Suchergebnisse

The database on the European Commission provides an overview of the European Commission's historical development from the start of the first Hallstein Commission in 1958 to the Juncker Commission in 2018. It was part of the multi-annual project 'Position formation in the EU Commission' (PEU) at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and is now continued at Freie Universität Berlin.


With the rise in scale and scope of the European Commission, research and literature on the nature of the institution has increased considerably. What is yet still missing is structured information how the European Commission developed in its organizational and staff composition over a longer period of time and what sectoral patterns emerge. This newly established and comprehensive database attempts to close this gap.


The database provides three different perspectives on the Commission: information on the Commission staff ('Persons Data' and 'Persons Positions'), on the administrative structure and size of the Directorates-General ('DG Data') and a localization of policies in the administrative structure of the EU Commission ('DG nomenclature').


'Persons Data' and 'Persons Positions' list available information about all 400 persons who have been active as Commissioners or Directors-General from 1958 to 2018. This includes details about names, dates of birth, gender, nationality, party affiliation, DGs, Commissions, dates of entry and exit for all positions a person served in at the EU Commission as well as information regarding a person's professional background and further career. 'Persons Data' and 'Persons Positions' provide an historical overview, and allow comparisons primarily on the staff composition of Commission DGs.


'DG Data' provides an overview to the administrative structure of the different Commission DGs. It gives details about all Directorates-General of the Juncker Commission, including official name, personnel numbers, names and number of units (Units) and the name and number of directorates they each compromised in previous Commissions. This perspective inspires comparing changes in portfolio organisation and salience during the integration process.


'DG Nomenclature' deals with shifts in the Commission's portfolios over the history of EU Integration. Neither the names nor the responsibilities of individual portfolios in the Commission have been constant. This section thus enables to understand the administrative positioning of each portfolio over the course of history.


To compose the database a multitude of sources were evaluated and included. The collected data primarily stem from official organigrammes of Commission constellations taken from the institution's website and its Historical Archives in Brussels, Fabio Franchino's dataset on Commission portfolios since 1958, and CVs provided mainly by the Commission or personal websites.

"The present consultation regime of the European Commission is marked by the role the Commission assigns to non-governmental actors or civil society organisations (CSOs). The Commission's documents on its policy of consultation and cooperation with external non-governmental actors reveal that a reflective approach has emerged during the 1980s, referring to a more elaborate concept of 'good governance'. The gradual extension is most noticeable in the change of terminology, from 'consultation' (1960/70s) to 'partnership' (1980/90s) and 'participation' (1990s/2000). This trend was fostered by the recognition of 'civil society' as addressee of the Commission's consultation policy and potential source of democratic legitimacy. Yet, does today's consultation regime of the European Commission enhance democracy through participation?" (excerpt)

It has long been thought that, of all EU competition processes, merger regulation was immune from arbitration. This has changed dramatically over the last few years. Starting in 2000, the European Commission accepted, albeit reluctantly, to consider behavioural commitments made by merging entities. In the past, the Commission had considered that such commitments were not adequate to ensure competitive market structures. Compliance with structural remedies can be monitored fairly easily by the Commission. Structural commitments entail mostly divestments needed to maintain an acceptable level of competition. Behavioural commitments, however, require more extensive monitoring, since they concern the future behaviour of the merged entity. Monitoring these commitments is time consuming and the Merger Task Force (MTF) does not have the necessary resources to do so. One of the solutions favoured by the MTF to monitor compliance with these new commitments, is to impose an arbitration agreement to the merged entity. The article examines the difficulties posed by the arbitration process in this context

This review gives an overview over citizenship and information at the European Commission. Citizenship information is currently an important topic at the European Commission, because the Commission regards it as an important step to an involvement of European citizens into the European unification process and ultimately as a condititio sine qua non to the success of the European unification efforts. This report first introduces the European concept of citizenship information: European citizenship is different to national citizenship, in so far as it is a citizenship complementary to national citizenship. Citizenship information covers information about rights and information for democratic control. There is little information about obligations because the European citizen has no direct obligations to Europe. Information about rights is regarded most important to the ordinary citizen; information for democratic control is most eagerly supplied by the Commission.

In April 2018, the EU Commission presented a Proposal of Directive -amending Directive 2017/1132- on cross-border conversions, mergers and divisions ("The Proposal"). The Proposal lays down common rules and procedures at the EU level on how a company can move from a Member State to another Member State, merge or divide into two or more new companies across borders. This paper addresses this Proposal focusing mainly on the rules on cross-border conversions. After a brief introduction, Section 2 describes the background of the Proposal and analyses some general questions. Sections 3 through 6 examine the different phases in which a cross-border conversion is structured, with particular attention to the safeguards laid down by the Proposal aimed at the protection of minority shareholders, creditors and employees. Finally, Sections 7 and 8 provide a general assessment of the text and a series of conclusions.

This paper uses reputation theory to address a century-old puzzle: what guides the choice of coordination efforts in large politico-administrative systems? Max Weber, founder of the modern study of bureaucracy, famously considered a hierarchy superior to other organizational models. However, modern governments are not organized as one big hierarchy, but as a set of parallel hierarchies, typically 15-20 ministries. This raises a coordination challenge, which in practice has proven surprisingly difficult to meet. Based on reputation theory we argue that concerns of audience management are likely to be an important factor when deciding on the level of coordination. We investigate this argument in the European Union's central executive institution, the EU Commission. Based on more than 7,000 cases from the EU Commission's internal digital coordination system we analyze the impact of audience sensitivity and audience involvement on coordination efforts. Our findings suggest that audience concerns are important drivers of agencies' interdepartmental coordination. ; This article uses reputation theory to address a century-old puzzle: what guides the choice of coordination efforts in large politico-administrative systems? Max Weber, founder of the modern study of bureaucracy, famously considered a hierarchy superior to other organizational models. However, modern governments are not organized as one big hierarchy but as a set of parallel hierarchies, typically 15–20 ministries. This raises a coordination challenge, which in practice has proven surprisingly difficult to meet. Based on reputation theory, we argue that concerns of audience management are likely to be an important factor when deciding on the level of coordination. We investigate this argument in the European Union's central executive institution, the EU Commission. Based on more than 7,000 cases from the EU Commission's internal digital coordination system we analyze the impact of audience sensitivity and audience involvement on coordination efforts. Our findings suggest that audience concerns are important drivers of agencies' interdepartmental coordination.