The Politics of the European Union

This chapter gives an overview of EU policy-making, outlining what types of policy the EU makes, in which areas it is important and in which areas it plays a smaller role, and how the EU’s policy-making role has evolved over the past decades. In doing so, it sketches the broader picture within which the subsequent chapters on agenda-setting, decision-making and implementation of EU policies can be placed. The text seeks to give students a firm grasp of the broader patterns of EU policy-making, while providing examples of specific policies in order to make more tangible what EU policies look like. After outlining the varying involvement of the EU in different policy areas, the chapter provides an overview of both the expenditure and the revenue side of EU budgetary policies. This is followed by a discussion of EU regulatory policies, both in relation to the internal market and beyond. After this general introduction, the chapter zooms in on the development of two policy areas in which EU policy-making has shown important developments over the past decades: Economic and Monetary Union and foreign policy.