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Discusses the goals of the European Commission's White Paper 'Completing the Internal Market,' a plan for a large scale onslaught on the ommissions in the acquis with respect to Treaty obligations crucial to market integration. Support for the completion of Internal Market; Implementation of a significant part of the program of the White Papers.

The White Paper on European Governance can be seen as a bid to make a major contribution to the strategic leadership of the Union. By centring its deliberations and proposals on the concept of ‘governance’, the Commission signalled an intention to explore the limits of conventional hierarchical law and policy, and propose alternatives. Yet the White Paper concludes that a renewed and reinvigorated ‘Community method’ should be at the heart of EU policy-making, with the Commission itself playing an enhanced role. Moreover, the paper criticizes the Member States and ‘intergovernmental’ institutions, rather than the Commission itself. These features are neither good politics nor a full response to the questions raised by the White Paper or set for it by Prodi. Enlargement and the increased importance of the issues of (re)distribution and related emergence of new modes of governance, such as the open method of co-ordination, pose challenges and provide opportunities for the Commission and the Union more generally. A White Paper that was both more modest and self-confident about the part to be played by the Commission might have made a more important intervention in current debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) studies literature has not engaged much with instances in which the European Commission exhibited dysfunctional and pathological behaviour. The paper employs a least likely case to suggest that the Commission might adopt such behaviour even under adverse circumstances. It examines the Commission's public opposition to a private sector involvement scheme for Greece in 2011, despite member states and investors favouring such an option. This stance exacerbated financial instability, proving detrimental for the Commission's stated crisis‐management goals. By using qualitative material, including 10 elite interviews, the paper attributes this behaviour to the Commission's pro‐integration culture as historically interpreted in the context of financial crises. This led the Commission to universalise inefficient policies whilst being insulated from external feedback. The study offers insights on when the Commission adopts dysfunctional behaviour whilst providing a novel angle on its role in EU integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on enforcing compliance with the European Union's (EU's) rule of law value has focused on the roles of the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the EU. However, the Council of the EU has attracted less attention. Existing scholarship has convincingly established that the rotating Presidency can crucially influence the functioning of the Council, and, accordingly, this paper examines the discretionary impact the Presidencies have towards Art.7 procedures. Drawing on official documents and statements, this paper compares how the various Presidencies from 2018 to 2022 have used their privileged position on the Council's agenda to decide whether to move forward with hearings. In doing so, they selected appropriate agenda‐shaping strategies, shaped the Commission's perceived opportunities to exercise its agenda prerogatives, avoided compromises on the trios' agendas and, sometimes, benefited from not dealing with Art.7 to pursue other agenda priorities. The Presidency's wide room for manoeuvre hinders the Council's activity in scrutinising backsliding governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the decade after 2007 eurosceptic actors in the UK successfully deployed securitizing narratives to portray the free movement of people (FMoP) and EU citizens as a threat to the 'ontological security' of national citizens. The ensuing exclusionary policies (up to and beyond the end of FMoP) were normatively problematic, particularly given the absence of evidence in support of those narratives. However, the paper argues that a response aimed at de‐securitizing the issue—in this case, a return to the status‐quo‐ante – is not without its own normative problems. Indeed, the permissive pre‐2007 New Labour government's approach to FMoP was not inclusive of all EU citizens. In valorizing EU citizens as 'independent post‐national entrepreneurs', the marginalization of economically vulnerable EU citizens, particularly via tough welfare conditionality, was legitimated. The paper concludes by reflecting on the theoretical and political implications of the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses an extensive collection of historical surveys that have only recently been made available to researchers to examine the formation of British attitudes towards the then European Economic Community. It demonstrates that – up until 1967 – the demographic predictors of support for UK membership were unstable. Thereafter, coinciding with the second UK application, these attitudes started to stabilise and harden, with support becoming highest among men, the youngest age cohorts, the middle class and those with greater education. The renewed politicization of the issue in 1967 also coincided with Labour voters becoming significantly more likely to support membership. Following the change in the parties' positions, Labour voters subsequently become substantially less supportive than Conversative voters. The paper thus supports existing analyses on the role of elite cues, while providing new, robust evidence of the change in demographic associations over this formative period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the institutional architecture of the euro area. Topics include elections that took place in 2017 such as the fear in France with many wondering whether politician Marine Le Pen of the Front National could sway a sufficient number of people to defeat contenders, and the German federal election, a discussion of the White Paper on the Future of Europe that came out in March 2017 and a discussion of the May 2017 Reflection Paper on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), despite the salience of Brexit on the European Union agenda, the institutional architecture of the euro area remains an important item.

The external incentives model (EIM) proved highly compelling in explaining Europeanization and rule adoption in countries from Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe. Building on the EIM, the present article seeks to contribute along three key objectives. First, it proposes to re‐evaluate the EIM for the Eastern European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) region: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Second, the paper introduces a conceptual distinction between domestic transformation costs and regulatory costs. Third, it integrates and evaluates the EIM in a broader framework, incorporating domestic and alternative international conditions. The paper combines theory‐guided case comparisons and panel data analysis, based on a dataset with evidence collected from the Eastern ENP countries. The study corroborates the EIM and finds that higher domestic transformation costs lead to lower levels of democratic development and a positive cost–benefit balance of transformation, on the other hand, tends to encourage democratic consolidation in the Eastern ENP region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'flexible' interstate solidarity model envisaged by the 2020 'New Pact on Migration and Asylum' ('the Pact') allows European Union (EU) member states to choose how to do their share in the distribution of the costs connected to asylum. According to one of the proposals contained in the Pact, member states have the option to contribute to the distribution through return sponsorship, taking measures to facilitate the return of irregular migrants residing in other member states. This paper asks: should EU member states be allowed to discharge their solidarity obligations through return sponsorship as envisaged by the Pact? Scholars of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) have raised several doubts about this proposal, particularly regarding the feasibility of return sponsorship and the related risks for human rights. Although the proposal is pragmatic in some respects, these problematic aspects pose at least two questions for normative political theorists: first, should member states be allowed to choose their form of contribution in a solidarity scheme? And, if so, should return sponsorship be one of the contributions allowed? Building on normative theories of solidarity in the EU, this article will argue that return sponsorship should be rejected both because it does not further solidarity among member states and because the rights of rejected asylum seekers set a strong presumption against it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on joint borrowing and a significant transfer component, NextGenerationEU stands in contrast to Germany's longstanding rejection of a 'debt' and 'transfer union'. This article probes into the determinants of this shift in Germany's European policy approach. Focusing on the conflicts in Germany over the 'deepening' of the Monetary Union through fiscal capacity building between 2015 and 2020, it investigates which actors, interests and strategies instigated this shift. The analysis is based on trade and exchange rate data, a qualitative document analysis of position papers as well as expert interviews with interest group representatives, parliamentarians and civil servants. Theoretically, the study draws on concepts from regulation theory, materialist state theory and neo‐Gramscianism. It argues that even though not a fundamental paradigm shift, Germany's push for NextGenerationEU indicates a strategic re‐orientation of parts of the German power bloc towards European fiscal integration, amplified by recent geopolitical dynamics and crisis tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, at a time when the EU was experiencing a triple crisis, the European Commission published a White Paper containing five scenarios outlining potential ways out of it. In his State of the Union address Commission President Juncker added a sixth. Although the Commission refers to fundamental values it neglects gender equality and reduces equality to the harmonization of the quantity of fish in fish fingers and EU‐wide access to vaccination against measles. Despite the neglect of gender equality, the scenarios are not gender neutral. A feminist institutionalist analysis unpacks the potential direct and indirect positive and negative gendered consequences of each scenario and illuminates how the choice of scenario makes a difference as to their gendered impacts and as to the access for feminist actors to bring gender issues to the table. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds new light on the policy reality of the European Energy Union on the example of the EU natural gas market. The paper argues that, as the energy union preserves the treaty‐based parallelism between the competences of the EU and the member states, the resolution of conflicts between individual preferences and shared priorities has emerged as a measure of consolidation in the EU energy domain. Which logic prevails: the common good or the consensus will? The paper applies the concept of international society to test key hypotheses related to the pluralism/solidarism nexus in the European Energy Union. The paper concludes that individual interests and collective decision‐making in the EU natural gas market are reconciled along the premises of pragmatic solidarism with demonstration effects for the regional energy system, indicative of the EU's vanguard role as a regional regulator setting the rules of energy investment and trade in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which focused on the European Parliament's (EP) Committee of Inquiry which was implemented to examine Community law. Number of committees of inquiry which were established in 1996; Striking features of the committees; How the Parliament developed mechanisms to maximize its influence; Comparison between the work of the EP and other national parliaments.

The euro crisis has sparked changes in the EU's economic governance framework and a crisis of legitimacy across the union. While the institutional repercussions of the crisis have been studied before, the democratic impact at the national level has received much less attention. This paper aims to fill this gap, focusing on the procedural changes that the EU's new economic governance (NEG) framework has brought to national budgetary decision‐making. Building upon the Varieties of Democracy framework, the paper adds empirical nuance and conceptual clarity to the notion of 'throughput legitimacy' and its components: openness, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability. Detailed case studies of post‐crisis Austria, Italy and Portugal show that the NEG improved access to national budgetary decision‐making and enhanced executive scrutiny, while excessive complexity remains the Achilles' heel of EU fiscal rules. We submit that these procedural changes are too meaningful to be overlooked in post‐crisis debates about EU democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is now a significant literature engaging with questions around gender and economic governance in the European Union. This builds upon research that demonstrates the gendered nature of the economy, and the gendered impacts of policy interventions. This paper draws on that research to develop an account of the gendered nature of the EU's crisis response, moving from analysis of the response to the Global Financial Crisis to some prelimary discussions of the EU's economic response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. The paper shows how at each stage policies generate gendered consequences, and are built upon gendered assumptions about society and the economy. This paper therefore connects the feminist literature on the European Economic Governance to debates on the COVID‐19 response, using a focus on gender and gender equality to examine key continuities between the crisis fighting of the Global Financial crisis to the establishment of the Next Generation EU fund. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether and how the European Semester has influenced structural reforms in member states. It does so by analysing the interaction between the Commission and the national bureaucratic and political levels. The paper presents two process‐tracing exercises with a focus on those actors that directly worked with the CSRs to assess the political dynamics underpinning the CSR implementation process. First, it examines the more nuanced and indirect effects the Semester had on the liberalization of professions in Italy. Second, it shows how the debate on wage indexation in Belgium turned around over the years and how the Semester was an important factor in introducing reform. The analysis shows the influence of the Semester in terms of issue salience and agenda setting, but it also shows how the Commission can exert real pressure. This pressure may in turn affect the EU's perceived legitimacy, which holds lessons for the Semester's post‐pandemic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a reconstruction and game‐theoretical characterization of the coming about of the €750 billion Covid Recovery Fund (RRF). It does this from the perspective of one prominent member state, the Netherlands, who was arguably the most prominent opponent to the idea. The case of the Netherlands is revealing for the ability of individual Member States to oversee and control EU decision‐making in this new system of European Council centred governance. We provide an embedded process tracing analysis of the decision‐making from the first Summit on the Multiannual Financial Framework of 20/21 February, up until the 'historic' deal on the MFF and RRF of 21 July. Where most media accounts and scholarly evaluations focus on the proceedings at the highest political level and particularly the role of German Chancellor Merkel, we highlight the early, technical‐level developments and proceedings, that laid out the tracks for the final deal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU participates in many international fora related to climate change (for example UNFCCC, G20, Montreal Protocol), which collectively constitute the international regime complex on climate change (IRCCC). Using the case study of negotiations on the Paris Agreement, this paper addresses the question How and why did the EU use the different fora of the IRCCC to achieve its objectives in the Paris Agreement negotiations? It finds that the EU used the IRCCC in four main ways: employing typical multilateral negotiating activities, overcoming specific issues of the Paris Agreement negotiations, creating political momentum, and ensuring cross‐fora coordination. These uses correspond with the level of political authority of participants and the level of climate‐specialization in a given forum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares how European and non‐European participants in international environmental negotiations perceive the EU's role in such negotiations. Three dimensions of the EU's role (environmental ambition, diplomatic activity and influence) are assessed in three UN‐wide environmental forums (the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions on chemicals, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Environment Assembly). The paper presents original data collected through an online survey with 659 delegates who participated in the negotiations in the three forums in the period 2018–19. Comparing the ego perception of delegates from the EU with the alter view of delegates from non‐EU countries, the paper finds that the ego and alter perceptions of the EU's ambition, diplomatic activities and influence are largely similar. Both ego and alter see the EU as a highly ambitious, active and influential actor in global environmental negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper analyses the impact of economic crises on the development of European financial assistance. It demonstrates that crisis episodes that have taken place over the last five decades have significantly altered the design of European Union emergency support. This paper illustrates how solutions adopted in formative moments – including the 1973 oil shock, the Eurozone crisis, and the Covid‐19 pandemic – and their long‐term consequences led to the smorgasbord of instruments of the present financial assistance structure. By applying a historical institutionalist approach, combining insights from studies of critical junctures and gradual change, this contribution explains how economic shocks contributed to change in financial assistance, while also highlighting mechanisms that led to the continuation of specific elements of the assistance structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only with the three largest emitters (the EU, China and the US) building a coalition was it possible to conclude the Paris Agreement in 2015. With the announced withdrawal of the US, the interdependence between the EU and China has increased significantly. Both actors have reiterated their will to implement the Paris Agreement and to cooperate on climate change. In times of political constraints between the EU and China, this seems puzzling. The paper takes a role‐theoretic perspective to assess the following question: How can the changing roles of the EU and China, ascribed to them by external and internal expectations, explain their increased climate cooperation? It draws on a qualitative text analysis of policy documents and expert interviews. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings against the backdrop of growing tensions between the EU and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being one of the founding members of the European Community and the third largest economy in the EU, Italy does not stand out as a particularly influential negotiator when it comes to day‐to‐day EU decision‐making. Why is it that a country with Italy's political weight, economic resources and administrative capacity has such a patchy record in terms of negotiation success? Examining Italy's negotiation of two key EU policies (2008–16) and relying on an original set of interviews with EU officials and Italian politicians, this paper contends that the answer lies in a set of domestic factors that have largely been neglected by negotiation theory: namely, political, administrative and individual domestic constraints. This contribution explains Italy's inconsistent performance in EU negotiations, while also developing a broader theoretical framework accounting for the ways in which domestic factors moderate member states' bargaining power and, ultimately, their likelihood of achieving negotiation success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to spell out the Commission's present position on the following set of questions: according to which normative criteria can European integration, European governance and the Commission's own roles in the two processes be considered legitimate? Taking the 2001 White Paper on Governance as a reference point, it is argued that the Commission is trapped between two sets of claims to legitimacy: one set of claims coming from the Monnet tradition of thought, where the stress is on unity, efficiency, responsibility and impartiality; and a second set of claims coming from the post-Maastricht critique of the Union, which highlight diversity, clarity and democracy. The result has been that the European Commission entered the recent constitutional debate with a set of proposals that did not do much to strengthen its own position in the Union, or to contribute innovative ideas to the debate, which was meant to deal with the great challenges that lie ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I focus on how national policy implementation affects policy revision at the EU level. The main argument is that when policy is implemented in a decentralized manner, it affects the current situation or status quo in member states. This affects the possibilities of any further legislative change at the EU level. The analyses suggests that heterogeneity in national preferences and homogeneity in national status quo points make it less easy to adopt a revised policy. This result is illustrated by the recent discussion on revising the Posting of Workers Directive. Having rather different views on this policy while faced with limited possibilities to shape this policy nationally, makes it difficult to change the Posting Directive. The rather long and difficult negotiations, especially among the member states, about its revision support this implication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the determinants of productivity gaps within the European Union in computing, chemicals, basic metals and food manufacturing – four sectors that vary in terms of the intensity of sectoral R&D. Our analysis reveals that the main causes of these productivity gaps are intensity of unembodied or disembodied R&D activity and R&D embodied in purchased equipment and machinery, and their interplay. While disembodied and embodied R&D are both associated positively to closing productivity gaps, the interaction between the two does not have the same effect. There is no complementarity between these technology acquisition modes, despite both disembodied and embodied technology are crucial for productivity catch up. In a policy context, this suggests possible lack of coordination between R&D policy and technology transfer (that is, foreign direct investment, trade and industrial policy). We show, also, that the productivity gap between 'peripheral' (southern and eastern) and 'north' EU countries is widening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the political aspects of the Action Plan for Capital Markets Union (CMU) as well as legislative proposal related to securitization proposed by the European Commission. Topics discussed include the goal of the proposed CMU which include reduction of fragmentation in the financial market, strengthening crossborder capital, and improvement on the access to finance, the significant of the CMU in the single market considering financial market integration, and the financial market integration in the European Union (EU).

The launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights occurred at a phase of endogenous critical juncture for Social Europe. By analyzing the Pillar's formulation and adoption process, we investigate to what extent the European Commission used the involvement of civil society and policy responsiveness to foster change in the modes of governance and legitimize stronger intervention in the social sphere, by re‐launching the methods of coordination introduced in the 1990s. Methodologically, we rely on a content analysis of EU policy documents before and after the public consultations, a content analysis of over 60 position papers and on interviews with policy actors. We find that despite increased openness and responsiveness, the Pillar initiative did not allow to alter the predominance of 'soft law' routes and patterns of intergovernmentalism characterizing the governance of EU social policy, a result that further qualifies the conditions that lead (endogenous) critical junctures to generate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of effective risk sharing mechanisms is one of the main passages for the success and longevity of a monetary union. In this paper, we study risk sharing, measured as income and consumption smoothing, in the EMU. As we employ time‐varying estimations, we are able to retrieve time patterns of risk sharing for each member country and to compare them with the degree of economic asymmetry within the EMU. Other than documenting the need for stronger risk sharing mechanisms in the EMU, our results also suggest that much more attention should be dedicated to fostering homogeneity in risk sharing across member countries. We document the existence of increasing heterogeneity in the risk sharing capacity between member countries that can potentially exacerbate and amplify the impact of asymmetric shocks and further destabilize the EMU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macro‐economic policy coordination remains a challenge in the EU. The European Semester was designed to help facilitate more coordination. In the area of wage policies, it encourages Germany and the Netherlands to support stronger wage growth, while Italy and Portugal have been told to exercise wage restraint. This paper analyses how domestic interest group politics influence how EU recommendations are received. Reflecting on the different growth models that underpin these four countries, we find that country‐specific recommendations meet country‐specific obstacles – independent of whether recommendations aim at increasing or reducing wages. Specifically, we observe that domestic actors successfully mobilize against EU recommendations that go against the interests of their constituencies, but are less effective in mobilizing for recommendations aligning with their interests. Hence, we submit that high salience of EU influence poses an obstacle for EU‐induced reform in the South while low salience limits EU influence in the North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, the EU's trade policy has been centred around open(ing) markets. Why, then, has the EU recently embraced open strategic autonomy as the conceptual cornerstone of its renewed trade policy? In this article, we argue that this move away from neoliberalism has to be understood against the background of a changing global environment. The geopoliticization of trade in particular has changed the Commission's view about how to best serve European interests (and values) but also provided an opening for neo‐mercantilist and socially oriented actors to challenge Europe's embedded neoliberal compromise. Using document analysis, interviews and discourse network analysis, we show how the Commission used open strategic autonomy as a coalition magnet to mobilize support for its new doctrine of qualified openness. Our paper contributes to understanding the ideational and coalitional politics behind the recent evolution of EU trade policy as well as broader debates around European autonomy and sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the European Union (EU) in the post‐crisis international governance of securitization does not sit well with the literature that considers the EU as a 'paladin' of stringent regulation as well as a 'rule‐taker' in finance. Whereas in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the United States (US) promoted more stringent rules on securitization, subsequently, the EU, but not the US, successfully sponsored less stringent rules. What accounts for this 'deviant case', that is to say, the EU as a pacesetter in trading down the regulation of securitization worldwide? After examining alternative explanations, this paper draws attention to a novel complementary explanation that can 'travel' to other cases, namely, the pivotal role of the United Kingdom (UK) and, specifically, whether the UK sides with the US or the EU in international standard‐setting. It takes two to tango in regulating global finance, even more so after Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The correct abstract should have read as follows: This paper investigates the extent to which between the late 2000s and late 2010s budgetary policy in Eurozone countries was driven by fiscal responsibility or responsiveness towards redistributive preferences. Karremans, J. (2021) This time wasn't different: Responsiveness and responsibility in the Eurozone between 2007 and 2019. [Extracted from the article]

Removing so‐called technical barriers to trade is a critical aspect of contemporary deep integration trade agreements. Yet, these barriers – standards, regulations, conformity assessment procedures – form a set of institutional complementarities, named technical infrastructure, which performs a central role for the functioning of integrated markets. Drawing on evidence from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) the paper illustrates that this contradiction reduced the negotiators' bargaining leeway. Changing a technical infrastructure comes at the risk of undermining its effectiveness. Therefore, each party could only offer an unacceptable compromise: Transforming the other's technical infrastructure towards one's own technical infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Hill's seminal 'Capability–Expectations Gap' framework (CEG) to analyse EU capabilities and expectations of the EU, from the perspectives of four key Asia‐Pacific states, China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea. Intensive analysis of domestic print media shows that all four states have low perceptions of EU capability, particularly EU ability to reach agreement on common action. Indonesia and South Korea also have low overall expectations of the EU. Japan has some expectations of the EU, but mostly related to EU internal and neighbourhood action, confirming findings of previous research identifying a Japanese 'expectations deficit' regarding EU external action. China however had many expectations of EU external action, on bilateral relations, but also multilateral governance and management of the international economy. Therefore, from the Chinese perspective a significant EU capability–expectations gap is identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differentiation is not only a design feature of European integration, it is also a Member State strategy to overcome preference divergence. However, putting together an optimal group is difficult: Either the resulting club lacks the capacity to produce the club good efficiently; or differentiation attempts lead to an equally suboptimal outcome of a club too large and too heterogeneous to be effective. This paper develops an explanation of this differentiation paradox. When an avant‐garde group proposes differentiation, the presence or absence of its go‐it‐alone power determines the outcome. The former leads to suboptimally large clubs due to the bandwagoning dynamic that produces a cascade. By contrast, the absence of go‐it‐alone power triggers a blockade and results in suboptimally small clubs. This actor‐centred approach to differentiated integration is tested by analysing the establishment of Permanent Structured Co‐operation in security and defence, which declined from an ambitious idea into a diluted reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how issue linkage between the European Parliament (EP) and the Council affects Member States' bargaining success in European Union lawmaking. Drawing from the spatial model of EU decision‐making and the relais actors thesis, it theorizes the general and conditional effect of inter‐institutional package deals on states' bargaining satisfaction. Using the DEUII dataset, the analysis reveals the following findings. First, issue linkage has a varying effect on preference attainment as cross‐legislation packages decrease states' bargaining success, while within‐legislation logrolls increase it. Second, states with centrist preferences are less successful when issue linkage occurs. By contrast, package deals favour Member States sharing positions with the EP and those holding the EP rapporteur and the Council presidency. However, these effects vary with the type of package deals and the voting rule in the Council. Third, in contrast to conventional negotiations, issue linkage produces a relatively symmetric distribution of bargaining success among Member States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the methods of analysis and synthesis to study the regulatory framework governing the modern operating mechanism of the EU single market. Statistical analysis made it possible to reflect the market dynamics with reference to the pre‐ and post‐COVID crisis periods. Consolidation was applied to merge data on the trade of goods and services – the key elements of the EU Member States' trade indicators. Finally, the method of comparative analysis was employed to compare the single market environment of the EU with markets of other countries. The functioning of the single market depends on shared responsibility between the EU's centralized management and the many policies of its Member States. There are barriers within the single market system that limit the free movement of goods, services, people and capital and lead to an imbalance. These are sanitary and phytosanitary standards, tariff measures, and technical and quantitative barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why and how do crises cause European integration? Going beyond case‐ and policy area‐specific analyses, the present paper develops a general, liberal intergovernmentalist model of the crisis‐integration link. The empirical process‐tracing test of this model is performed on two diverse cases of crises: the BSE Crisis 1996–2002 and the Euro Crisis 2010–13. The original analysis of primary documents and newspaper articles reveals that, as theoretically expected, crises stir high public attention and thus turn policy change in the affected policy areas into a salient issue for governments. This opens a 'window of opportunity' for domestic actors to approach their governments with change proposals. Governmental cost–benefit calculations, the distribution of bargaining power at the EU level, as well as supranational activism then explain deeper European integration in response to a crisis. With these findings, the present paper contributes to a broader understanding of the mechanisms of European integration in exceptional times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining (de‐)politicization as an actor‐driven phenomenon, this study asks: How and to what extent do actors in the public sphere attempt to (de‐)politicize European Union (EU) policies? (De‐)politicization is understood not only as a process but also as the deliberate framing of debates over EU issues at a domestic level. This paper conceptualizes (de‐)politicization acts in the public sphere and shows how these can be detected empirically through a claim‐level (de‐)politicization index. This approach is applied to a database of evaluations (claims) on EU trade, by EU actors, national executive actors and societal actors, surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, in the media of six Member States (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Denmark). Whilst all kinds of actors may engage in (de‐)politicization, the analysis of the index allows us to determine if a certain category of actors does so to a greater or lesser extent compared with others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU and China are both pioneers in energy transition and are major energy consumers. However, we know little about the attitude of the Chinese public toward EU's energy role or EU–China energy cooperation. The paper contributes to the study of relationship between agenda‐setting and public opinion in the context of Chinese social media. Using empirical data, it finds that energy cooperation, energy trading, energy politics, and energy technology&service are the four co‐occurrence networks of Chinese public discussion on the topic. Yet the opinion leaders differ on these issues. While verified media accounts are key opinion leaders setting the agenda in EU energy politics and trade issues, in energy technology and service issues, verified individual accounts lead opinions. The study helps understand the role of online opinion leaders in EU–China energy relations and argues that key opinion leaders need to play more active roles in communicating the issues and guiding public discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the nature of contemporary societal conflict in Europe, conceptualizing conflict in terms of oppositional identities, represented by the archetypal extreme corner positions between which contestation takes place. By analysing key characteristics of 28,565 Europeans from seven countries in four distinct time periods, we find three archetypal corner positions. Each archetype represents an ideal‐typical configuration of values, attitudes and socio‐demographic characteristics which people identify more or less with. The first archetype (which we label Postmodern Cosmopolitan) represents an urban, higher‐educated person with cosmopolitan values and attitudes. The other two archetypes (Rural traditionalist and Urban Precariat) present images of Europe that are more nationalistic and differ in their political‐economic ideological position. Western and Eastern European countries differ markedly in the distribution of these archetypes over time. The novelty of this paper is our conceptualization and operationalization of the changing nature of societal conflict as changes in oppositional identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to noncompliance with the EU's fundamental values such as democracy and the rule of law in Hungary and Poland, the EU Commission has established the Justice Scoreboard, the Rule of Law Framework and the Rule of Law Mechanism. Moreover, the Commission has proposed linking the disbursement of funds to respect for the rule of law (Rule of Law conditionality). However, the deployment of these measures has not restored compliance. Drawing on the two dominant approaches in compliance studies, the management approach and the enforcement approach, this paper argues that with the exception of Rule of Law conditionality, the Commission's tools are characterized by a mismatch between the causes of the problems identified and the solutions chosen. Instead of sanctioning voluntary noncompliance, they rely on soft measures, which are recommended in cases of involuntary noncompliance, but which are not suitable in cases of deliberate noncompliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the public form preferences about differentiated integration (DI)? The literature on mass‐elite linkages offers two perspectives: top‐down, political elites cue the public, or bottom‐up, political elites react to public preferences. This paper develops expectations based on both perspectives, and presents novel empirical data on citizens, political parties, and governments to test them. We distinguish preferences over differentiated policy integration, like 'Opt‐Outs', from preferences over polity differentiation, such as 'Two‐Speed Europe'. Although our evidence is observational and therefore cannot establish causal relationships between elites and the mass public, our results are most compatible with the notion of a top‐down linkage. This is because DI preferences are generally of low salience, and first revealed at the European level in the context of negotiations. Subsequently, this revelation of DI preferences shapes domestic discussions about DI, especially at the level of political parties. Yet, this mostly pertains to situations when governments do not yet have clear DI preferences of their own, meaning government preferences are not yet formed and revealed in the context of the supranational negotiations. Overall, this study suggests that mass‐elite linkage in the preference formation on DI might be more tenuous than either the top‐down or bottom‐up perspective might assume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: While the EU has long been promoting economic reforms in neighbouring countries, scant attention has hitherto been paid to its regulatory efforts. This paper addresses this empirical gap with reference to the EU's promotion of regulatory reforms in three economic sectors in Egypt: agriculture, banking and telecoms. It finds that these reforms are significantly, if selectively, informed by ordoliberal principles and practices. Two theoretical implications of this finding are explored. On the one hand, while this substantiates the institutional isomorphism hypothesis, for which the EU tends to export its own models elsewhere, the selectivity with which this occurs demonstrates greater instrumentality than usually maintained in this literature. On the other hand, understanding ordoliberalism as a variation within the neoliberal template shaping restructuring in Egypt, this paper moves beyond binary views of regulatory co‐operation and competition and thus also enriches debates on the EU as a global regulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Among the factors highlighted by the literature as crucial for the success of cohesion policies in generating satisfaction among citizens, and therefore in acting positively on the constitution of an European identity, this paper emphasizes a particular one, territorial identity. Elaborating on the definition of territorial identity as a local condition in which private interests coincide with public ones, the paper claims that territorial identity plays an important role in a European identity‐building process. In fact, by increasing the probability that local public expenditures match private interests, territorial identity generates a favourable context where the critical factors that hamper the successful programming, design and implementation of cohesion policies can be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID‐19 crisis, European Union (EU) health policy has become high politics. Key parts of EU health cooperation have, however, long developed more discretely in European administrative networks (EANs) and become core building blocks in the institutional architecture of an EU health policy. In these networks, health experts interact regularly and, by doing so, pool key resources and develop common standards. However, are some network members more influential than others in defining the way forward, and if so, why? In this paper, we examine the structure of networked health cooperation in the case of health technology assessment (HTA), by means of unique survey data and social network analysis, employing exponential random graph models (ERGMs) for different types of interaction. A horizontal structure of interaction fosters cooperation by and for all, whereas a hierarchical structure allows certain members to set agendas and place themselves in a powerful position. We find that the network structure is indeed hierarchical, with some members constituting the core of the network based on their national HTA experience as well as external contact relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on Normative Power Europe (NPE) largely omits the question of why the EU chooses to focus on particular norms in the first place. This paper goes beyond the assumption that the EU simply externalizes its internal norms, because such a perspective does not sufficiently explain why the EU prioritizes certain norms over others, particularly in the case of contested norms. Using LGBTI rights and Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) in the EU's external human rights policy as two cases, I demonstrate how norm entrepreneurs – both external and internal – have been essential for bringing these norms to the EU's attention. Only after initial internal resistances had been overcome, were these norms able to reach the EU's external agenda. The two cases illustrate the internal political struggles that precede norm selection, supporting recent calls for a more politics‐oriented perspective on Normative Power Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explain the under‐researched phenomenon of why the European Commission (the Commission), as 'guardian of the Treaties', tolerates member states' noncompliance with the EU law. While major accounts of selective enforcement depict the Commission as a self‐serving political entrepreneur, this paper assumes that it is a trustee guardian of EU treaties that aims to safeguard the stability and integrity of the EU legal order. For this purpose, the Commission is theorized to strategically utilize toleration of noncompliance to evade jurisdiction overlap and norm collision. Relying on the detailed tracing of the Commission's enforcement leniency towards Slovakia regarding pharmaceutical parallel trade, this illustrative case study indicates that toleration of noncompliance is a necessary evil for the Commission and other stakeholders to navigate through a legal and political impasse. And it simultaneously preserves the delicate integrity of the existing legal order of EU free movement law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union's Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group are touted as a new form of equitable engagement. However, many argue that the EPAs simply substitute a different form of political and economic domination. In this paper, we consider if the siting of meetings has a substantive impact on EPA outcomes or media reporting thereof. Using a difference‐in‐difference like approach we evaluate if the tone and polarity of media reports about the EPAs during periods of 'home' meetings in the ACP countries differs from media reports during 'away' meetings in the EU. Using two different datasets we arrive at differing results, leading to inconclusive overall findings. While we suspect that the alternating meeting site norm has implications for EPA process and outcomes, further research will be needed to uncover the precise nature of these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]