Secrecy is a prevalent feature of politics within and among liberal democratic states, as well as in the relations between states and international organisations. However, surprisingly little research in political science has explored the effects of secrecy on policy making; the evolution of the regulatory frameworks that govern the use of secrecy; and the tensions between secrecy and transparency. This fascinating volume examines secrecy in European politics across a range of EU and national settings and policy domains, exploring the technological, social and political developments which appear to signal the end of privacy and the rapid expansion of political secrecy in European multi-level settings. Consequently, the tensions between democratic accountability with its transparency requirements, and political secrecy, which is typically justified on grounds of effectiveness of state action, have become more marked and more politicised. Engaging with these developments, the authors focus on actors' motivations in secret politics; institutional perspectives that highlight contestation over secrecy norms; and organisational perspectives that emphasise the diversity of secrecy cultures. This book will be of great interest to students, researchers and professionals of political science and law. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal West European Politics.

Starting in the 1980s, competitive pressures and the ideology of competitiveness have shaken and transformed traditional models of development, public policy, and governance in Europe. This edited book carries out a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and innovative analysis of the relationship between competitiveness and solidarity in the contemporary European Union. It offers an original contribution to the scholarly debates on the current developments and challenges of welfare states, social and economic policies, and forms of governance in the European Union. Bringing together an international team of cutting-edge scholars in the social sciences and the humanities, Competitiveness and Solidarity in the European Union sheds light on the conceptual richness and policy relevance of these relationships, pointing to important avenues to make the European Union more economically successful and socially fairer. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union studies and, more broadly, of EU Law, Public Policy, Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Geography, and Contemporary History.

The Academy of European Law, established by the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, has as its main activity, the holding of annual Summer Courses in the law of the European Community and the protection of human rights in Europe. The courses, given by leading autorities in the respective fields, are published in the language in which they are delivered.

In easily accessible language, this book analyses the impact of Economic and Monetary Union on Small and Medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe. This overarching and widely researched study explains in a jargon-free manner the mechanisms of EMU and it's likely effect on SMEs. The book then goes on to explain and examine the results of seven case studies in Germany and France. Answers to many questions that have arisen over the years regarding SMEs and European integration can be found in the pages of this study. In a remarkably well-written and researched book, Birgit Hegge has succeeded in bringing together two interesting areas of research in an original and insightful manner. This book will be incredibly useful as a background reference for international economics and business students at an advanced level. The evidence and conclusions of this book will also, no doubt, make extremely interesting reading for European Policy makers along with those involved in European business.

Originating in the June 1998 joint conference of the United Kingdom Association for European Law (UKAEL) and the University Association for Contemporary Studies (UACES) and edited by David O'Keeffe and Patrick Twomey, this book brings together a collection of essays that offer critical insights into the institutional and substantive changes to the European Community and Union resulting from the Treaty of Amsterdam. With a preface by Lord Slynn of Hadley, the collection includes essays based on the conference presentations of Joseph Weiler, Anthony Arnull, Alan Dashwood, Franklin Dehousse, Hans Ulrich Jessurun d'Oliveira and Laurens Jan Brinkhorst and some twenty, other essays offering the reflections and criticisms of leading academics in the field as well as the unique insights of contributors working within the Community institutions.

The book analyses the processes of institution and identity building of the European Union Diplomatic Service working on matters of foreign policy and external economic relations, both in Brussels and in the Commission's Delegations across the world. The book examines what images high ranking officials in charge of the EU foreign policy hold of the EU's and of the Commission's role in international politics. The author explains how the EU diplomatic network came into being, how it is currently organised and what changes are likely to take place with the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty. Through an empirically grounded and theoretically informed approach, it analyses how their idea of Europe is enacted through the Commission's diplomatic practices. Carta demonstrates how processes of socialization can bring about different foreign policy priorities, role conceptions and identities. This book makes an important contribution to debates about the idea of Europe, the European Union and European foreign policy, as well as more generally to the analysis of how ideas, identities and self-images shape the daily practice of large institutional bodies in international politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars of European politics, foreign policy, international organizations, international relations and diplomacy.

Agriculture has a small, and declining, importance in employment and income generation within the EU, but a political importance well beyond its economic impact. The EU's common agricultural policy (CAP) has often been the source of conflict between the EU and its trade partners within first the GATT, and then the WTO. In the Doha Round agriculture was again a sticking point, resulting in setbacks and delays. The position of the EU is pivotal. Due to the comparatively limited competitiveness of the EU's agricultural sector, and the EU's institutionally constrained ability to undertake CAP reform, the CAP sets limits for agricultural trade liberalization blocking progress across the full compass of the WTO agenda. Therefore, the farm trade negotiation, with the CAP at its core, is the key to understanding the dynamics of trade rounds in the WTO.
The book, written by a political scientist and an agricultural economist, applies theory on ideas to explain how the agricultural sector came to be included in the Single Undertaking that resulted in the Uruguay Round agreements, and how this led to a dynamic interplay between CAP reform and the possibility of further agricultural trade liberalization within the WTO, thereby providing useful insights into international trade relations.

The book by Christian Schweiger helps understand the processes currently taking place within the European Union, which result from the economic crisis. They concern the transformations within economic and social models taking place in the Member States. The uniqueness of this publication consists in the fact that the author confronted many of his opinions in the debates with researchers and experts from the states and regions he describes. Having read the book, one can only hope, but also be certain, that the European Union still has a future ahead.' - Maciej Duszczyk - Institute of Social Policy, University of Warsaw, Poland'This stimulating and well-argued book examines the areas relevant within the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) debate such as employment-related institutions and policies including the welfare state, and fiscal and monetary policies. Schweiger's focus on the different VoC in Europe could not be timelier. Engaging in fundamental current European economic policy-related issues, this excellent book is a must read for scholars, policy advocates and students in the field.' - Lothar Funk, University of Applied Sciences, Dusseldorf, Germany The EU And The Global Financial Crisis analyses the emerging new political economy of the EU Single Market in the wake of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. The crisis has initiated a new wave of functionalist spillover towards deeper integration in the eurozone, which in effect divides the EU into multiple integrative cores. Providing the first comprehensive examination of the emerging policy framework in the EU and the eurozone after the global financial crisis, this rigorous study applies a neofunctionalist approach to the analysis of the crisis implications by considering the emergence of the system of multiple cores in the EU as a result of the return of political spillover. It outlines the EU's post-crisis varieties of capitalism and examines the effects of the financial crisis on selected key economies in the Single Market. This authoritative book offers a complete breakdown of the EU's political economy in the wake of the global financial crisis and will therefore appeal to students of European politics, international political economy and European studies, as well as policy-makers and other stakeholders. Contents: Part I: The EU Policy Frameworks under Stress 1. Varieties of Capitalism and the Crisis 2. From Deregulation Towards 'Smart' Regulation 3. Europe 2020 and the Eurozone Crisis: A New Functionalist Era? Part II: National Varieties of Economic and Social Models in the EU-27 4. The United Kingdom - Still the Liberal Model? 5. Germany: The Modell Deutschland between Stagnation and Reform 6. The New Crisis Paradigm: The GIIPS Countries 7. Central and Eastern Europe: From Transition Towards New Risk 8. The New Varieties of Capitalism and the Future of the European Social Model Index

The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 introduced the right to free movement for EU citizens. Despite this, in practice there are still substantial barriers to securing these freedoms. EU Citizenship and Social Rights discusses and analyses those legal and practical barriers preventing inter-European migrants from integrating into new host countries. Providing analysis of the development of EU social policy, this book highlights the disparate roles of the EU as a whole and of Member States in determining social rights and outcomes. In particular the issues of social assistance, housing benefits, study grants and health care are examined. In addition, the authors discuss the discrepancy between the social rights granted to workers and social rights granted to non-worker migrants, as well as the barriers facing minority groups like the Roma, which highlight issues in the development of EU social policy for migrants. This book will be a vital resource for students of European law as well as public and social policy. EU policy makers will also benefit from reading this, with its practical and theoretical suggestions for ways in which social policies may be amended to the benefit of EU citizens. Contributors include:; N. Absenger, F. Blank, P. Brown, C. Bruzelius, H. Dean, K. Hylten-Cavallius, C. Jacqueson, P. Martin, F. Pennings, P. Phoa, L. Scullion, M. Seeleib-Kaiser, S. Stendahl, O. Swedrup, A.M. Swiatkowski, M. Wujczyk

This work is the first systematic study of the presidency of the European Commission. Drawing upon cases of attempted leadership by Jacques Delors, the Commission President from 1985-95, it examines the leadership capacity of the office-holder. This points to the inherently shared and contingent nature of Commission President's leadership in a Union where the leadership sources are widely dispersed. While this is essentially an empirical study, Endo addresses some of the theoretical implications of its findings and resulting issues.

Redefinitions of EU borders (enlargements, Brexit), geopolitical challenges (conflicts, migrations, terrorism, environmental risks) and the economic and financial crises have triggered debates on the common values that hold European countries and citizens together, justify public action and ensure the sustainability of European governance. This book discusses the genesis of and increasing references to "European values", their appropriation by diverse groups of actors and their impact on public action. It argues that European values are a broad and flexible symbolic repertoire, instrumental to serving diverging ends, and a resource for both negotiation and conflicts. Looking at the broader picture, the book reflects on the role of values in the institutionalization of the EU as a political order and paves the way to an assessment of its singularity in comparison with other polities across time and space. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in EU politics, comparative politics, IR, public policy, sociology and cultural studies.

The European Union (EU) is at the forefront of engaging in external trade relations outside of the World Trade Organization (WTO) with entire regions and economic powerhouses. Understanding why and how the EU engages in one of the most active fields of external relations is crucial. This book fills a gap in the literature by analysing motives on the modes - bilateralism, inter-regionalism, or multilateralism - of EU external trade relations towards regional organizations in Asia and Latin America outside of the WTO. In particular, it examines why the EU turned from interregional to bilateral external trade relations towards these world regions - a question that is, to date, under-researched. By developing and testing an original approach rooted in realist theorizing coined 'commercial realism', it examines systematically the explanatory power of commercial realism against liberal-institutionalist approaches dominant in the literature on EU external relations through five in-depth case studies. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students in EU Politics/Studies, EU external relations, inter-regionalism and more broadly to International Relations and International Political Economy.

This book studies the response of the European Court of Human Rights, the international court that supervises governmental compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to complaints submitted to it by companies and their shareholders. The protection of business vis-a-vis governmental regulation is hardly the main concern of international human rights law, yet it is not disputed that companies, and their owners, in principle enjoy protection under the ECHR. Such complaints are not unproblematic for the Court in Strasbourg, however. This book analyses the Court's reasoning in three groups of cases in which they have presented difficult issues of treaty interpretation. As the case law is streamlined in a minimalist fashion which obscures the Court's rationale, the book construes the structural framework within which the Court operates and explains how the relevant case law is largely coherent when considered against the general structure of ECHR protection. This book is the first major study of the protection of business enterprise under the European Convention on Human Rights and thus an invaluable guide to understanding how the Court in Strasbourg responds to corporate complaints. More importantly, by focusing on a field of European human rights law that is regarded by many as marginal and even objectionable, the book reveals the fundamental structures of European human rights protection, where the protection of economic activity and corporate life is regarded as inseparable from core values of the ECHR such as an effective political democracy and the rule of law.

As the EU enters an increasingly uncertain phase after the 2016 Brexit referendum, Euroscepticism continues to become an increasingly embedded phenomenon within party systems, non-party groups and within the media. Yet, academic literature has paid little attention to the emergence of, and increased development of, transnational and pan-European networks of EU opposition. As the 'gap' between Europe's mainstream political elites and an increasingly sceptical public has widened, pan-European spheres of opposition towards the EU have developed and evolved. The volume sets out to explain how such an innately contradictory phenomenon as transnational Euroscepticism has emerged. It draws on a variety of perspectives and case studies in a number of spheres - the European Parliament, political parties, the media, civil society and public opinion. Examining to what extent the pan-European dimension of Euroscepticism is becoming increasingly influential, it argues that opposition to European integration has for too long been viewed somewhat narrowly, through the paradigm of national party politics. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and professionals in EU politics, European studies, political parties, and more broadly to comparative politics and international relations.

With each legislative issue, legislators have to decide whether to delegate decision-making to the executive and/or to expert bodies in order to flesh out the details of this legislation, or, alternatively, to spell out all aspects of this decision in legislation proper. The reasons why to delegate have been of prime interest to political science. The debate has concentrated on principal-agent theory to explain why politicians delegate decision-making to bureaucrats, to independent regulatory agencies, and to others actors and how to control these agents. By contrast, Changing Rules of Delegation focuses on these questions: Which actors are empowered by delegation? Are executive actors empowered over legislative actors? How do legislative actors react to the loss of power? What opportunities are there to change the institutional rules governing delegation in order to (re)gain institutional power and, with it influence over policy outcomes? The authors analyze the conditions and processes of change of the rules that delegate decision-making power to the Commission's implementing powers under comitology. Focusing on the role of the European Parliament the authors explain why the Commission, the Council, and increasingly the Parliament, delegated decision-making to the Commission. If they chose delegation, they still have to determine under which institutional rule comitology should operate. These rules, too, distribute power unequally among actors and therefore raise the question of how they came about in the first place and whether and how the "losers" of a rule change seek to alter the rules at a later point in time.

In a deeply iniquitous world, where the gains from trade are distributed unevenly and where trade rules often militate against progressive social values, human health, and sustainable development, NGOs are widely touted as our best hope for redressing these conditions. As a critical voice of the poor and marginalized, many are engaged in a global struggle for democratic norms and social justice. Yet the potential for NGOs to bring about meaningful change is limited. This book examines whether improvements in participatory opportunities for progressive NGOs results in substantive and normative policy change in one of the major trading powers, the European Union. Hannah advances a constructivist account of the role of NGOs in the EU's trade policymaking process. She argues that NGOs have been instrumental in providing education, raising awareness, and giving a voice to broader societal concerns about proposed trade deals, both when they take advantage of formal participatory opportunities and when they protest from the streets and in the media. However, the book also highlights how NGO inputs are mediated by the social structure of global trade governance. Epistemes-the background knowledge, ideological and normative beliefs, and shared assumptions about how the world works-determine who has a voice in global trade governance. Showing how NGOs succeed only when their advocacy conforms broadly to the dominant episteme, this book will be of value to scholars and students with an interest in NGOs and international trade negotiations. It will also be of interest to policymakers, national trade negotiators, government departments, and the trade policy community.

Recent failures and rescues of large banks have resulted in colossal costs to society. In wake of such turmoil a new banking union must enable better supervision, pre-emptive coordinated action and taxpayer protection. While these aims are meritorious they will be difficult to achieve. This book explores the potential of a new banking union in Europe. This book brings together leading experts to analyse the challenges of banking in the European Union. While not all contributors agree, the constructive criticism provided in this book will help ensure that a new banking union will mature into a stable yet vibrant financial system that encourages the growth of economic activity and the efficient allocation of resources. This book will be of use to researchers interested in Banking, Monetary Economics and the European Union.

Europe Un-Imagined examines one of the world's first and only trans nationally produced television channels, Association relative a la television europeenne (ARTE). ARTE calls itself the "European culture channel" and was launched in 1991 with a French-German intergovernmental mandate to produce television and other media that promoted pan-European community and culture. Damien Stankiewicz's ground-breaking ethnographic study of the various contexts of media production work at ARTE (the newsroom, the editing studio, the screening room), reveals how ideas about French, German, and European culture coalesce and circulate at the channel. He argues that the reproduction of nationalism often goes unacknowledged and unremarked upon, and questions whether something like a European "imagination" can be produced. Stankiewicz describes the challenges that ARTE staff face, including rapidly changing media technologies and audiences, unreflective national stereotyping, and unwieldy bureaucratic infrastructure, which ultimately limit the channel's abilities to cultivate a transnational, "European" public. Europe Un-Imagined challenges its readers to find new ways of thinking about how people belong in the world beyond the problematic logics of national categorization.

The financial crisis posed new challenges for the administrations of Eurozone countries, including: how to respect EU obligations when the economy is under stress? How to improve the overall implementation of EU policies and domestic reforms? How to negotiate effectively with the Troika and then quickly and efficiently fulfil the requirements of the Memoranda of Understanding? This volume offers the first analysis of EU coordination by national executives in the light of the legal and political consequences of the crisis, using case studies of five severely affected Member States: Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal. It examines from an interdisciplinary perspective how they have adapted their coordination systems since the outbreak of the crisis, shedding light on the adjustments undertaken by domestic administrations. The comparison reveals that in this process Prime Ministers and Ministers of Finance were empowered in a common shift towards the centralization of EU coordination.

Africa's association with the European Union has long been hailed as a progressive model of North-South relations. European officials, in particular, have represented the Africa-EU 'partnership' as a pro-poor enterprise in which trade interests are married to development prerogatives. Applying a moral economy perspective, this book examines the tangible impact of Africa-Europe trade and development co-operation on citizens in developing countries. In so doing, it challenges liberal accounts of Europe's normative power to enable benevolent change in the Global South and illuminates how EU discourse acts to legitimise unequal trade ties that have regressive consequences for 'the poor'. Drawing upon the author's own fieldwork, it assesses the difference between norms and the actual impact of EU concessions in relation to: budget support; aid for trade; private sector development (PSD); decent work. It concludes by considering the value of a moral economy approach in the assessment of free trade structures more widely. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of Africanist IPE, European studies, and more broadly international political economy, international development, and international relations.

The question of how political parties are, and ought to be, regulated has assumed an increased importance in recent years, both within the scholarly community and among policy-makers and politicians as the state assumes an increasingly active role in the management of, and control over, their behaviour and organisation This book concentrates on the regulation of political parties in the EU post-communist democracies, and on Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, in particular. In analysing the various dimensions of party regulation, it builds on the main premises derived from the neo-institutionalist literature in political science, concerning the ways in which the (formal and informal) rules and procedures may influence, constrain or determine the behaviour of political actors. In doing so, it provides a comprehensive overview of the regulation of Eastern European political parties provided by leading experts in the field and casts theoretical and empirical light on the manner in which the constitutional and legal regulation of party organizations and finances have had an impact (or not) on the consolidation of party politics in post-communist Europe since 1989. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of Political Parties and Behaviour, East European and Post-Communist Politics and Comparative Politics.

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a key actor in the global investment regime since the 1980s. At the same time, international investment policy and agreements, which govern international investment liberalisation, treatment and protection through investor-to-state dispute settlement, have become increasingly contentious in the European public debate. This book provides an accessible introduction to international investment policy and seeks to explain how the EU became an actor in the global investment regime. It offers a detailed analysis of the EU's participation in all major trade and investment negotiations since the 1980s and EU-internal competence debates to identify the causes behind the EU's growing role in this policy domain. Building on principal-agent and historical institutionalist models of incremental institutional change, the book shows that Commission entrepreneurship was instrumental in the emergence of the EU as a key actor in the global investment regime. It refutes business-centred liberal intergovernmental explanations, which suggest that business lobbying made the Member States accept the EU's growing role and competence in this domain. The book lends support to supranational and challenges intergovernmental thinking on European Integration. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of European and regional integration, EU foreign relations, EU trade and international investment law, business lobbying, and more broadly of international political economy.

Since 2010 Greece has been experiencing the longest period of austerity and economic downturn in its recent history. Economic changes may be happening more rapidly and be more visible than the cultural effects of the crisis which are likely to take longer to become visible, however in recent times, both at home and abroad, the Greek arts scene has been discussed mainly in terms of the crisis. While there is no shortage of accounts of Greece's economic crisis by financial and political analysts, the cultural impact of austerity has yet to be properly addressed. This book analyses hitherto uncharted cultural aspects of the Greek economic crisis by exploring the connections between austerity and culture. Covering literary, artistic and visual representations of the crisis, it includes a range of chapters focusing on different aspects of the cultural politics of austerity such as the uses of history and archaeology, the brain drain and the Greek diaspora, Greek cinema, museums, music festivals, street art and literature as well as manifestations of how the crisis has led Greeks to rethink or question cultural discourses and conceptions of identity.

Modern constitutionalism as an idea and practice is facing great uncertainty in current times. Scholarly debates focus predominantly on constitutions beyond the state, while the predicament of domestic constitutionalism is much less considered. This volume contributes to a theoretically informed analysis of the key challenges and changes affecting domestic constitutionalism in Europe and beyond, departing from the idea of 'constitutional acceleration' or the increased propensity of different actors to engage in (formal) reform of the constitutional order. The volume points to a fundamental change in the function of constitutions in that constitutions themselves are increasingly subjects of political contestation rather than framing political debates. The collection of essays addresses a range of critical challenges - including societal acceleration, depoliticization, civic engagement, multi-faceted constituent power, modernization, populism and nationalism, and transnationalization. The volume includes a variety of disciplinary, and in some cases interdisciplinary, approaches, including (political) sociology, political science, constitutional law, and constitutional and legal theory, and will be of interest to researchers and students in any of these areas. Case studies focus on the EU and the wider European context, and include highly relevant but little known or ill-understood cases, such as the recent constitutional events in Iceland, Italy, or Romania, and cases of democratic reversal, such as Hungary, while also engaging with traditional but rapidly changing cases of constitutional interest, such as the UK.

Social cohesion is one of the declared objectives of the European Union and, with some 16% of EU citizens at risk of poverty, the need to fight poverty and social exclusion continues as a major challenge. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the EU Social Inclusion Process, the means by which it hopes to meet this objective, and explores the challenges ahead at local, regional, national and EU levels. It sets out concrete proposals for taking the Process forward. The book provides a unique analysis of policy formulation and assessment. Setting out the evolution and current state of EU cooperation in social policy, it examines what can be learned about poverty and social exclusion from the EU commonly agreed indicators. Taking the position of outside, but informed, observers, the authors explore the further development of the common indicators, including the implications of Enlargement, and consider the challenges of advancing the Social Inclusion Process - strengthening policy analysis, embedding the Process in domestic policies and making it more effective. Proposing the setting of targets and restructuring of National Action Plans and their implementation, they emphasise the need for widespread "ownership" of the Process at domestic and EU level and for it to demonstrate significant progress in reducing poverty and social exclusion. The book will be invaluable to academics, students and policy-makers at sub-national, national and EU levels as well as to social partners, and NGOs working towards a more inclusive society.