Suchergebnisse

Most of the literature has treated EU enlargement and the transition of Central and Eastern Europe, two of the most memorable events in recent history, as separate events. We argue that such separation is not warranted; it obfuscates an important fact, namely that the reform process in many Central and East European countries has taken a sui generis turn precisely because of the external EU option. We offer a formal model that explains how and why the EU membership option drives regulation in applicant countries beyond their equilibrium level of regulatory quality. We derive a series of hypotheses from our model and test these hypotheses employing standard panel methods. Empirical results support our model and suggest that approximately 40% of the variance in regulatory quality among transition countries is explained by EU conditionality in the enlargement process.

This book provides a comprehensive account of EU's renewable energy policy development as it traces the agenda-shaping, policy formulation and decision-making phases of the EU's secondary legislation on renewable energy - that is the three successive directives of 2001 (RES-E), 2009 (RED), and 2018 (RED II). It also explores the EU's energy policymaking dynamics and assess integration outcomes of these three policymaking instances in the renewable energy field from a comparative perspective. Enriched with elite interviews with the Brussels policy community, and drawing on European integration and public policy literature, the proposed book will resonate with and offer relevant insights to students, scholars, stakeholders, and policymakers interested in EU energy policy, in particular, and European integration, in general.

Multilingualism is an ever-present feature in political contexts around the world, including multilingual states and international organizations. Increasingly, consequential political decisions are negotiated between politicians who do not share a common native language. Nils Ringe uses the European Union to investigate how politicians' reliance on shared foreign languages and translation services affects politics and policy-making. Ringe's research illustrates how multilingualism is an inherent and consequential feature of EU politics—that it depoliticizes policy-making by reducing its political nature and potential for conflict. An atmosphere with both foreign language use and a reliance on translation leads to communication that is simple, utilitarian, neutralized, and involves commonly shared phrases and expressions. Policymakers tend to disregard politically charged language and they are constrained in their ability to use vague or ambiguous language to gloss over disagreements by the need for consistency across languages.

Substantial theoretical, conceptual and empirical advances have been made in research on the implementation of EU policies during recent years. However, our findings have remained ambivalent and our theoretical insights disparate. It therefore seems high time to address some methodological issues and to raise awareness of the limits of the various approaches and of the data commonly used. We highlight the challenges of operationalizing and of choosing adequate indicators for the dependent variable (compliance). We also discuss the promises and perils of different types of data used in the field, such as official statistics on notifications and infringements published by the European Commission.

National courts have been key players in the legal push for Europe, though notably to varying degrees. This paper examines the persisting variations in the referral rates of national courts and the underlying causal factors, aiming to better understand why some member states' courts have been more reluctant to join in the legal push for Europe. By using econometric methods, it challenges the modified neofunctionalist argument that the extent of intra-EC trade explains the referral practice of the individual member states. Majoritarian democracy is hypothesized as a causal factor in the low referral rates for some of the EU member states. Key characteristics of majoritarian democracy versus constitutional democracy are outlined and the former is further detailed by means of two case studies: Denmark and the UK. Finally, a panel data analysis is conducted and finds evidence of a negative impact of majoritarian democracy on the number of referrals. The paper concludes that, owing to the uneven legal push for Europe, some member states and their citizens remain at arms' length from the legal integration process — and, in consequence, from the full impact of European integration.