Decision making in the EU before and after the Lisbon Treaty


Book Description

Decision-making in the European Union before and after the Lisbon Treaty aims to assess what the changes the Treaty of Lisbon envisaged and whether these ambitions have materialised since the Treaty entered into force. It offers analyses of the past, as well as what might be the future (because some provisions will only enter into effect in the years to come). To what extent has the current decision-making process been able to address the shortcomings and challenges of the past? What has been the impact of aspects of the Lisbon Treaty that clarified pre-existing norms and structures, in some cases formalizing them, rather than introducing new changes? The authors in this book look at the interaction between formal rules and informal practices seeking to point to the interaction between the two. They find that informal practices to date typically still dominate formal rules. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.







Decision making in the EU before and after the Lisbon Treaty


Book Description

Decision-making in the European Union before and after the Lisbon Treaty aims to assess what the changes the Treaty of Lisbon envisaged and whether these ambitions have materialised since the Treaty entered into force. It offers analyses of the past, as well as what might be the future (because some provisions will only enter into effect in the years to come). To what extent has the current decision-making process been able to address the shortcomings and challenges of the past? What has been the impact of aspects of the Lisbon Treaty that clarified pre-existing norms and structures, in some cases formalizing them, rather than introducing new changes? The authors in this book look at the interaction between formal rules and informal practices seeking to point to the interaction between the two. They find that informal practices to date typically still dominate formal rules. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.




The European Parliament in the Contested Union


Book Description

The European Parliament in the Contested Union provides a systematic assessment of the real influence of the European Parliament (EP) in policy-making. Ten years after the coming into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, which significantly empowered Europe’s only directly elected institution, the contributions collected in this volume analyse whether, and under what conditions, the EP has been able to use its new powers and shape decisions. Going beyond formal or normative descriptions of the EP’s powers, this book provides an up-to-date and timely empirical assessment of the role of the EP in the European Union, focusing on key cases such as the reforms of the EU’s economic governance and asylum policy, the Brexit negotiations and the budget. The book challenges and qualifies the conventional view that the EP has become more influential after Lisbon. It shows that the influence of the EP is conditional on the salience of the negotiated policy for the Member States. When EU legislation touches upon ‘core state powers’, as well as when national financial resources are at stake, the role of the EP – notwithstanding its formal powers – is more constrained and its influence more limited. This book provides fresh light on the impact of the EP and its role in a more contested and politicised European Union. Bringing together an international team of top scholars in the field and analysing a wealth of new evidence, The European Parliament in the Contested Union challenges conventional explanations on the role of the EP, tracking down empirically its impact on key policies and processes. It will be of great interest to scholars of the European Union, European politics and policy-making. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.




The Maastricht Treaty: Second Thoughts after 20 Years


Book Description

The Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992 and ratified in the following year, is widely seen as a landmark in the evolution of the European Union. It introduced into the treaty framework revolutionary new elements such as the co-decision procedure between the Council and the European Parliament, cooperation in the area of Justice and Home Affairs, the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the "euro" as a single currency for the majority of the then member states. It also introduced the concept of European citizenship into the treaty, reflecting the rising expectations of both citizens and decision-makers in the European project, and upgraded the role of the European Council at the summit of the EU’s institutional structure. Twenty years later, each of these innovations remain of central importance for the process of European integration, while current developments provide a valuable opportunity to reflect on the historical decisions taken in Maastricht in order to assess their significance and examine the subsequent evolution of the Union. This volume brings together an international group of leading scholars in the field in order to provide such an assessment, with each article both looking back over the developments within each of these domains as well as looking ahead to the way in which the EU is positioned to address current challenges. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.




After Lisbon


Book Description

The role of national parliaments in EU matters has become an important subject in the debate over the democratic legitimacy of European Union decision-making. This volume therefore aims at providing a comprehensive overview of the activities of national parliaments in the post-Lisbon Treaty era. This book was originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.







The European Union Beyond the Polycrisis?


Book Description

The European Union beyond the Polycrisis? explores the political dynamics of multiple crises faced by the EU, both at European level and within the member states. In so doing, it provides a state-of-the-art overview of current research on the relationship between politicization and European integration. The book proposes that the EU’s multi-dimensional crisis can be seen as a multi-level ‘politics trap’, from which the Union is struggling to escape. The individual contributions analyze the mechanisms of this trap, its relationship to the multiple crises currently faced by the EU, and the strategies pursued by a plurality of actors (the Commission, the European Parliament, national governments) to cope with its constraints. Overall, the book suggests that comprehensive, ‘grand’ bargains are for the moment out of reach, although national and supranational actors can find ways of ‘relaxing’ the politics trap and in so doing perhaps lay the foundations for more ambitious future solutions. This book, dedicated to the exploration of the political dynamics of multiple, simultaneous crises, offers an empirical and theoretical assessment of the existing political constraints on European integration. Analysing domestic and European political reactions to the EU’s polycrisis and assessing how EU institutions, national governments and broader publics have responded to a new era of politicization, The European Union beyond the Polycrisis? will be of great interest to scholars of European politics and the EU, as well as professionals working in EU institutions, national administrations and European advocacy groups. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.




Differentiated Integration


Book Description

Far from displaying a uniform pattern of integration, the European Union varies significantly across policy areas, institutional development and individual countries. Why do some policies such as the Single Market attract non-EU member states, while some member states choose to opt out of other EU policies? In answering these questions, this innovative new text provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the study of European integration. The authors introduce the most important theories of European integration and apply these to the trajectories of key EU policy areas – including the single market, monetary policy, foreign and security policy, and justice and home affairs. Arguing that no single theory offers a completely convincing explanation of integration and differentiation in the EU, the authors put forward a new analytical perspective for describing and explaining the institutions and policies of the EU and their development over time. Written by a team of prominent scholars in the field, this thought-provoking book provides a new synthesis of integration theory and an original way of thinking about what the EU is and how it works.