Suchergebnisse

The results of the UK referendum in favour of leaving the European Union (EU) clearly put into question the European economic and political project as well as its institutional structure. This article argues that the Brexit may be a momentum to reform the institutional structure and procedural rules through which tax policy is made at the EU level. The UK referendum is indeed unlikely to further slow down the EU harmonization process in tax matters, which has always followed a tortuous path. Instead, the Brexit may give momentum to reform major weaknesses of the EU institutional and decision-making process in tax matters, in particular the unanimity rule and the role of the European Parliament. Finally, with regard to taxation specifically, the establishment of an EU tax, providing the EU with sufficient genuine own resource, could also reinforce EU's legitimacy by countering the criticisms related to Member States' contribution to the European budget.

This article investigates what happens when governmental actors foster the participation of non-state actors (NSAs) in treaty ratification and implementation decisions. NSAs, being non-governmental organisations, business groups, citizens, or research institutions among others represent interests that will be ultimately impacted by policy choices. While governments have long consulted them on an ad hoc basis, a "deliberative turn" happened in the 2000s to encourage their involvement, for greater legitimacy and transparency, through among others, the use of public consultations. This proactive turn raises questions about public consultations: are such instruments effective? Do they encourage new thinking? Do they matter for final decisions? This article answers these questions by investigating, using among others lexicometry tools, the public consultation organised by the European Commission in 2011 prior to the ratification of the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing (ABS) by the European Union in 2014. The results are mixed. While the studied public consultation favoured the expression of small national NSAs the process is still poorly inclusive. NSAs did not propose any fresh ideas on the ABS issue and their final influence on European decision-makers is blurred by the diversity of interests expressed.

The EUROSUR system is supposed to further the surveillance of external borders of European Union Member States. From this point of view, it can be considered an important step in the construction of a controlled space. Drawing inspiration from the Foucauldian attention to programs and technologies, and mobilizing the Actor- Network-Theory concepts of setting and actant, the paper investigates EUROSUR main methodological operations. It highlights how the making of a controlled space is, first and foremost, a mise-en-discours going well beyond surveillance and pro- hibition: a continuous effort to make sense of a disparate multiplicity, encompassing both human and nonhuman elements, both controlled and controlling ones. From a theoretical perspective, the chapter contributes to on-going endeavors to reinvigor- ate the post-structuralist studies of International Relations with approaches inspired by Actor-Network-Theory.

In recent years, public authorities and civil-society organisations, driven by increasing public disengagement and a growing sense of distrust between the public and their representatives, have been instituting exercises in public deliberation, often using 'mini-publics', that is relatively small groups of citizens, selected according to various criteria and representing different viewpoints, brought together to deliberate on a particular issue. From small-scale experiments, mini- publics have recently taken a constitutional turn, at least in Europe. Iceland and Ireland have turned to deliberative democracy to reform their constitutions. Estonia, Luxembourg and Romania have also experienced constitutional processes in a deliberative mode. In Belgium, the G1000, a citizen-led initiative of deliberative democracy, has fostered a wider public debate about the place and role of citizens in the country's democracy. At the same time, the European Union institutions have introduced different forms of deliberative democracy as a way to reconnect with citizens. These empirical cases are indicative of a possible 'constitutional turn' in deliberative democracy in Europe. These examples of constitution-making happened in a particular time and place but they may also serve as models for other events.

The Red Devils, chocolate or beer and the King, such is the typical answers given to the oft-asked question of what is still holding Belgium together. To these three symbols, two extra elements are often added: the debt and Brussels, the capital of the country and of the Flemish Region/Community, the French Community (politically but not constitutionally the Wallonia-Brussels Federation), the European Union (to be more specific, one of the three capitals, along with Strasbourg and Luxemburg), while being as well the seat of the Brussels Capital Region. Generally, the list of factors of unity in Belgium ends with this short list. Is it already too long, or on the contrary, is it really too short? This is the main question of this chapter. Paradoxically, although this question often arises, there are very few scientific writings analyzing it. To do so, this chapter will discuss six sets of factors: historical, identity, socio-economic, political, international and symbolic. Nonetheless, it is important to take into account that such enterprise seeks to be informative and not prescriptive. This chapter does not assume that Belgium should be united. There are several points of view about what Belgium should be, and this contribution merely wishes to nurture the political debate by conveying an original approach on six types of factors.

Abstention is a key issue for any representative democracy. Turnout has a direct impact on the input legitimacy of the democratic system, but also eventually on the output legitimacy, that is on the policies that are designed and implemented. This issue has long sparked debate about the determinants of abstention in elections and its consequences both for politics and for policies. Yet, a multi-level approach is often missing. While the second-order elections theory has shown that different levels of elections mean different levels of turnout, it has been criticized theoretically for its so-called nationalist – i.e. in favor of national elections – bias and methodologically because it typically assesses elections not held on the same day. The last elections held in Belgium offer a fertile ground of investigation for multi-level abstention as the regional, federal and European elections were organized the very same day, under the rule of compulsory voting. This paper aims at presenting and discussing the real abstention rates at the three levels of elections, as well as for the local elections. The 2014 PartiRep voter survey offers an original way to explore the potential abstention – that is electoral participation in the absence of compulsory voting – as the respondents were not asked the typical single question about their potential electoral participation if compulsory voting was to be abolished, but a fourfold question asking them whether they would always, often, sometimes or never vote at the local, regional, federal and European elections. The results will show that there is a significant amount of the voters who would vote differently: 437 of them (22%) would always vote at one – level of – election, but not always at the other ones. The paper seeks to assess this potential multi-level abstention in light of socio-demographic and political (namely party) variables. This contribution will thus shed new light on the issue of abstention – both real and potential – in its multi-level dimension.