Suchergebnisse

Under what conditions will international compliance-monitoring institutions pursue violations of international law? The European Commission's infringement procedure is a multi-step process that culminates at the Court of Justice of the European Union when a member state has allegedly violated European Union law. The Commission, however, does not have meaningful enforcement powers, and may potentially spend valuable time and resources on a case only for a member state to not comply with European Union law. To manage this opportunity cost of pursuing other violations of European Union law, I argue that the Commission will strategically delay advancing a case through the infringement procedure when it anticipates that the political conditions will be more favorable for compliance in the future. I provide evidence that the Commission delays infringement proceedings when it expects the election of a new government that will be more likely to comply than the incumbent government.

"In this volume an international cast of contributors analyze and discuss the role of societal actors in European integration from the creation of the present-day European Union in 1958 to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Based throughout on newly accessible sources the authors discuss a variety of societal actors from political parties to business groups and civil society organizations demonstrating the scope and limits of their role in European polity-building and policy-making before the Maastricht Treaty, with an outlook on the period since then. This is an important text for students and Scholars of European Studies, European Union Politics and contemporary History."--Publisher's website

EU internal security concerns such as migration, police and judicial cooperation are today part of EU foreign policy. This book shows how those concerns dominate the EU agenda towards Mediterranean countries. Adopting a rational-choice institutionalist approach, it explores EU policy and the strategic choices made after the 2011 Arab revolts

Which member states could leave the European Union in the years ahead? To answer this question, I develop the 'EU Exit Index' measuring the exit propensities of all European Union member states. The index highlights that the United Kingdom was an outlier and uniquely positioned to leave the European Union. While all other states are far behind the United Kingdom, the index still reveals substantial variation among them. Moreover, the index allows monitoring the development of exit propensities over time. It shows that the European Union is in better shape today than before the Brexit referendum and that, currently, no further exits are on the horizon. Still, this could change in the future and the EU Exit Index provides systematic and reproducible measurements to track this development.

This open access book provides an in-depth look into the background of rule of law problems and the open defiance of EU law in East Central European countries. Current illiberal trends and anti-EU politics have the potential to undermine mutual trust between member states and fundamentally change the EU. It is therefore crucial to understand their domestic causes, context conditions, specific processes and consequences. This volume contributes to empirically informed theory-building and includes contributions from researchers from various disciplines and multiple perspectives on illiberal trends and anti-EU politics in the region. The qualitative case studies, comparative works and quantitative analyses provide a comprehensive picture of current societal, political and institutional developments in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Through studying similarities and differences between East Central European and other EU countries, the chapters also explore whether there are regional patterns of democracy- and EU-related problems.

"The Czech Republic and the European Union" published on by Oxford University Press.

This book assesses the impact of the May 2019 European elections as well as the Covid-19 pandemic on the EU's politics, institutions, and policies. Special attention is paid to the impact of these events on the different political forces as well as on the Union's institutional balance, its priorities and the reform of its budget and policies. Because of the many post-electoral uncertainties, the book also takes into account how the relations between the Parliament, the European Council and the new Commission have developed. Furthermore, it analyses the capacity of the von der Leyen Commission to implement an ambitious programme, especially in the context of an unfolding pandemic. The objective of this book is to study the 2019 electoral sequence (parliamentary elections, appointment of EU institutions leaders, investiture of the Commission, new legislative programme) and determine its influence on the main institutional and political challenges for the 2019-2024 legislature. In other words, the volume deals with the question of who holds the EU's leadership after the 2019 elections and how it handles the 2020-2021 pandemic. Olivier Costa is Director of European Political and Governance Studies at the College of Europe, Belgium, and Research Professor in Political Science and EU studies at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEVIPOF-Sciences Po, France. He is also Executive Editor of the Journal of European Integration. Steven Van Hecke is Assistant Professor in Comparative and EU Politics at the Public Governance Institute of the KU Leuven, Belgium, and Senior Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz, Germany.

This article analyses to what extent and why national parliaments have created oversight institutions to adapt to European integration. Employing data from 22 member states from 1984–2006, the analysis suggests that government-supporting parliamentary groups create oversight institutions to enhance policy participation as integration becomes more important. Moreover, parliamentarians improve their access to information about government policy if governing parties are internally divided over European integration. Finally, oversight institutions that constrain the government's discretion to act in European Union affairs exist in Eurosceptic countries, where they help parliamentarians to enhance electoral security.

The European Union has evolved into a system of multilevel governance. EU actions have facilitated the involvement of regional/subnational authorities in EU policy formulation and implementation, thus enabling a downward shift in competencies toward subnational authorities. In this article, I argue that regional attachment facilitates support for European integration. Specifically, I show that individuals holding inclusive regional attachment sentiments perceive EU policies that result in the empowerment of subnational authorities in a positive light. In the process, these individuals are more likely to be supportive of European integration. This article's findings contribute to the literature on public opinion and European integration by exploring regionalist sources of support for European integration. Moreover, these findings contribute to the growing research on the emergence of a 'Europe of the regions.'

Part I. Introducing the Problem -- 1. Introduction -- Part II. Concepts and Theory -- 2. Authority relations in regime complexes -- 3. Struggling for authority in regime complexes -- Part III. Explaining authority distributions in the European defense complex -- 4. European defence cooperation and member state preferences -- 5. Integrating the WEAO into the EDA: Toward a European armaments agency? -- 6. The marginalization of the EDA: False premises, false promises? -- 7. The fragmentation of European defense planning: PESCO's deep sleep -- 8. PESCO's resilience: Jumpstarting the bandwagon -- Part IV. Assessment -- 9. Confronting contenders -- 10. Quo vadis, CSDP?.

Much previous research on popular support for European integration assumes that support is a function of economic calculations. I propose a different model, in which support is the consequence of the interplay between supranational & national politics: the higher citizens' opinion of the functioning of supranational institutions & the lower that of national institutions, the greater their support for integration. This is so because the worse the opinion of the national political system, the lower the opportunity cost of transferring sovereignty to Europe. In order to illustrate this hypothesis, I show that levels of national support for integration are higher in those countries that suffer greater corruption & have less-developed welfare states. Through an ordered logit analysis of one Eurobarometer survey, I test this political model at the individual level. Finally, I draw some conclusions from the empirical analysis for current discussions on the possibility of a European democracy. 5 Tables, 2 Figures, 23 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd.]