This timely and important intervention in the debates concerning Europe in Ireland begins with the 1916 Centenary celebration. The Brexit decision of June 2016 has fundamentally altered Ireland's relationship with the European Union and has exponentially increased interest in European matters in public debates. Yet, public discussions regarding Ireland's closer links with the European Union often remain purely utilitarian and economic, or take place solely within academia. There is an urgent need to broaden the debate towards the cultural and social spheres, which includes highlighting the inherently European quality of Irish culture and society, in the past as much as the present. The most extensive interventions on these issues in recent years have come from the President of Ireland. This edition collects all of the major speeches on the topic of Europe since 2016. They encompass interventions on historical aspects, bilateral cultural links, citizens' involvement in the European project, workers' rights and ecological concerns. The present Covid-19 crisis will further move the European Union into the limelight, in particular its role in helping member states cope with the consequences of this unprecedented disaster. President Higgins addresses the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918-19 from a speech made in May 2019 and considers the role of European leaders in a letter to the President of the Hellenic Republic in April 2020. These speeches are marked by the President's particular and personal stamp, while also expressing central concerns on behalf of Irish citizens. The speeches are enhanced by a Foreword written by President Michael D. Higgins.

This is the first in-depth study of the Committee of the Regions and its role in the European policy process. It is rooted in the theory of European integration, including the 'normative turn', and will be essential reading for students of multilevel European politics.' - Michael Keating, University of Aberdeen, UK'Piattoni and Schonlau s innovative, careful, and multi-disciplinary analysis of the CoR helps us reconsider not only that institution but also EU democracy and governance. It deserves to be widely read by all who seek ways to improve EU governance or to understand the role of sub-state actors in EU politics.' - Alex Warleigh-Lack, Visiting Fellow, UNU-CRIS 'Piattoni and Schonlau's work is that rare combination of careful analysis and passionate argument. As the former, it is easily the most thorough and sophisticated study of how the Committee of Regions fits in the EU's institutional structure and the role it plays in its policy making process. As the latter, it is a theoretically astute, and normatively inspired defence of the way in which the CoR contributes to the articulation of democratic voice within the EU's multilevel structure of governance. As such, it is a reflection on how democratic representation works in complex societies, and it should be read by those interested in the legitimacy of the European Union and the question of democratic legitimacy at large.' - Dario Castiglione, University of Exeter, UK This ground breaking book looks at the way in which the Committee of Regions (CoR) can influence EU policy making from below, despite its relatively weak position in the decision-making process. In essence, the authors argue that the CoR plays a significant role in the EU's political process, going well beyond its formally limited advisory function. By applying theoretical considerations about the expression of judgment and the formation of will in democratic systems, the authors develop a normative argument about why it is opportune that local and regional concerns be involved in shaping European Union decisions. Moreover, by looking at the institutional development of the Committee, and by analyzing its contribution in key policy areas, the book shows why the CoR is already a very important element of the multi-level democratic system of the European Union. Academics, researchers and students will benefit from the up-to-date analysis of the CoR. Functionaries in the EU institutions, European regions and localities, state bureaucracies and political party members will find the new insights provided in this book to be of interest.

Through its focus on EU Association Agreement negotiations, this book goes beyond the study of traditional EU trade negotiations and puts the spotlight on the increasing number of negotiations where trade relations are discussed alongside political ones. This setting makes both the negotiations themselves and the definition of the EU's positions more complicated, raising the question as to what ultimately determines the EU's behaviour in such complex negotiations spanning multiple of the EU's policy areas. Offering a generalizable analytical model to study such complex EU international negotiations, the book illuminates the preferences and interactions between individual parts of the EU's foreign affairs bureaucracy, and those between the lead actors, the Directorate General for Trade, and the European External Action Service (EEAS), in particular. In doing so, it demonstrates the utility of adapting the concept of bureaucratic politics from Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) to the EU's foreign policy decision-making apparatus across different stages of EU international negotiations. It also discusses how the institutional changes of the Treaty of Lisbon have altered the institutional set-up of the EU's foreign affairs bureaucracy and thereby changed the foundations of the EU's bureaucratic politics. Finally, the book finds that the EU's behaviour in these negotiations is ultimately shaped, on the one hand, by the presence of diverging positions between its institutional actors, and the difficulty to bridge them through policy coordination mechanisms, on the other. Empirically, it explores these dynamics by considering the EU's Association Agreement negotiations on the Latin American continent over the last twenty years before demonstrating the analytical model's utility in the context of the EU's negotiations with Ukraine and Japan. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in EU foreign affairs/external relations, EU public administration and public policy, EU trade policy, and more broadly to Foreign Policy Analysis and International Relations.

European Regulatory Agencies (ERAs) have become increasingly important features in EU decision-making. They aim to provide expert advice independent of political or economic considerations. This book explains whether and under what conditions ERAs comply with this scientific mandate. Expanding on rational institutionalism, Ossege provides novel insights into the behaviour of ERAs, their autonomy from 'undue' external influence, and their impact on EU policy-making. The empirical comparison of three major ERAs - the European Medicines Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, and the European Chemicals Agency - not only shows that agencies capitalise on their expertise and rule-making competences to protect their autonomy. Rather, in making strategic use of their expertise, the ERAs also guard their autonomy in areas of high political salience, though their policy influence in these areas is partially circumscribed. Based on these insights, European Regulatory Agencies in EU Decision-Making locates its subject in the wider system of European Governance and considers the perennial question of how to reconcile the need for expert advice with democratic decision-making.

Since UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched the Global Compact in 1999, over 12,000 organisations around the world have voluntarily adopted and promoted its values and Ten Principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and corruption. This corporate citizenship initiative has been seen as a non-compulsory alternative to international market regulations. Around the globe, the UN Global Compact has promoted the creation of local and regional networks for businesses to act together to mainstream the Ten Principles. This edited volume brings together international contributions on the specific implications for business when embracing the Global Compact. Managerial, internationalisation, legal, behavioural and sociological perspectives are explored in this volume in which both evidences and theoretical developments are reflected.

Thanks to new transparency rules and increased efforts by scholars, researchers are better equipped than ever before to analyze the decision-making processes of the Council of the European Union and to test old wisdoms. This book covers the most contentious areas and important debates in current research.

This authoritative volume traces the creation and development of the EEC as an institution and assesses its impact on the economic development of Europe and the policy areas under its control.The book includes a thorough discussion of the background and origins of the European Economic Community. In the early years of post-war Europe, the continuous search for a multilateral commercial agreement resulted in various plans for European commercial cooperation. These schemes were proposed less in a desire for European integration and supranational institutions, than in response to real economic problems and were the precursors to the formation of the EEC. The next section investigates the process of creating the EEC including the road to integration of the major founding members, and the attitude of the United States to European integration. Finally, it discusses the economic development of the EEC since 1957. It explores major themes including the impact of the Community on trade and agriculture and on competition and financial policy, as well as the effects of its own enlargement. The study ends with the steps towards closer union embodied in the Treaty of Maastricht, which signalled the transformation of the European Economic Community into the European Union.

This book aims to assess what the changes of the Treaty of Lisbon envisaged and whether these ambitions have materialised since the Treaty entered into force. It offers analyses of the past, as well as what might be the future (because some provisions will only enter into effect in the years to come). To what extent has the current decision-making process been able to address the shortcomings and challenges of the past? What has been the impact of aspects of the Lisbon Treaty that clarified pre-existing norms and structures, in some cases formalizing them, rather than introducing new changes? The authors of this book look at the interaction between formal rules and informal practices, seeking to point to the interaction between the two. They find that informal practices to date typically still dominate formal rules. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

This book is an exploration of how the European Union (EU) and other regional actors construct, understand and use different forms of power in a political space that is increasingly referred to as "Greater Eurasia". The contributors examine the extent that the understanding of power shapes how states and the EU act on a range of questions from energy to the balance of power in Eurasia. They explore how the EU's and other regional actors', primarily Russia's, understanding of power determines whether the post-Soviet space is a neighbourhood, a battleground or an arena for geopolitical and geostrategic confrontation. The chapters deal with a range of issues from negotiations between the EU and Azerbaijan, to how the EU and Russia are trying to shape relations in Central Asia. The volume represents an innovative way of understanding the changing dynamics of the relationship between Russia and the EU, with some original empirical data, and presents these dynamics within a broader conceptual and geographic framework. It also contributes to emerging debates about how the ideational construction of political space may provide insight into how actors behave. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Europe-Asia Studies.

The conceptual uncertainty when dealing with processes of integration and disintegration in Europe is striking because traditional notions of the nation-state, constitutionalism, sovereignty, and federalism do not account for emerging realities in either Western or Eastern Europe. This volume explores the complex inter-relationship between federal arrangements and their effects on integrating multi-ethnic societies in Europe, and takes stock of current debates on the effects of federalism on integration and disintegration in Eastern and Western Europe. For the first time federalism is addressed in a pan-European context and an attempt is made to look for remedies to overcome nationalism in both East and West within a federalist institutional framework.

The enlargement of European-based organisations has reached a near terminal point. The Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) currently cover virtually all states of Europe (Belarus still remains excluded from the first of these). The EU and NATO have experienced extensive processes of enlargement and the scope for continuing enlargement is now limited largely to the Balkans and the European neutrals. Given this state of affairs it is now pertinent to think of a Europe characterised not by enlargement but by post-enlargement. In International Relations (IR) conceptual thinking on Europe (as opposed just to the EU) has been undertaken using a range of scholarly tools. In this volume, attention to Europe proceeds from English School (ES) thinking, and specifically its three-fold distinction between international system, international society and world society. It is the international society element (the development/institutionalisation of shared interests and identities buttressed by rules and norms) which signifies in their most concrete form different patterns of interaction or integration between states. This book will be of interest to international relations scholars, as well as practitioners within the European Union and other intergovernmental institutions. It was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

Currently, some 2,500 civilian experts work across Europe, Africa, and Asia in ten ongoing civilian missions launched under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Mandates cover a broad range of multidimensional tasks, such as rule of law support, law enforcement capacity building, or security sector reform. Numerous (recent) incidents from the field underscore that there are serious institutional as well as procedural weaknesses and irregularities tied to accountability in these EU peacebuilding missions. This title offers a comprehensive legal analysis and empirical study of accountability concerning the Union's peacebuilding endeavours, also referred to as civilian crisis management. Along with examining the governance credentials of EU peacebuilding, the monograph thoroughly scrutinizes de jure and de facto accountability arrangements of political, legal, and administrative nature existing in the domestic sphere, at EU level, and across levels. With a view to providing for a nuanced picture, the assessment further distinguishes between different accountability finalities and evaluates the appropriateness of existing accountability arrangements in civilian crisis management based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative criteria.

In September 1988, Margaret Thatcher, then British Prime Minister, delivered a speech in the Belgian town of Bruges. It opened a great debate on the future of Europe. For the first time in post-war European history a British politician proposed widening the ideal of European political union, to throw European countries on the side of international free trade, willing co-operation between nations and individual liberty. The Bruges Group, formed in February 1989, is concerned to argue for these broader objectives within the debate on the future of Europe. All the papers in this volume are written from that viewpoint.

Deciphering the European Investment Bank: History, Politics and Economics examines the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union's financial institution and the largest lender and borrower among the International Financial Institutions. Since its establishment in 1958, the EIB has developed without becoming front-page news and has remained highly invisible. By putting together 14 chapters that analyze topical and meaningful moments and aspects of the bank, this edited book offers the first comprehensive analysis of its origins and its evolution in terms of its mandate, governance, structures, policy activity, and performance. Written by acknowledged experts from various disciplines, the chapters weave together history, economics, law, and political science to provide a multidisciplinary examination and capture the complexity of the EIB. The book is a timely initiative for understanding the EIB, whose role has been ever increasing for contributing to the recent global economic challenges, including the economic and financial crisis, climate change, and COVID-19 pandemic. The chapters are written at a level which will be comprehensible to undergraduates in economics, history, and international political economy. It will also be a valuable source of reference for academics, policy makers, bankers, and other practitioners interested in regional development banks and their role in the global economy.

This book examines the ability of citizens across ten European countries to exercise their democratic rights to access their personal data. It presents a socio-legal research project, with the researchers acting as citizens, or data subjects, and using ethnographic data collection methods. The research presented here evidences a myriad of strategies and discourses employed by a range of public and private sector organizations as they obstruct and restrict citizens' attempts to exercise their informational rights. The book also provides an up-to-date legal analysis of legal frameworks across Europe concerning access rights and makes several policy recommendations in the area of informational rights. It provides a unique and unparalleled study of the law in action which uncovered the obstacles that citizens encounter if they try to find out what personal data public and private sector organisations collect and store about them, how they process it, and with whom they share it. These are simple questions to ask, and the right to do so is enshrined in law, but getting answers to these questions was met by a raft of strategies which effectively denied citizens their rights. The book documents in rich ethnographic detail the manner in which these discourses of denial played out in the ten countries involved, and explores in depth the implications for policy and regulatory reform.

This book presents the most thorough examination of the role that the most political social network, Twitter, played in creating, negotiating and challenging Brexit narratives during the process of UK's exiting of the European Union Working with multiple methods, from digital media analysis to interviews, and a wide variety of data, the book offers scrutiny of Brexit-related tweets and discourses they promote, and gives voice to key actors - UK citizens, political and media actors - to explain why and how they've used Twitter to talk about Brexit and with what outcomes The author engages with, and enhances, a range of theoretical discussions central to our understanding of the role of social media in politics, from permanent campaigning on social media to social media journalism With a reach far beyond the central Brexit case study, the book discusses new trends and practices in political communication and contextualises them with reference to empirical evidence The book is key reading for all students and researchers in digital media and politics, digital methods and related areas, as well as anyone interested in developing their understanding of the role that Twitter plays in political communications

This engaging and concise new edition offers the student and general reader a compact, readable treatment of British membership of the European Union (EU) from 1973 up until the present day and Brexit, with detailed analysis of the period 1945-1972 accounting for Britain's absence from the formation of the EU. It provides a highly distilled and accessible analysis and overview of some of the parameters and recurring features of Britain's membership of the European Union, touching on all the major facets of membership at this critical time in Britain's relationship with Europe. Key features of the new edition: examines the constant and changing character of British membership of the EU; discusses the problematical and often paradoxical features of EU membership; familiarises the reader with both academic and public debates about the subject; offers thematic treatment of all aspects of policy and attitudes towards the EU; significantly restructured and updated to include the origins of the decision to hold a referendum on UK membership of the EU, the campaign, explanations for its outcome, and the course, substance and implications of the UK-EU Brexit negotiations. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and the generally interested reader in the areas of European Politics/Studies, British Politics, EU Politics/Studies, Area Studies and International Relations.

Is today's left really new? How has the European radical left evolved? Giorgos Charalambous answers these questions by looking at three moments of rapid political change - the late 1960s to late 1970s; the turn of the millennium; and post-2008. He challenges the conventional understanding of a 'new left', drawing out continuities with earlier movements and parties. Charalambous examines the 'Long '68', symbolised by the May uprisings in France, which saw the rise of new left forces and the widespread criticism by younger radical activists of traditional communist and socialist parties. He puts this side by side with the turn of the millennium when the Global Justice Movement rose to prominence and changed the face of the international left, and also the period after the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of anti-austerity politics which initiated the most recent wave of new left parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. With a unique 'two-level' perspective, Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organisation, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.

Offering a comprehensive and structured analysis of the reasons why the EU lacks external coherence towards Russia, this book presents important new insights to the topic beyond conventional institutionalist arguments. Philipp Thaler utilises key cases in external energy and human rights policies to highlight the on-going difficulties in creating a coherent position, despite the EU's formally stated objective to achieve this. Providing new avenues to understanding the meaning of coherence, the book explores why this frequently used term is undefined and why it became a guiding principle in EU foreign policy. Thaler includes a thorough overview of how the EU's institutional architecture and successive reforms have been designed to improve external coherence, and highlights elements that impede this aim. Placing the challenges in the EU-Russia relationship into their historical context, the book demonstrates that the quest for coherence is not a marginal normative claim, but practically incorporated into the EU's foreign policy. Timely and inquisitive, this is a critical read for European studies and international relations scholars. It will be particularly helpful for those focusing on energy governance and EU foreign policy.

This highly topical book addresses the challenge of economic convergence within Europe, beginning with a thorough review of the theory of growth and related empirical research. Historical and more recent economic developments within the present EU and current accession countries are discussed, along with the design for the process of further integration of accession countries into the EU and the Euro area. Moreover, the potential to achieve a sustainable catch-up process in Western Balkan countries, the Ukraine and Russia is explored, focusing on the task facing the EU in designing proper policies vis-a-vis these countries. The contributors' varied perspectives ensure that the theories and policies postulated are linked closely with the actual situation in accession countries and offer up-to-date insights. Economic Convergence and Divergence in Europe will be of interest to economists and researchers of regional and European studies, particularly those with a focus on integration. Its accessible and non-technical approach assures its appeal to experts from the banking and governmental sectors.

This book examines how European issues have played out in Serbian and Croatian party politics since 2000, in the context of significant challenges brought by European integration of the Western Balkans. It provides a comprehensive analysis of how political parties in these countries have determined and shifted their positions on the EU, by exploring the effect and interaction of party ideology and strategy, position within the party system, relations with the general public and voters as well as transnational party linkages. The author argues that the particular nature of European issues, closely related to crucial identity and statehood dilemmas in these post-conflict societies, largely determined party stances on the EU, feeding significant Eurosceptic sentiments. At the same time, a number of core parties underwent a rapid pro-EU conversion, pragmatically responding to internal and external incentives in the context of dynamic electoral competition and strong EU presence, and aimed at maximising their chances of securing executive office. The book will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in the fields of comparative politics, Western Balkan politics, and EU studies.

The future of Europe and the role it will play in the 21st century are among the most important political questions of our time. The optimism of a decade ago has now faded but the stakes are higher than ever. The way these questions are answered will have enormous implications not only for all Europeans but also for the citizens of Europe's closest and oldest ally - the USA.

In this new book, one of Europe's leading intellectuals examines the political alternatives facing Europe today and outlines a course of action for the future. Habermas advocates a policy of gradual integration of Europe in which key decisions about Europe's future are put in the hands of its peoples, and a "bipolar commonality" of the West in which a more unified Europe is able to work closely with the United States to build a more stable and equitable international order.

This book includes Habermas's portraits of three long-time philosophical companions, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida and Ronald Dworkin. It also includes several important new texts by Habermas on the impact of the media on the public sphere, on the enduring importance religion in "post-secular" societies, and on the design of a democratic constitutional order for the emergent world society.

This title was first published in 2001. As economic integration touches ever more areas of society, more and more people are confronted by the bewildering complexity of the functioning of the European Union. Rather than merely focusing on the description of EU policies, this study of the economics of European integration seeks to: select the most relevant aspects and developments; place the wide variety of issues in a robust conceptual structure; integrate theoretical developments with the results of empirical research and of policy analysis; explain the logic of the dynamic processes; describe the structural features of the European economy; highlight the response of private companies to changes in the regulatory environment; depict the historical developments so as to give a sound basis for the understanding of the present situation and the likely future development; and set the European developments in the light of global developments. In practice Western Europe is the focus of major parts of this book.

The Making of the European Union argues that the process of European integration has drifted into serious crisis, perhaps the most serious since the Danes voted against the Treaty of the European Union in 1992. French and Dutch voters blatantly rejected the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe in the summer of 2005, thus freezing the constitutional process for at least a year. The outcome of these referenda indicates that the views and attitudes of average Europeans have not been sufficiently listened to.Analysing the conditions for European integration, this book applies a citizens' or 'bottom-up' perspective on the integration process. The difficulties that the constitutional process has encountered illustrate the relevance of bringing public opinion into the analysis of the prospects for European integration. The book describes and analyses the historical, mental, intellectual, and attitudinal denominators of European integration, denominators that have shaped the processes so far and will continue to do so in the future. The authors apply a broad comparative perspective, where European nation-states constitute the primary units of analysis. The focus is on the foundations of European integration, public views about the EU, including various shades of Euroscepticism, and the long-term prospects of the EU. This is a fascinating and penetrating look at the EU and will therefore appeal to a wide audience including scholars and researchers in the social sciences - particularly political science, comparative politics and European studies. The book will also be of great interest to journalists and all those involved in the EU, including policy makers and civil servants throughout the EU itself.