sou · GNB3151 · 2000-01-01 00:00:00 — Patterns of commercial ex- change and the perceived economic needs of member states were critical in the development of the common market and the internal market. (Moravcsik 1998, Milward et al. 1993, Laffan et al. The Unions economic order operated at the micro rather than the macro level, injecting considerable competitive pressures into the domestic economies and thereby fundamentally altering patterns of production, distribution and exchange. The internal market programme, launched in the mid-1980s, was transformative in cha- racter in that it required a strengthening of the political-economic authority of the Union. The removal of internal barriers – physical, fiscal and technical – among national economies reflected a search for greater efficiency and competitiveness in eco- nomy. It involved a deepening of the common market in goods and an extension of cross-border competition to services and pub- lic procurement. Large sections of the national economies that had been relatively untouched by market integration, notably financial services and public utilities, were brought within the remit of the Unions regulatory range. A whole new language of regulation, home country control, mutual recognition, a level playing field built a new approach to EU regulation. The quantitative accumulation of new European laws and market opening measures produced a truly qualitative shift in the dynamic of economic in- tegration and in European economic governance. The transforma- tional nature of the internal market programme led to changes that have a direct bearing on the concerns of this conference. The most significant are: a step change in the regulatory reach and capacity of the EU, which is reflected in the concept of the EU as a regulatory state. This meant more EC laws and the development of new European agencies. EC regulation became more visible and contested within the member states and impacted more directly on individual citizens. the internal market reduced the boundary control capacity of national governments in a variety of ways. the success of the programme generated pressures for further economic integration< notably, the single currency project. the extensive mobilisation of national actors in the since the mid-1980s, all seeking voice and influence in this growing arena of public policy making. Domestic social forces were drawn out of the national into arena of po- licy making as they beam stakeholders in EU policy making. The significance of market/economic integration in the process of European integration shapes in a fundamental the kind of political and economic order that is emerging in Europe. This is illustrated by analysis of the second tension, highlighted above, notably between the EU as a problem-solving arena and as a polity. Problem Solving Arena and Polity Much of the day to day politics and public policy making of Union is characterised by the search for solutions to the problems generated by the attempt to make policies that must stretch across such a wide variety of member states. INTEGRATION AND STATEHOOD IN THE EUROPEAN UNION engaged in EU policy making are purposeful. The Unions policy regimes have been created and sustained by political actors, acting purposively to achieve specific goals or to resolve specific pro- blems. (, 2000, p. They must be convinced of the be- nefits of collective action and the appropriateness of the Union as the arena in which to tackle these problems. They are engaged in a variety of projects, not necessarily the project of European inte- gration per se. The multileveled system of policy-making has pro- duced multiple arenas and a diverse set of policy subsystems rather than a traditional political hierarchy. EU public policy making is non-hierarchical, characterised by ongoing negotiations and seg- mented in different institutional settings and policy networks. The technical nature of much of what the EU does privileges the poli- tics of the pragmatist and the experts who populate the myriad of committees attached to the services of the Commission and the Council sub-structure. Much of what is agreed occurs at the level of the specialists rather than their political . The complex nature of the Unions institutional landscape and the multiple decision rules that animate the policy process privileges insiders, those with knowledge and experience of how the EU process works. To the hundreds of thousands of officials and representati- ves of interest organisations who populate the level arena, Euro politics is familiar both in terms of substance and process. To the mass electorate, on the other hand, weakly connected to Euro politics, the EU is remote. arcane, and unwieldy. Paradoxi- cally, it is precisely those attributes of the system that endow it with an authoritative role in public policy making raise difficult issues of polity. The deepening of market integration, the intensification of treaty change and big projects such as EMU and enlargement brought polity issues – rather than just the politics of policy – to the fore. Up to the early 1990s, the authority and legitimacy of the EU could rest on the shadow of the past and the instrumental benefits it brought to the member states and their peoples. This appears to be insufficient as the EU goes beyond market regula- tion in the narrow sense. European integration has become politi- cised and is a divisive issue in the domestic politics of many states. Lines of resistance to integration appear to be on the increase al- beit with considerable cross-national variation (, 2000). A marked characteristic of scholarly writing on the EU in the 1990s is a focus on the so-called democratic deficit. The term deficit implies an inadequacy and insufficiency, but what is the appropri- ate benchmark against which to test the Union? To date the pro- cess of enhancing the democratic element in the Union is follo- wing the well-worn Union path of incremental change and prag- matic adaptation, not unlike the process of market integration. However, unlike market integration, there is no over-arching goal or big idea. In fact, national political leaders are extremely cautious in relation to the politics of integration. They are far happier to launch big projects in the economic sphere than to disturb the ba- lance or logic of domestic politics. The same political leaders show a marked reluctance to communicate the realities of power in contemporary Europe to their electorates. They persist with the old language of national interest when Janus-like they serve both the national and collective European governance. The realities of interdependence in Europe and more widely mean that European governments must embrace a broad agenda of co-operation. This leads to the next tension, the tension between national and Euro- pean policy making. Tensions in Multileveled Policy Making All multileveled systems of public policy making are characterised by tension and contention about the appropriate level of policy making and implementation. The Union, as a multileveled polity, is no stranger to such conflicts. I was asked specifically in this sec- tion to address the distribution of powers between the national and . However, it is not just a question of the amount of EU competence in any one area but the overall pattern of eco- nomic governance that results from the in which the EU engages in public policy making. The pattern since the 1950s is one whereby more and more areas of public have come within the ambit of collective governance. The major constitutional sett- lements, the treaties, have been critical in the formal extension of INTEGRATION AND STATEHOOD IN THE EUROPEAN UNION The treaties reflect a dual process. On the one hand, new treaties formalise policy co-operation that was already taking place. This is particularly true of EU R&D programmes, environmental policy, education and culture, co-operation on jus- tice and home affairs. On the other hand, the treaties may set up new policy goals such as the single currency by defining the calen- dar, processes, institutions, and eligibility criteria for membership of the new currency zone. EU competence has expanded in other ways, notably, by the judicial activism of the Court of and the policy entrepreneurship of the Commission. But the treaties tell us that the EU has few exclusive competencies, apart from the common commercial policy, elements of competition policy and more recently monetary policy for the Euro 11. EU public po- licy making operates on the basis not of exclusive competence but more on the sharing of competence with national authorities. This has led to what has been termed creeping competence whereby the EU now has a role, however, minor, in many areas of national policy. The nature of the Unions role differs depending on the kind of policy. As noted above, the Union has formidable power in the regu- latory field because of the common-internal market process. This has lead to very significant law making to provide a regulatory framework for the free movement of the factors of production. It ensures that law is the main source of public power in the Union. EU regulation has gone beyond the narrow confines of market regulation to include elements of social and environmental regula- tion. Given the importance of the market to the member states and economic actors within them, we are unlikely to see a significant reduction in the Unions regulatory capacity. In fact concern about food safety, for example, may lead to more not less EU regulation. The focus now is on improving the regulatory regimes and in en- suring the EC law is transposed and enforced in the member sta- tes. There is also an important international dimension to EU re- gulation arising from demands for global regulation in certain fields. Redistribution remains a largely national responsibility in Europe. That said, the Union has had to develop a re-distributive capacity to facilitate the process of market integration and to pro- vide side payments in return for treaty change. Prior to 1988, the common agricultural policy was the main re-distributive policy in the Union. Since then it has been augmented by the structural and cohesion funds that channel finance to the less developed member states and regions in the Union. There was a doubling of the amount of EU finance going to Europes poorer regions between 1988–1992. This was followed by further increases in the next pe- riod to 1999 and a stabilisation of EU cohesion spending to 2006, following the agreement on a new financial perspective at (24–25 ). money was accompanied by new processes for distributing EU finance. An expansion in re-distributive poli- cies was accompanied by a number of distributive policies in re- search and development, education and culture. The small size of the EU budget places a clear limit on the capacity of the Union to greatly expand its distributive and re-distributive capacity. The agreement retains 1.27 percent of GDP as a cap on EU fi- nances. on European Union in 1992 expanded the ambi- tions of the Union in a number of directions, notably the common currency, the common foreign and security policy and co-opera- tion in and home affairs. The single currency has been es- tablished and was accompanied by institution in the form of the central bank and the stability and growth pact to govern national budgetary policies. The management of the single curren- cy has greatly increased the need for the member states to develop common understandings of economic developments both within the Euro zone and in the international monetary system. Suprana- tional influences are likely to increase and the range of issues that are of common concern to the member states is likely to grow. The debate has already moved to fiscal policy and issues of unfair tax competition. The activities of the Union in pillars two and three have grown in importance and will become even more central to the agenda of the Union. The war in Kosovo has re-opened the debate about the Unions international capacity and its need to develop an enhanced capacity in relation to European security. of established a very ambitious programme in INTEGRATION AND STATEHOOD IN THE EUROPEAN UNION the area of and home affairs, which may strengthen the mo- dest framework for collective action that now exists. The Balance between the National and The EU system is a system that works on the basis of a high level of decentralisation and delegation. It is not a system with a strong centre replete with large fiscal or bureaucratic resources. It works on the basis of the enmeshing the national and in an uneasy tension between integration and autonomy. With the es- tablishment of the single currency, the EU has put in place the last brick of economic integration. Enlargement to the east and south will eventually establish the geographical reach of the system and one or two more intergovernmental conferences will settle the main institutional questions. The system may well be entering a period of consolidation following the dynamic of change since the mid-1980s. This should allow the relationship between EU competence and national competence to settle down. The decision at to insert the protocol on subsidiarity and proportionality into a treaty format makes these principles part of the constitution of the system. The protocol establishes how Article 3b in the Treaty on European Union should be opera- tionalised. The document is beautifully ambiguous. It copperfas- tens subsidiarity as a legal principle but one that does not call into question the powers conferred on Community by Treaty, as interpreted by the Court of . The application of the principle must also respect the provisions and objectives of the Treaty particularly as regards the maintaining in full of the acquis communautaire and the institutional balance (Protocol, articles 2– 3). Moreover, it identifies subsidiariry as a principle that allows Community action within the limits of its powers to be expanded where circumstances so require, and conversely, to be restricted or discontinued where it is no longer justified (Protocol 3). Provi- ded that these provisions are met, the subsidiariry principle is one that should govern all EU institutions in the carrying out of their tasks. The protocol was mindful that the EU should legislate only to the extent necessary and that Community measures should leave as much scope for national decision as possible. Moreover, care should be taken to respect well established national arrange- ments and the organisation and working of Member States legal systems. (Protocol, article 7.) The debate about subsidiarity and its subsequent inclusion in the treaties reflects the fact that the Union is now maturing as a public policy arena and that care must be ta- ken to ensure that the Unions reach does not extend beyond its grasp. The Balance between Large and Small States The constitutional order of the Union is based on the formal equality of the 15 member states. That said, the member states differ in size, economic wealth and capacity. To date, the EU has managed to balance the needs of its large and small states are a re- latively smooth . Size does not feature as a variable in the day to day policy-making system of the Union. Policy cleavages would tend not to manifest themselves as cleavages between the large and small. Small states do, however, have a collective interest in issues of representation, voice and the rules of the game. The current system is one that gives over-representation to small states in terms of weighted votes in Council and MEPs in Parliament. The of eastern enlargement with many more small states has raised the question of small/large state representa- tion, an issue that was not resolved at . In a protocol on institutions to the the outline of an institu- tional bargain is there in that the large states will lose a second Commissioner in return for a re-weighting of votes in the Council. This will be one of the most imponant issues to be addressed at the 2000 Intergovernmental Conference. Apart from the question of formal representation in the institutions, smnll states must be vi- gilant about the emergence of an informal directoire of the large states in the Union. Large states already have more extensive bila- teral contact with each other than they do with the small states and INTEGRATION AND STATEHOOD IN THE EUROPEAN UNION there has been a growth of informal contact groups in the second pillar. High-ranking posts in the Union have also tended to go to the nationals of large states in the last year. The Union has achieved deep economic integration without a centralised political authority. It has developed a capacity to go- vern this increasingly integrated economic space without many of the attributes we associate with governance. Collective EU gover- nance had to be crafted in a novel and experimental be- cause of the continuing salience of the member states as containers of national societies and polities. In general, the EU does not represent a process of zero-sum bargaining between the national and . The EU can only succeed by mobilising the in- stitutions, actors and resources of the member states and therefore by reaffirming them. In the EU, states trade formal sovereignty and control for representation, voice and influence. This should be seen as a positive sum game, although not for all states and all so- cial forces at any one time. The prismatic nature of the Union is set to continue with segmented bargaining and problem solving in different policy arenas. Arising from EMU, the system will have to take on a more domestic and less diplomatic character. The tra- jectory of the Union as a polity is very difficult to plot, as the po- liticisation of the EU system is novel and the emphasis on bringing Europe closer to its citizens is a relatively recent concern for Europes political leaders. It could be argued that the Union could be democratised in bits and pieces in line with the way in which the Union has done things in the past. At present, the Unions political fabric is being fashioned in an incremental, contested and patchy . The process is not unlike a strategy of pragmatic and incremental market creation. However, the disquiet in a num- ber of member states about the impact of the EU on their national democracies, in addition to the growing stakes in integration may force Europes political leaders to be more innovative in their approach to the political fabric of integration. So far they have re- sisted tampering with the roles of the game of national politics. INTEGRATION AND STATEHOOD IN THE EUROPEAN UNION Laffan, B., ODonnell R. and , M. (2000, Europes Experi- mental Union: Rethinking integration. Milward, A. S., , F.M.B., Romero, F., , R. and Soren- sen V. (1993) The Frontier of National Sovereignty. Moravesik, A. (1998) The Choice for Europe. Sandholtz, W. and . (1998) European lntegration and Supranational Governance. (2000) The Policy Pendulum, in , W. and , H., eds. PolicyMaking in Union. The Architecture of EU Modern democracy is representative democracy. This holds for the prototype of mass democracy, that is the political process in the national political arena. It holds all the more for a political entity which is as large and complex as Union. Some 300 million citizens are called to participate in all sorts of local and regional politics, in national politics and in EU politics. The dif- ferent tiers of this multi-tiered polity are not independent from one another, and the national and the EU layer are particularly intimately intertwined. Direct citizen participation in government is generally limited. At most places and most of the times, political decisions are taken by representatives of the people rather than by the people them- selves. Citizen participation in politics is not restricted to, but concentrated upon the process of electing representatives. Poli- tical parties are in many ways indispensable in this process. Even if we leave aside possible irregularities, evaluations of the democratic quality of the electoral process may vary from one election to the next. Those evaluations can be based upon two 1 The author is professor in political science at für Europäische Sozialforschung at university. THE ARCHITECTURE OF EU INSTITUTIONS AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION One is turnout. Do the people who are not in a position to take part in the real thing (i.e., policy making) at least participate in elections of their representatives, and what does it mean if many do not? The second criterion is political agreement (or, more technically, issue congruence) between electors and elected. Representative democracy works well if voters participate in elections, and if representatives decide as voters would if they had a chance to. A related question is how issue congruence is brought about. Are the parties responsive followers of voters preferences or are they powerful molders of the world views of their voters. We will briefly address each of these questions in turn. Turnout is high in national parliament elections, with only a very modest downward trend over the last half century. It is consi- derably lower in European Parliament elections, with a dramatic decline in the last election (Figure 1). Electoral Participation in Western Europe and in the There are two aspects of turnout differences between national and European Parliament elections: level and trend. Level differences are mainly due to differential mobilisation and involvement. It is more at stake in national elections than in European elections, the campaigning of political parties is more intense, the politicisation of the mass public is generally higher, and the public is more involved as a result (1980). It is generally believed that level differences do not relate sys- tematically to attitudes about the EU. EU-critical attitudes are not a major factor in the explanation of abstentionism in European Parliament elections (see 1990 and van der Eijk & Franklin 1996; for a contrary view Blondel et al. People do not abstain because they do not agree with the Union and its policies, but because they are uninterested and disenchan- ted. Rather than abstentionism, one would expect EU-critical orientations to cause anti-integrationist parties or lists to form and to absorb the respective vote share (as, e.g., in the Danish and the French case). The formation of such EU-critical partisan forma- tions may take time, and it may not be equally successful in every party system. Nevertheless, the general impression is that absten- tions in European Parliament elections are not normally a result of EU-critical orientations. It is not just level differences which become apparent in the above figure. There are also trend differences: participation rates in European Parliament elections decline faster than participation rates in national first order elections. Why this is so is not well understood; changing context effect patterns like concurrent national first-order elections in different national settings may be one reason; composition effects that originate in the two rounds of enlargement of the Union (since 1979) may be an other. This in any case needs further investigation. While low turnout is best characterised as a ringing alarm clock for the democratic quality of elections, deficient representation is immediately and substantially more important. Low turnout is not per se problematic – those staying home may be well in agreement with the functioning of the political system and may therefore see no need to participate. In the long run, however, deficient THE ARCHITECTURE OF EU INSTITUTIONS AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION participation seems likely to undermine effective representation.