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The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) is a judicial body of the European Union (EU), created in 2017 to investigate and prosecute crimes against the EU financial interests. The aim of this thesis is to explain how and why national and supranational institutional actors, through the establishment of the EPPO, come to construct supranational criminal justice. By establishing the EPPO, the 22 participating member states of the EU transferred key sovereign powers – pertaining to criminal justice – to a supranational body. Criminal justice is closely linked to the monopoly on the legitimate use of force and the definition and protection of essential societal values. This is why states generally want to maintain their authority over this policy field. Accordingly, common EU action in this field has mostly relied on cooperation, coordination, and mutual recognition, essentially keeping national judicial systems intact and limiting their submission to supranational authority. The EPPO, with its binding and far-reaching enforcement powers, presents a clear departure from this pattern.To understand the drivers of this transfer of sovereign powers and how the various institutional actors in the EU arena are shaping supranational criminal justice in that respect, we must find out how key actors themselves understand (their) sovereignty in relation to European integration. I, therefore, adopt an ideational approach to this question to examine how ideas and discourse – rather than functionalist pressures, national interests, or international norms – have resulted in the creation of the EPPO and shaped its modalities. Concretely, I adopt a discursive institutionalist approach to show how discourse influences institution-building.Through this theoretical lens, I uncover the various ideas held on the protection of the EU financial interests and how they are articulated with ideas on national sovereignty and European integration in that context. I operationalise the coordina, Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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This paper investigates the construction of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis by EU elites. It addresses the puzzling relationship between the spread of the new virus with a large-scale reconfiguration of economic governance in the EU which was unimaginable a few months earlier. Drawing from a constructivist approach to political economy, we argue that the discursive construal and framing of this crisis was instrumental to embed the emergency of the pandemic with broader levels of conjunctural, historical, and even civilizational temporal references. Providing a frame analysis of public statements by the heads of the European Commission, the European Council, and European Central Bank during 2020, we show how the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 was framed as a catalyst for tackling the EU’s historical crisis of purpose, the socio-economic imbalances left over from the euro crisis, as well as the predicament of the climate crisis., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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This paper explains how a turn in EU governance which was unthinkable only a few months prior became possible in 2020. Rather than a sudden paradigm shift brought about by the pandemic, we argue that it occurred through successive episodes of reinterpreting the rules and layering on new instruments while fostering investment and fiscal sharing on top of the pre-existing ordoliberal regime. Through a discursive institutionalist lens, the paper supports these claims by studying the frames and narratives of French, German and EU leaders during three rounds of reforms, namely the flexibilization of the European Semester (2014–2016), the adoption of the Budgetary Instrument for Convergence and Competitiveness (BICC) (2017–2019), and the adoption of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (2020–2021). The analysis shows that an increased awareness of a responsiveness imperative, going beyond national constituencies, transformed European elites’ conceptions of ‘responsible’ government thus at least momentarily closing the gap between responsibility and responsiveness., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Résumé (FR)La situation des personnes LGBT représente aujourd’hui un réel enjeu au sein de l’Union européenne. Cette situation est loin d’être homogène dans de nombreux domaines allant des droits aux attitudes sociales. L’objectif de cette recherche est de comprendre comment a évolué la situation des personnes LGBT en Croatie depuis l’adhésion à l’Union européenne en 2013. Nous étudions cette évolution en nous basant sur la théorie de la diffusion des normes et du processus d’européanisation en mobilisant les perceptions d’un type d’acteur ;les membres d’organisations LGBT croates. La situation des personnes LGBT en Croatie n’a pas évoluée significativement. Une des raisons principale réside dans la résistance de plusieurs acteurs à la diffusion des normes LGBT. Nous ne constatons pas de réels changements des attitudes sociales envers les personnes LGBT. Abstract (ENG)The situation of LGBT people represents a real challenge within the European Union. Across the Union, this situation is far from homogeneous in many areas, from rights to social attitudes. The objective of this research is to understand how the situation of LGBT people in Croatia has evolved since the country joined the European Union in 2013. We study this evolution using norm diffusion theory and the theory of Europeanization, and by drawing on the perceptions of a specific type of actor: members of Croatian LGBT organizations. This research allowed us to observe a change in the evolutionary dynamics of the situation of LGBT people in Croatia, notably the lack of significant evolution. One key reason for this is the resistance of several actors to the dissemination of LGBT norms. We do not observe any real change in social attitudes toward LGBT people, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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In 2017, member states established the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), an EU body investigating and prosecuting offences against the EU financial interests. This article analyses the relation between the institutional design of the EPPO and sovereignty concerns of member states. Combining the core state powers framework with literature on Council negotiation dynamics, it argues that the Council was divided on the question of how far-reaching the authority of this new body vis-à-vis member states should be or to what extent member states should retain control over the body. A qualitative discourse analysis shows that the competition between states sharing a supranational position regarding the EPPO and those sharing an intergovernmental position resulted in the creation of a complex and ambiguous body. These findings contribute to the literature on agencification of Justice and Home Affairs as well as, more broadly, to scholarship on the construction of new types of authority., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Prenant pour cas d’étude le processus décisionnel ayant abouti en 2019 à l’adoption de la directive européenne « Droit d’auteur dans le marché unique numérique », la thèse cherche à comprendre et expliquer la déviation d’une politique publique européenne d’une trajectoire libérale vers celle de la régulation. Analysé au prisme de la sociologie de l’action publique, le droit d’auteur y est défini comme un instrument d’action publique au sens de Lascoume et Le Galès (2005). Le cadre analytique repose ensuite sur l’articulation de trois concepts clés :le champ eurocratique, le travail politique et les espace-temps de l’action publique. La thèse répond alors à la question de recherche suivante :comment et pourquoi le travail politique des agent·es, déployé dans les différents espace-temps du champ eurocratique, a-t-il aboutit à l’adoption du droit d’auteur comme instrument de régulation du marché unique numérique ?Le dispositif méthodologique combine une enquête par entretiens auprès des agent·es ayant pris part au processus décisionnel étudié (n=79) et une fouille de documents divers relatifs au dossier du droit d’auteur européen, et datant majoritairement d’une période courant de 2004 à 2019, c’est-à-dire des premières réflexions sur une nouvelle réglementation du droit d’auteur à l’adoption de la directive finale (n=161).L’analyse des données ainsi collectées montre que la directive droit d’auteur dans le marché unique numérique a dévié de la trajectoire libérale qu’elle avait pourtant entamée dans les années 2000 parce qu’un ensemble d’agent·es défendant une position pro-régulation a d’abord émergé dans l’espace-temps de la Commission, puis s’est maintenu au fil des différents espace-temps de la prise de décision (Conseil de l’UE, Parlement, Trilogues). Deux grandes options existaient ainsi pour réglementer le droit d’auteur numérique :la libéralisation et la régulation. L’option de la libéralisation se traduit concrètement par l’expansion du champ des exceptions au, Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

One of the key outcomes of the 2019 elections is the increased fragmentation of the European Parliament (EP). The decline of traditional parties in many member states, the good results of the Greens and the Liberals, combined with the success of Eurosceptics have led to a political reconfiguration of the EP. This poses a challenge for its functioning and its place in the EU decision-making system. A higher level of internal fragmentation may make it more difficult to reach a common position in time to truly have a voice in EU interinstitutional debates. This chapter aims to examine the implications of higher political fragmentation on coalition formation in the EP since 2019. Our central question is: how has the political equilibrium within the EP changed since the beginning of the 9th legislative term? We expect that the two largest political families will cooperate even more now that they do not hold an absolute majority on their own. We further expect them to include smaller groups in the grand coalition more often in order to continue to adopt reports with large majorities. To examine this question, we rely on an analysis of roll-call votes (RCV) at the plenary level., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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En 2010, le premier Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) est signé entre le gouvernement grec et la « troïka », un organe ad hoc chargé de gérer la crise économique en Grèce pour le compte des États membres de l’Union européenne. Un an plus tard, la « task force pour la Grèce » est créée à la Commission européenne pour aider à la mise en œuvre des réformes demandées dans ce cadre, mais aussi pour soutenir l’accélération de l’absorption des fonds européens. Cette thèse se penche sur ce service d’assistance technique mis sur pied au cœur de la crise. L’enquête part d’un écart énigmatique entre deux observations. D’un côté, on associe couramment la gestion de la crise grecque au tableau d’une Europe désunie, technocratique et austéritaire ;de l’autre, il apparaît sur le terrain que les personnels européens ont régulièrement dénoncé les débordements et les limites de cette gestion. Ce hiatus cristallise toute la complexité de l’intervention européenne dans la crise grecque, de son plus haut niveau de politisation jusqu’à l’ordinaire du travail normatif de ses responsables. Nous montrons que les membres de l’assistance technique ont été amenés à composer avec les termes équivoques, sinon contradictoires, d’un mandat marqué par l’exceptionnalité de la configuration politique globale :comment faire le lien entre les mesures budgétaires et les réformes de long cours, ou entre le temps de la crise et le temps démocratique ?Autrement dit, comment agir conformément aux règles juridico-morales qui gouvernent l’Union européenne dans une situation réputée y attenter du tout au tout ?Combinant entretiens, observations, documents officiels et internes ainsi qu’un corpus médiatique, cette thèse interroge la morale professionnelle des personnels européens à l’aune des épreuves qu’emporte cette intervention dans la crise et « à distance ». À l’aide des outils de la sociologie politique, de la sociologie des crises et de la sociologie des dispositifs, elle examine de façon relationnelle l, Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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MEPs are legislators with a multi-dimensional representative mandate. They work in a supranational assembly, deciding on policies that affect around 450 million people, are elected in ‘second-order elections’ highly dominated by the national political agenda, and have to deal with the diverging demands of their three main principals: their European political group, their national political party, and their voters. For multiple reasons, it is generally assumed that MEPs do not have a strong linkage to the citizens. On the other hand, asked about who they represent in parliament, they, themselves, claim that regional and even individual citizens’ interests are very important for their work. This paradox is the starting point of the research presented here analysing the question which role territorial activities play in MEPs’ parliamentary activities. The main assumptions this research is built on are that MEPs have multiple foci of representation which they invoke in different contexts in their parliamentary work. The territorial focus, considered to be the shortest and most straightforward link between MEPs and citizens, is one of them. Given the complex nature of electoral constituencies for most MEPs, in this research, their territorial focus is however not assumed to be restricted to their electoral districts. Instead, it includes MEPs’ references to individual concerns, the local and the regional level as much within as outside their own Member States. In the idea of representative claims-making, MEPs are expected to construct their own ‘territories’ by referring to them regularly and in an open and observable way in their parliamentary activities. The objective of this research is to shed light on this little-known dimension of MEPs’ representative mandate. In an approach that becomes increasingly detailed, MEPs’ territorial focus is analysed from different angles: first, an exploratory analysis investigates how much territory there is in MEPs’ activities. It is, Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This PhD presents a compendium of six publications dealing with the process of Europeanisation of democracy at work, and within that overarching framework, the process of Europeanisation of worker representation on corporate boards of directors.The Europeanisation of codetermination rights at enterprise level is analysed from an institutional and socio-political perspective, interested in actors and institutions, and addressing codetermination as an area of EU social policy and EU trade union strategy. The publications are presented in three parts. One contextualises the research and the historical and legislative developments that have led codetermination to become a rather limited area of EU social policy under the shadow of the German model and actoral strategies, although significantly eroded by the effects of EU integration and corporate mobility. The second part addresses the process of top-down Europeanisation of worker representation on boards. It examines the implementation of the European Company (SE) Directive 2001/86 and how clauses of participation have been negotiated in SE agreements, generally weakening previous national models, as well as critically analyses the legal and political implications of the CJEU Case Erzberger, which constituted a sort of impasse for the development of Europeanisation of worker representation on boards in multinationals governed by national law. A final third part examines the process of bottom-up Europeanisation of these rights, according to national law and practice and independently of any EU regulation. The findings question the idea of a Europeanisation by stealth and tending to a Euro-democratic process. Without a proactive legal and political action from institutions and social actors at EU level, particularly trade unions, codetermination rights may lose from their democratic legitimacy component., Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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From Bucharest to Skopje, anti-government protests have been sweeping Southeast Europe(SEE) since 2011. Considering that the region had been regarded to have a weak civil societybefore the protests, the mobilisations came as a surprise to academics and practitioners alike.Yet, these protests were not only noteworthy for happening in a region, seemingly endowedwith a weak civil society, but also for the fact that they remained largely peaceful. Even untilthe mid-1990s, in contrast, the Romanian government had violently dispersed protests usingmilitant miners, and protests in Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia had a similar outcome.Tracking the frequency with which governments have used lethal or non-lethal violence duringprotests, it can be shown that governments in SEE appear to have become more tolerant of thistype of extra-parliamentary political participation. Data collected from protest events showsthat at least since the early 2000s there has been a period of government restraint. This came atthe same time as the EU opened accession pathways for most countries in the region. Thus, thethesis discusses the reasons for the decline in repression. It explores whether the temporalcorrelation between increased EU engagement and the decline of physical repression in theregion was coincidental or can be linked. In this context, the thesis focuses on the role of EUaccession conditionality, since it has been assumed that EU conditionality could have ademocratizing and, therefore, potentially constraining effect on governments. Even though thethesis concludes that EU-accession conditionality impacted repression, the nature of thatimpact is complex. It shows that to understand how EU-accession conditionality impactedrepression, we cannot treat repression as a monolithic concept. Although EU conditionalityreduced visible forms of repression, such as lethal and non-lethal violence, it had little effecton opaque, institutional forms of repression. Studying how media outlets thr, Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Reviews"Thanks to Crespy’s impressive knowledge of the field and her admirable clarity of writing, readers are guided through academic and policy debates about Social Europe to attain a full understanding of present-day challenges and future perspectives. A must-read for students, researchers and all those interested in a fairer and more democratic European Union." – Maurizio Ferrara, Professor of Politics, University of Milan"Amandine Crespy, a leading scholar on Social Europe, presents an excellent 'state of the art' on the (increasing) complexity of European social integration. This book is an excellent, well-documented, analysis of the piecemeal development of social Europe, presented clearly and pedagogically. I especially appreciate how critical reflections on the challenges with the social dimension of Europe are woven into each chapter. Strongly recommended for academics, practitioners and students interested in the social dimension of Europe." – Caroline de la Porte, Professor, Copenhagen Business SchoolDescriptionOver recent years it has become increasingly clear that the European Union is falling short of its promise to enhance social cohesion across the continent. Welfare state modernization has been at the centre of divisive debates over the redistribution of wealth and imbalances between a wealthy European core and its peripheries. Some see the policies and governance of the EU as part of the problem, others rather as the solution.This book examines the key issues facing the EU’s social policy-making. Each chapter focuses on a single challenge and explores the arguments and considerations that coalesce around it. The book helps students and researchers alike to understand how the EU operates and shapes social policy on multiple levels, and to better assess the EU’s role in supporting social cohesion.ContentsIntroduction: “Social Europe”: irrelevant, catching up, or dangerous?1. What is the European social question?2. Is the EU a key player in addressin, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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Since the Lisbon Treaty, EU national Parliaments have been recognized as relevant and legitimate players at the supranational level and given tools to be involved beyond the scrutiny of their national government. However, the last decade brought new challenges to the Europeanisation of national Parliaments, with several crises boosting intergovernmentalism. This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee, examines how EU national Parliaments have adapted to all these challenges and assesses their involvement in EU affairs over the past decade., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Can national authorities perform systematic checks on persons engaged in cross-border travel in the Schengen area without these checks being considered as border checks or as having an equivalent effect to border checks? The present article investigates a specific set of measures that involve the harnessing of “new technology” to enact systematic controls on persons traveling across the internal borders of Schengen states, through the processing of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data and in the framework of the EU PNR Directive. It argues that PNR data processing should at the same time be understood as part of the alternatives to border checks available for Member States to regulate cross-border mobility in the Schengen area and as a standout among these measures. PNR data processing challenges the existing legal framework of Article 23(a) of the Schengen Borders Code (SBC) as well as the assessment framework developed by the CJEU in its relevant case-law, not because it contravenes Schengen rules, but because it stretches and overflows them. Ultimately, PNR data processing puts into question the very understanding of what checks performed in relation to the act or intention of crossing a border actually stand for or whether controls related to border crossings can be characterised as border controls., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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The aim of this article is to understand why the EU opted to conclude the ‘EU–Turkey refugee deal’ in March 2016 in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, despite the fact that the agreement deeply contradicts fundamental EU values and norms. The article seeks to explain the outcome—the conclusion of the EU–Turkey refugee deal—by analysing not only the ability of EU institutions to shape decisions, but also their motivations, ideas and preferences in justifying the EU’s actions in responding to the refugee challenge. It is argued that the deal results from ideational and power struggles between supranational (the European Parliament and the European Commission) and intergovernmental institutions (the European Council and the Council of the European Union). It is demonstrated that while the former put forward normative arguments, the latter invoked security as a main concern to avoid internal divisions between Member States. This article also reveals that such ideational and power struggles have consequences for the EU’s identity. Theoretically, the article builds on the new intergovernmentalist claims and on the normative/civilian power literature. Empirically, it explores the usage of normative justifications by EU institutions and points to inter-institutional tensions in framing the EU’s response to the refugee challenge., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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In the Republic of Moldova struggles for independence and over national identity in the late 1980s and the early 1990s resulted in two conflicts with the Gagauz minority and separatists in the region of Transnistria. In this paper we compare and contextualize the settlement processes and pay specific attention to Chisinau’s perceptions of the two conflicts. Our analysis highlights how Gagauz autonomy and Transnistrian separatism are situated in the complex relationship between geopolitics and domestic identity politics that reproduces cleavages among Moldova’s political stakeholders. This is a major obstacle to a coherent position of Chisinau and the implementation of autonomy arrangements in both cases., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published