The Europeanisation of intergovernmental cooperation and conflict resolution in Belgium: The case of agriculture

Abstract

This article analyses the genesis of formal procedures and institutional conditions within the agriculture policy domain in federal Belgium. Our process tracing starts in 1988 when a small number of agriculture competencies were handed over to the regions and ends in 2002 with the almost complete de‐federalisation of agriculture. In particular we argue that the fourth Belgian state reform in combination with the change of TEU‐article 146 (current article 203) (both in 1992) has set the institutional parameters for the almost complete de‐federalization of the agriculture policy‐domain in 2002. The case of agricultural policy demonstrates how sectoral changes are embedded within a more general process of institutional change and how, more in particular, domestic reform and European adaptation or Europeanisation evolves through a concatenated set of small incremental, at first hand seemingly unrelated, steps which may lock‐in actors into a specific set of institutional choices. With respect to the Belgian case, we demonstrate that Europe mitigates or softens the dual nature of Belgian federalism and that it stimulates cooperative forms of governance.1