Has the EU Become Uncontrollably Divergent? : Analysis of EU Governance, from the Treaty of Rome to the Treaty of Lisbon

Abstract

Political will has been essential to European Union (EU) projects; economic integration projects are no exception. The experiences of the European Coal and Steel Community, the Customs Union, the Common Market, and the Economic and Monetary Union indicate that European economic integration projects have also been driven by political will. Thus, in facing economic difficulties such as economic underdevelopment, lowered competitiveness, and financial and fiscal turmoil, it is fairly persuasive to say that Europe needs political leadership (i. e., firm will on the part of politicians) to achieve further cooperation and overcome these economic difficulties. However, the author believes that such arguments have recently come to have more significance than ever, since the vectors and extent of divergence in the EU are approaching a “danger zone”in other words, the EU has both prepared a variety of modes of governance on a variety of issues and come to emphasize input legitimacy (democracy), both at the expense of its uniformity. The main purpose of this paper is to show that the EU has tended to be too divergent, by outlining changes in governance within the EU. This paper especially focuses on the fundamental treaties of the EU: the Treaty of Rome, the Maastricht Treaty (Treaty of the European Union), the Treaty of Amsterdam, and the Treaty of Lisbon. It assesses the features of governance provided in these treaties, in light of (1) asymmetrical economic fundamentals and performance among member states, (2) the number of differentiation measures, (3) the public nature of EC/EU policies, and (4) the extent of concerns for democracy within the EU. Analysis of these fundamental treaties shows us that, recently, the EU has tended to be too divergent to make it controllable solely through political will.