4 results
5 - EC regional policy: monetary lubricant for economic integration?
- Edited by Volker Bornschier, Universität Zürich
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- Book:
- State-building in Europe
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- 10 October 2009
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- 05 October 2000, pp 122-151
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Summary
The cohesion target – introductory remarks to chapters 5 and 6
Along with the internal market project and technology policy, regional and social policy elements are additional important political dimensions of the integration thrust of the 1980s. The consistency with which the cohesion target is reinforced in its various formulations in the conclusions of European summit meetings and annual Commission programmes is impressive. This no doubt reflects the societal consensus in all member states of the EC regarding the necessity and desirability, in accordance with Marshall's famous definition of social policy, ‘to use political power to supersede, supplement or modify operations of the economic system in order to achieve results which the economic system would not achieve on its own’ (Marshall 1975: 15). The principle of state-organized balancing between classes and regions was and is a central element of the Western postwar model (Bornschier 1996), even when there were and are different forms and levels of development among the member states (see Esping-Andersen 1990; Schmid 1995). This societal consensus continues to exist in Western Europe, as surveys show (Ferrera 1993), even during the present tumultuous times of fiscal crisis and system rebuilding.
In this context, the definition of the functions that the European Community, as one level of statehood in Europe, is supposed to take on remains controversial. In fact, in the 1980s the cohesion target was anchored in the treaties, which represented a marked expansion of the ‘welfare state mission’ of the Community. For the proponents of a European federal state, the existing EC functions in this domain are stages on the way to a supranational system of social policy regulation with financial equalization.
2 - Tying up the Luxembourg package of 1985
- Edited by Volker Bornschier, Universität Zürich
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- Book:
- State-building in Europe
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- 10 October 2009
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- 05 October 2000, pp 38-72
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Summary
‘L'initiative vient toujours d'en haut!’
Frédéric Moreau in Flaubert's Education sentimentaleA considerable part of the debate on the reasons for the integration thrust in the 1980s is based on the not always precise differentiation between statements on the origins of political initiatives, the corresponding agenda setting, the mediation of interests and thus the transformation of the initiative and its adoption. This is shown with the often undifferentiated use of the terms ‘1992 Initiative’, ‘EC reform’, ‘Single European Act’ (SEA), etc. Furthermore, the origins of political initiatives and the prerequisites for their success (or failure) are often imprecisely distinguished from each other. This chapter chronologically and logically follows chapter 1 in that it reconstructs the process of the construction of a successful package deal, the Luxembourg package, by making reference to the analysis of the causal factors of the integration relaunch. The Luxembourg package is hereby defined as the entirety of the agreements on the insertion or amendment of articles in the EC treaties, as they were formulated during the intergovernmental conference in 1985, which together form the Single Act and which were adopted by the Council of Ministers in 1986.
The first section presents some theoretical considerations on the conditions for success of a package deal. The following section describes important integration projects and processes for forming alliances. The first six months in 1984 are seen as the ‘take-off’ phase for the SEA. The Commission's changing role, its actual ‘rebirth’ as a result of an altered situation and as a precondition for the creation of a negotiation package, is then discussed.
6 - EC social policy: the defeat of the Delorist project
- Edited by Volker Bornschier, Universität Zürich
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- Book:
- State-building in Europe
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- 10 October 2009
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- 05 October 2000, pp 152-184
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Introduction
The relatively low rank of the ‘social dimension’ in the renewed push for European integration in the 1980s provides the starting point for three competing theses on the integration process. First, the cornerstone thesis holds that, from the beginning, the Europeanization of social policy was a cornerstone of the integration project as conceived by the supra-national political entrepreneur, the EC Commission, and certain governments. The conception of the social policy domain in the Single Act (most importantly, Articles 21 and 22 of the Single European Act, i.e. Articles 118a and 118b in the EC treaties) remained narrow for purely tactical reasons so as not to endanger the strategic goal of relaunching European integration. Second, the supplement thesis states that the core of the project, which was legally established by the Single Act, was the internal market. When it became apparent that this effort might not be successful (particularly owing to the public debate about its social consequences in the years 1987–8), it became necessary to provide, albeit belatedly, a social policy cushion for the impact of the internal market. According to neo function a list reasoning, the politicization of social policy following the Single Act was an aftereffect of intensified economic integration. The packaging thesis argues that the weak social policy regulations together with the abundance of social rhetoric were merely an expression of the selling of an elite pact to the European public; it was simply a matter of ‘packaging the package’. According to this thesis, social policy regulations at the European level were not really sought after by the main actors.
The packaging thesis and the cornerstone thesis contradict each other.
9 - European integration after the Single Act: changing and persisting patterns
- Edited by Volker Bornschier, Universität Zürich
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- Book:
- State-building in Europe
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- 10 October 2009
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- 05 October 2000, pp 244-263
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Introduction
With and through the integration thrust of the 1980s, a qualitative change in the interaction between economic and political actors has developed in Western Europe. The Single European Act, now more than a dozen years in force, marks the beginning of this process. The massive underestimation of the meaning of the Single Act on the part of most observers as well as actors involved in the integration process remains nothing less than astounding. In retrospect, the assessment of the actors who understood the Single Act as the first result of a far reaching dynamic has been confirmed. This is true on the economic level, where a fundamental structural change was set in motion in anticipation of the internal market, as well as on the political level. First, elements of integration projects that had been set aside were put back on the agenda in the 1980s, in particular the project of a European monetary union, which became the core of the next policy package, the Maastricht Treaty. The political dynamic after 1986 can also be traced back to changes in the decision-making process at European level that were effected through the Single European Act, especially the further erosion of the ‘veto culture’. In addition, the Commission was able to develop and maintain a strong, proactive role in many areas. Along with this came successive expansions of the circle of involved political actors. The new transnational forms of cooperation, without which the new integration dynamic cannot be explained, developed further. This did not lead to an end of the central position of the individual roundtables of industrialists in Brussels, but they increasingly became one voice among others.