Abstract
This article analyses the development of the European Union (EU) project of a Charter for Services of General Interest (SGI) from the mid-1990s to the publication of the White Paper on Services of General Interest and the draft European Constitution in 2004. Though service charters are often associated with New Public Management (NPM) reforms related to privatization, they are also an integral part of the process of EU institution building, and need to be understood alongside developments such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Using a four-stage model of international NPM convergence analysis four phases of the Charter for SGI experience are examined and compared to Anglo-Saxon experiences. Though there are important similarities linking the charter initiatives in the EU and the Anglo-Saxon world, there are also a number of important differences, which can be explained by the project to construct a supranational political citizenship, as well as vital institutional differences in capabilities related to EU competences and issues of governance.
Highlights
Service charters, in particular their Anglo-Saxon variants, are generally understood as a managerial tool designed to render public services more responsive to the direct users of their products or services, by seeking to transform the culture of service delivery, focusing ‘bottom – up’ on the needs of users and offering consumer guarantees to quality public services
In order to compare the practical phase in the case of the Charter for Services of General Interest (SGI), the use of two methodologies by the European Union (EU) will be compared to their Anglo-Saxon charter counterparts: techniques used to measure consumer satisfaction and to evaluate public service performance
Comparing the EU Charter for SGI with other charter initiatives has highlighted some of its vital differences
Summary
In particular their Anglo-Saxon variants, are generally understood as a managerial tool designed to render public services more responsive to the direct users of their products or services, by seeking to transform the culture of service delivery, focusing ‘bottom – up’ on the needs of users and offering consumer guarantees to quality public services. If the early efforts to establish a Charter for SGI at the European level are almost the mirror image of those associated with the Anglo-Saxon variants in terms of actors, concerns and discourse, the EU’s institutional response from 2000 onwards exhibited important similarities with NPM discursive practices towards public services.
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