillover’)

③ Bela Belassa’s theory of economic integration predicted a logical teleological development from a customs union to a political union.

④ Most scholars within the supra-national framework emphasize the role of ‘non-state’ actors, such as economic and social interest groups and the supra-national institutions of the EU themsevles.

⑤ Explains the evolution from the coal and steel community to the customs union.

⑥ Also explains the development from the single market to economic and monetary union, and how a market on a continental scale has spillover effects on governments’ taxing, spending, immigration, and policing policies.

⑦ However, less able to explain why the process of European integration slowed between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s, or why some member-states decided to join the EU at different times or indeed remain largely outside the process of European integration (such as Norway and Switzerland).

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION Neo-functionalist vs Intergovernmentalist1. Intergovernmentalist

① Stanley Hoffmann’s approach was set out in a string of publications, re-stated in a collection.

② Placed the member state at the centre of bargaining.③ The EU is seen first of all as a venture in cooperation amongst

states, which are rational actors and whose domestic functioning is governed by principles of authority and hierarchy.

④ In a context of generalized economic interdependence, the EU constitutes a more profound form of ‘international regime’.

⑤ The resulting ‘pooled sovereignty’ does not lead to a diminution of the role of the states, but on the contrary to a strengthening of that role, encouraging their adaption to constraints imposed by the international environment.

⑥ The creation of one regime does not necessarily lead to the creation of others by an automatic spill-over effect, as supposed by neo-functionalists.

⑦ Andrew Morabvcsik’s “Liberal Intergovernmentalism”

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION2. Liberal Intergovernmentalist

① The state is a rational actor in Europe.② Power in the EU is the result of bargaining amongst states.③ Liberal theory is needed to explain the formation of national

preferences within the state. ④ Insightful into EU member state relations even though

Moravscik is using them to explain European Integration rather than looking at those relations in their own right.

⑤ He received critics• In seeing the EU member states through the prism of central

governments alone.• Also, in assuming that the EU is an arena where large member

states exercise power.• Moravcsik sees un EU institutions only agencies created by the

member states with the purpose of increasing the initiative and influence of national governments.

• Lastly as regards preferences formation within states, there is a strong assumption that interests can only be advanced via national governments rather than via other routes, such as direct lobbying in Brussels.

EUROPEAN UNION

EUROPEAN UNION EU as a democratic political system1. There is a clearly defined set of institutions for

collective decision-making and set of rules governing relations between and within these institutions.

2. Citizens seek to achieve their political desires through the political system, either directly or through intermediary organizations like interest groups and political parties.

3. Collective decisions in the political system have an impact on the distribution of economic resources and the allocation of social and political values across the whole system.

4. There is a continuous interaction between these political outputs, new demands on the system, new decisions, and so on.

EUROPEAN UNION

EUROPEAN UNION Points of access in the EU system for the member gov-

ernments1. Policy design

The Commission does not invent policy proposals in a vacuum; its officials draw on a wide variety of sources in developing policy ideas and crafting policy proposals.

The Commission operates a system of advisory committees and expert groups through which it gathers opinions on possible policy initiatives and promotes processes of deliberation. Many of these involve ‘experts’ from the member states precisely in order to ensure that the policy experiences and preference of the member states are fed into deliberative e process.

2. Policy negotiation The phase of policy negotiation is crucially important for the exercise of

power and influence by member governments within the EU. It is around this phase, mostly played out through the Council and the

European Council, including in the many preparatory working groups and high level groups of national officials that member governments make their most explicit investment efforts to influence the outcomes.

It is towards this phase of negotiations that the national coordinating procedures of governments are mainly directed.

EUROPEAN UNION Points of access in the EU system for the member

governments

3. Policy legitimation Once policies are negotiated and agreed in the

Council of the EU, they have to be made legitimate and thereby ratified within the member states in order to take effect.

There are significant variations in the way member governments address this task, both procedurally and behaviourally.

In some member states there is a kind of contract between the national government and the national political class that EU policy positions should be explicitly negotiated and ratified through a formal political process in some ways.

EUROPEAN UNION Points of access in the EU system for the member govern-

ments

4. Policy implementation It has always been the case that the bulk of EU

policy decisions are implemented through agencies of one kind or another in the member states. Although the Commission has responsibilities of executing Council decisions, in only a few fields does this involve direct administration by the Commission services or its own sub-contracted agencies.

EUROPEAN UNION Several factors are at work, which are altering the ways in

which EU policies are implemented within the member states. 1. The recognition that the central administrative resources of

the EU, and especially the Commission are simply over stretched to be able to deliver policies directly.

2. A second trend is towards forms of contacting out the delivery of public policy, both regulatory and allocative to quasi-autonomous agencies.

3. A third factor at work is the trend, accelerated by the development of the Lisbon Strategy, towards comparison and bench marking for good and best practices in the delivery of both national and EU policies.

4. A fourth factor which is shifting more of the policy implementation away from the Commission is the disturbing evidence of the weaknesses and sometimes abject failings of the Commission as a policy delivery institution.

EUROPEAN UNION Power and influence in the EU system1. Political weight

Factors that are relevant include: objective factors, such as size, population or geopolitical position; but also more subjective factors, to do with for example historical position, including date of accession to the EU; or centrality to the issues under negotiation military engaged countries, such as France or the UK, carry more weight on European defence questions than neutral and non-aligned countries.

2. Political practice Governments that pursue accommodating and consensus-

seeking policies, for example, acquire a kind of peer respect within the system.

A capacity for coalition-building with other like-minded government is often a valuable tool for reinforcing influence.

Conversely, governments that operate in a more singular way may extract advantage under unanimity rules, although suffer under QMV is they are outside the coalition system.

EUROPEAN UNION Power and influence in the EU system3. Economic Weight

Economic weight also affects the influence that a member government can wield in the development of EU policies.

4. Social and economic practice Influence through example is one of the assets on which a

member government may be able to draw in developing an argument within the EU.

The ability to deploy arguments grounded in observable practice within a particular member state has always conferred advantage.

5. Persuasive ideas The rectitude of ‘sound money’, derived from West German

monetary policy, became the persuasive idea in the development of the case for EMU.

The notion that broader international trade liberalization was virtuous as a governing idea had been rotted even earlier from the persuasive arguments of the more liberally minded among the EU governments.

EUROPEAN UNION Power and influence in the EU system6. Compelling demands

A different kind of impetus for EU policy developments has come from compelling demands from one or another member government, sometimes more, sometimes less harshly state.

The term ‘demandeur’ is a frequent epithet used in descriptions of bargaining, especially on distribution issues

7. Credibility and consistency The various bases for influence from which member governments

can argue their cases illustrate a mixture of shorter and longer term consideration.

More importantly factor of influence developed and deployed iteratively over time make a difference to the credibility of government’s overall policy stance and political approach to the EU.

Governments acquire reputations as more or less consensus-minded in general, or as example, more or less liberal or protection-minded on issues of regulation and trade, similarly advocates of one or other position on recurrent generic issues.

EUROPEANIZATION European Integration has had an

important impact upon the member states: the phenomenon that has become to be termed “Euopeanization”.

EUROPEANIZATION The term ‘Europeanization’ can be

related to 3 propositions:1. Integration strengthens the state;2. Integration creates a new multi-level

politics thereby recalibrating how domestic actors respond to integration;

3. The EU has transformed governance.

EUROPEANIZATION In the Europeanization literature national governments

have never been regarded as gatekeepers, controlling the effects of integration within the member state. A member state is used as a short hand to comprise

all political actors and institutions within a member state. It is not a synonym for national governments.

Number of problem arises when using the latter; ① Such accounts understood the EU as the interplay of na-

tional governments and ignored the process of pref-erence formation beneath the governments.

② Another legacy of cruder variants of in-tergovernmentalism is that member governments were seen as unitary actors.

③ In other words, as gatekeepers they were presumed to have a monopoly of contacts between national actors and the EU political system. Thus, the term member state is more neutral.

EUROPEANIZATION Member states matter as key actors in EU decision-

making on the architecture of EU, in the more routine policy decisions of the Council and its supporting committee structure. They are also key actors in the implementation of European policy in providing the administrative sub-structure on which the EU depends in most areas, if its policies are to achieve their goals.

Helen Wallace summarizes the situation thus:“Most of the policy-makers who devise and operate EU rules

and legislation are from the member states themselves. They are people who spend the majority of their time as national polcu0makers, for whom the European dimensions is an extended policy arena, not a separate activity. Indeed much of EU policy prepared and carried out by national policy-makers and agents who do not spend much, if any time, in Brussels.”

EUROPEANIZATION How do member states matter in the real world of the

EU?1. The ‘state of the EU” at any one time is reflective of a

balance of unifying EU and territorial forces / institutions. This balance represents the interplay of national and integrationist forces.

2. Territoriality matters in the EU: it is the main organizing principle. Identity, democracy and legitimacy tend to be located predominantly at the member state level. European integration has gone hand-in-dang with a number of transformative changes to the state system.

3. Member states are key players in the politics of the EU. 4. The EU is an important factor in member state politics.

Its activities impinge upon political actors, institutions, policies and identities at this level.

CONCLUSION Why European Union?1. First and foremost, it is a rational and logical objective for all member

governments to maximize their influence on the shaping of Union policies and on the way in which agreed policies are applied within their countries.

2. Second, there are clear differences across countries and over time among member governments in the extent to which they influence the outcomes of EU bargaining. One relates to the strategies, tactics and skills which individual governments are able to deploy in pursuing their objectives to the Commission or partner governments to accept their arguments. The other relates to the substance of issues being negotiated.

3. Third, the Union system provides multiple and iterative opportunities for each member government to exercise its voices in shaping Union policies. There opportunities are continuously proliferating, as the agenda of Union policy-making extends, and as new fora are added for developing dialogue and bargaining among member governments and within the EU institutions. This proliferation of fora has made it harder for gatekeepers in individual governments to act as filters or to provide authoritative coordination. Thus, the Union’s system risks increasingly fragmented and individual governments finds themselves challenged by the rage of Union process.

4. Fourth, however, the Union is in some sense not a stable system. Changes in membership, not least with the enlargement of 2004, necessarily provoke changes in the practices of the Union. These efforts at reform are in turn a matter of contestation, as was clear in late 2003 when IGC negotiating the proposed constitutional treaty failed to reach agreement on key proposals.

CONCLUSION  The driving force behind the formation of the EU, the earliest and the

most influential of all existing international economic integration schemes, was the political unity of Europe, with the aim of realizing eternal peace in the continent. IEI is defined as a state of affairs or a process which involves the amalgamation of separate economies into larger free trading regions.

There are over 400 schemes of IEI in the world, of which EU is the most significant, influential and committed to the deepest type of economic integration. The IEI has become popular for two reasons:

1. One is reason is that individual countries believe that their economies will benefit from free access to a larger market, lower costs through removal of barriers on trade, enhanced completion leading to better products and or lower prices, greater innovation, and so forth.

2. The other is that countries have become increasing frustrated by the slow progress in achieving global agreement through the WTO because with 153 members it is difficult to reach a consensus: the Doha Round in November 2001 and has yet to be finalized. It is also believed that the proliferation in IEI schemes may actually induce countries to galvanize the WTO into establishing the favoured multilateral regime.

CONCLUSION Growing concerns about a ‘democratic deficit’ in the EU, in

that many citizens feel that they have little influence over the direction of EU policies. Public support for the EU has declined since wide-spread enthusiasm for the single market programme in the late 1980s, and the EU is widely perceived as an elitist project which benefits highly educated and highly skilled citizens.

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The End of Part 1