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Cancela-Outeda, Celso
2020.
The EU in the 21st Century.
p.
117.
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European Integration in Context: Lessons in Political Organization?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
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The French are rightly proud of having spawned the Enlightenment. Their philosophers made a profound contribution to modern theories of government, which heavily influenced, inter alia, the Founding Fathers in the drafting of the American Constitution. (Montesquieu's arguments for a separation of powers, for example, are clearly reflected in the design of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the US government.) The French political class have also largely determined the nature of post-war European integration. The edifice in Brussels reflects above all their habits, interests and vision of Europe. (For example, the European Union is run by a bureaucratic elite like France itself.) This latter conception of government is, however, unlikely to prove to be as successful over the long term as the former. Indeed, the way in which European integration has so far proceeded raises serious questions about both its sustainability and its transferability.
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References
See, generally, Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, Introduction in, Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism, forthcoming. It is true that the way in which the domestic consultative process is structured may be seriously flawed. Public choice theory suggests that negotiating positions may be the result of the unequal ability of rent-seeking interest groups to organize and influence the political process. (Peter Behrens, Weltwirtschaftsverfassung, in: Jahrbuch fuer Neue Politische Oekonomie, Band 19, p. 12–3.) Positions may not therefore reflect conceptions of self-interest and prevailing conviction in a given community but may represent the expression of political decisionmaking. This phenomenon is likely to make international consensus more difficult to reach during negotiations in which there should otherwise be no significant differences in conceptions of self-interest and prevailing conviction. What is important for our purposes here, however, is that a position is taken and put forward in negotiation and not its development.Google Scholar
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INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 8 December 2001, no page citation at hand. The Euro-skepticism variously manifested in Denmark and Austria as well as Ireland over the last several years offers evidence of this reality.Google Scholar
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FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG (English Edition), 18 December 2000, p. 5. This proposal strikes me as paradoxical, if not contradictory to purpose of the whole project. In effect, it argues that to further European integration — especially through enlargement — the number of issues settled at the European level must be reduced.Google Scholar
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The new action plan for development partnership agreed between poor and wealthy states at a recent UN meeting notably contained no pledges of aid or debt relief. (INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 21 May 2001, no page citation at hand) Such gestures would in any event have to be considerable to more than reverse the drop in developed world aid to sub-Saharan Africa that occurred during the 1990s.Google Scholar
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In Poland and Hungary, for example, current support for EU membership barely exceeds 50%. ECONOMIST, 19 May 2001, Survey, p. 15.Google Scholar
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The sensitivity of popular opinion in applicant states was recently demonstrated by a large swing in support in favour of membership in Estonia following EU payments to the local agricultural sector and the victory of a local duo in the Eurovision song contest. FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG, 13 August 2001, p. 6.Google Scholar
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The experience of past enlargement, particularly to Spain, Greece, and Portugal, fills supporters with hope of success in realizing these objectives.Google Scholar
Some participants argue that the veto rights of member states must be further curtailed if the EU is to maintain the integration dynamic and to avoid paralysis after enlargement. Others argue that increased heterogeneity should be managed by ‘flexible integration’ (i.e. by differentiated modes of integration that allow various groupings of member states to pursue public policies with different procedural and institutional arrangements). Each of the proposed approaches remains unsatisfactory to the extent that it does not constitute a means of resolving a difference of opinion when the integration process has reached a critical depth for certain member states. Gloeckler, p. 67–8.Google Scholar
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The negative response was particularly remarkable in the Irish context, as Ireland has benefitted greatly from EU membership. As a result of EU-related subsidies and foreign investment, Ireland has gone from being one of Europe's poorest states to being one of its richest in a remarkably short space of time.Google Scholar
“The seemingly sudden appearance of the Community in all walks of life caused people to question how it had happened and, more importantly, what basis it had in terms of legitimacy” (Gloeckler, p. 23). Since Maastricht, the EU can hardly be spoken publicly of without mention of a ‘democratic deficit’.Google Scholar
A poll taken early in the year showed 61% of French and German respondents “unsatisfied” with how the EU is organizing itself. INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 1 February 2001, no page citation at hand.Google Scholar
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The proposal of a special EU tax mooted recently (ECONOMIST, 14 July 2001, p. 30) may attract more popular attention to the supernational body, but it seems unlikely to enhance its popularity.Google Scholar
Siedentop, p. 215 on. The Economist pithly characterized this approach to steering the EU as “we decide everything; one day you'll thank us.” ECONOMIST, 28 October 2000, p. 11.Google Scholar
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According to other observers, pragmatism and not grand visions has always dominated the progress from EEC to EC to EU. A recent account by Andrew Moravcsik finds, for example, that at five major treaty-amending turning points in the history of the EC the decisions taken were bargains among national governments based on concrete national interests, relative power and carefully calculated transfers of sovereignty. (See generally, Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe, UCL Press: London, 2000.)Google Scholar
In both France and Germany, the traditional motors of European integration, the governments must soon face their electorates.Google Scholar
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“Certainly, anyone betting against the EU over the past 50-odd years would have lost a lot of money.” ECONOMIST, 16 June 2001, p. 34.Google Scholar
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Hall, p. 21 (manuscript).Google Scholar
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 6 February 2001, no page citation at hand.Google Scholar
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