European Integration Project Research Articles

Legal Aspects of Disintegration: Lessons of States’ Withdrawals from European Regional Organizations

INTRODUCTION. Viewed for a long time as an outstanding example of restoring durable peace on the continent and a major precondition for its prosperity, the European integration project is increasingly running existential risks. The precedents of States’ withdrawals from the main European regional organisations – the European Union and the Council of Europe – command a critical review of both their experience and the perspectives for their continuing existence. While the aforementioned events were unique in nature, they have shaken in their own ways the long-established architecture of Pan-European cooperation and prompted in-depth studies of political and legal models of States’ withdrawals from European regional organisations.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The study is based on a broad ensemble of international and national norms and case-law that have shaped the Great Britain’s exit from the European Union. The analysis has been nurtured by an array of sources connected with the long negotiation process and the parallel legal and political processes within the UK. Mass media publications have been used along with official speeches and statements by high-level lawyers and politicians. The research also benefits from an in-depth study of the doctrine and practice, including the commentaries by direct actors of the pivotal events. Beyond the traditional methods of legal analysis the author has used historic and dialectic approach with a view to combining the study of the formal legal sense of the desintegration processes with their systemic understanding as interconnected elements within the broader dynamics of international law and international relations.RESEARCH RESULTS. The study has analysed through the prism of Brexit the legal aspects of desintegration as a complex process of the State’s desengaging from a highly organised supranational union. On the one hand, the article reviews the international-law dimension of the desintegration process through the denunciation of the statutory treaties and the conclusion of new ones with a view to a «soft exit», thus ensuring a progressive transformation of the intra-union relations into new formats, cutting off multiple connections, while preserving some others. On the other hand, the article explores the way the desintegration is framed and its consequences managed in national law. The progressive transformation of the nationaly rooted elements of the European legal order requires thousands of new legal acts, let alone the review of a more voluminous body of the EU-related case-law through national judicial decisions.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. The geopolitical shifts in Europe and the world, allied with the unprecedented deterioration of the political and economic situation within the European Union itself, raise doubts at both its continued leadership and even its capacity to survive in its present format. The current international context therefore commands a review of the Brexit experience in a comparative perspective, taking it as a highly sophisticated legal model, albeit not the only one, of withdrawal from the regional integration project. While the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU presents notable differences with Russia’s withdrawal from the Council of Europe, which deserves a separate study, certain parallels have been identified between the two phenomena both in terms of their framing in international and national law and in terms of their significance for further desintegration on the European arena.

Social solidarity and deservingness

The notion of social solidarity involves formal and informal practices, with various levels of institutionalisation. It builds on normative assumptions and discourses of reciprocal expectations of mutual help, on (perceived) ideas of sameness or neediness in relation to, among other, class, ethnicity, and/or gender and on notions of deservingness that are entangled in such ideas. In this contribution, we discuss how the intersection between institutionalised social solidarity in European nation-states and notions of deservingness informs who is seen as worthy of being part of welfare arrangements. Where ideas of solidarity and deservingness intertwine with legal categorisations of belonging, the results are exclusionary policies that often restrict migrants’ access to national welfare policies, and hence meaningful societal participation. Furthermore, we discuss migrants’ experiences with expressions of solidarity beyond the national realm, exploring how ideas about migrants’ deservingness become linked to their economic usefulness within the European (integration) project.

The Procedure for Admitting New Members to the European Union: Legal Aspect

INTRODUCTION. The article is devoted to the process of accession of new states to the European Union (EU). The authors try to demonstrate the evolution of the procedure for admitting new members since the formation of the European Communities and identify the main subjects of this procedure.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The current research is based on various international legal documents, including the founding treaties of the European Union, as well as acts of EU institutions and doctrinal sources.RESEARCH RESULTS. The research represents a retrospective analysis of the formation of the procedure for accession of new members to the European Communities/EU. It was found out that the norms of the founding agreement set only the general legal framework of the procedure, and its specific content differed through out the existence of the European integration project. The actual content of the accession process is determined by the member states, which, through the institutions of the Communities/Union, primarily the Council and the European Council, formulate the criteria and principles of accession. The Commission also plays a significant role in the process. The role of the European Parliament in this procedure is insignificant, although this institution tries to increase its influence throughout the negotiation process. DISCUSSION AND COCLUSION. To sum up, the accession procedure is typologically close to a special legislative procedure. Since its origin the accession of new states to the EU has been transformed from a rule-making procedure enshrined in the founding treaties to a set of various instruments and practices, including non-legal (political) ones.

Missions, conditions and the policy transfer of Smart Specialisation in the European Union

ABSTRACT Smart Specialisation is fundamentally a bottom-up policymaking process premised on entrepreneurial discovery and peer learning. Nonetheless, the European Union has relied on coercive policy transfer through the ex-ante funding conditionality instrument to secure its implementation across regions. This paper examines how the use of conditionality has shaped the implementation of Smart Specialisation in the European Union and its regions. Furthermore, it discusses whether the use of conditionality to ensure the implementation of a particular type of innovation policy reflects a changed perception of the role of the state in the broader European integration project.

Insights into teachers' training and professional development: introducing online technologies

The article deals with the problem of professional development of teachers and lecturers in Ukraine in today's challenging conditions. The authors of the article are representatives of the development team of the online course "Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Methodology" for educators. It is a product of the collective creativity of the Foreign Language Teacher Training Capacity Development as a Way to Ukraine’s Multilingual Education and European Integration (MultiEd) project team, сo-working under the umbrella of the Erasmus+KA2 programme. The course is hosted on the Moodle platform of Zaporizhzhia National University; it is aimed at training specialists capable of adapting and implementing advanced teaching methods in the educational process of the New Ukrainian School. This course is designed for subject teachers, foreign language teachers in secondary and higher education, as well as educational institution leaders who understand the contemporary challenges of education in line with the demands of the job market and are interested in modernizing existing educational programs, improving teaching and learning methods, and implementing a culture of quality assurance in education. The course is developed in the Ukrainian and English languages; it is flexible in time and choosing subject themes to fill the gaps in knowledge. The article presents the stages of course development and implementation, description of its content and structural elements. The course was piloted in all UA universities, partnered with the MultiEd team, encompassing 583 participants, 466 of which successfully completed the course. This article focuses on the results of 194 participants’ training on the Moodle platform of Zaporizhzhia National University (March – November 2023), their progress, evaluation and critical remarks, and highlights the prospects of its use in the system of professional teacher training

Collective Memory and the Stalling of European Integration: Generational Dynamics and the Crisis of European Leadership

AbstractThe project of European integration has been battered by repeated crises since the turn of the second millennium. However, in contrast to earlier periods in its history, when it responded to difficulties by adding new competencies to its repertoire of powers, since 2000, the deepening of integration has stalled. This article addresses why this is happening – and why this is happening now, 70 years after the foundation of the European Communities – using the paradigm of collective memory. More specifically, I argue that generational dynamics are crucial for understanding development of European integration. I identify and analyse the memories of three cohorts of leaders: the ‘founders’ of the 1950s, the ‘deepeners’ of the 1980s and 1990s and the current generation of ‘sceptics’. Based on this analysis, I conclude that debates about the European Union's (EU's) finalité politique should be set aside until a younger, more pro‐European cohort of leaders has come to power.

Religious voices raised for integral ecology in the European Union

ABSTRACT This article looks at how Europe’s Christian churches seek to have their voices heard in the corridors and debating chambers of the European Union through official consultation mechanisms, as well as through more informal awareness raising, and grass-roots activism. On the EU side, Christian inspiration was present from the outset, though arguably neglected or obscured for long periods of its 70-year existence. As the Union in its most recent incarnation seeks to emphasise the values-based nature of the European integration project, it has renewed its outreach to the cultural ‘holders of value’, with churches being particularly prominent in the dialogue. Among the EU’s current priorities, both in terms of domestic policy and global strategy, the ‘Green Deal’ is centre-stage. In striving for its 27 Member States to be world leaders in integral ecological and human development, the Union has found enthusiastic and like-minded partners in the churches.

Emotions and positive anti-communism during the early Cold War: the case of the Bilderberg Group

In the early 1950s, the Bilderberg Group became one of the first high-level informal transatlantic elite networks of the cold war. This article examines how the discussions at the Bilderberg Meetings were affected by the emotional nature of anti-communism on both sides of the Atlantic. On the one hand, ‘negative’ emotions resulting from the fear of communist infiltration and aggression could lead to the strengthening of transatlantic bonds. On the other hand, differences in political responses to communism could also lead to emotionally charged disagreements, as the first Bilderberg Conference in 1954 showed. As a result, the transatlantic discourse about anti-communism shifted towards the search for a strategy of positive anti-communism. The most important expression of this shift was the project of European integration.

Cultural narrative, crisis, and contention in Iceland's bid to join the European Union, 2009–2015

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, Iceland launched a bid to join the European Union. Joining the EU was presented domestically as a key to economic recovery and as a preventative measure against future economic distress. The bid itself was framed within a rapidly shifting political landscape, set against a backdrop of spreading economic malaise across Europe, accompanied by economic bailout plans and austerity measures. Several aspects of the bid's ultimate failure demonstrate the importance of identities and narratives around national independence and European integration. Most saliently, widespread perceptions about what it would mean to join the EU, particularly around sensitive notions of sovereignty, proved insurmountable to the more economistic rationale of the pro-EU campaign. The Icelandic bid thus presents a distinct opportunity to drill down into the complex relationships between austerity economics, popular politics, and the European integration project, with significant policy implications. To better understand the emergence of the bid and its failure in sociopolitical terms we assess different conceptual frameworks, including functionalist, intergovernmentalist, and post-functionalist approaches and theoretical perspectives on crisis and contentious politics. We also include voices of Icelandic citizens from civil society and government collected in research interviews between 2012 and 2018. Overall, our comparative theoretical approach and original case data sharpen an emphasis in the social sciences and policy research on the importance of cultural narrative and identity as key determinants of EU integration.

National and European Components in the Concept of Sovereignty in the EU Countries: Political Discourse in Contemporary Greece

The two-hundred-year long history of the independent Greek is intrinsically connected to the history of Europe as a whole. Contemporary Greek national identity has a pronounced European element. On the other hand, independent Greece has, throughout its history, been consistently influenced by the great powers (both European powers and the USA), which to some extent determined the course of its foreign and domestic policies. Membership in the EU does require a country to transfer part of its sovereignty to the transnational organisation. This issue has been drawing the attention of both politicians and researchers since the beginning of European integration. In Greece it became an especially prominent part of the political discourse in 2010, with the advent of the financial and economic crisis. For several years, the Greek economy and financial policies were put under control of the “troika” of external creditors — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, severely limiting national sovereignty and leading to a rise in popular scepticism towards the idea of European integration. The Greek crisis revealed an imbalance within the Eurozone, with economically more powerful countries easily influencing less powerful ones by using the political tools of the EU, despite nominally being equal partners within the Union. This core-periphery asymmetry made the European integration a tool, and the EU itself an arena, for expanding the influence of economically powerful states (for example, Germany). The sovereignty of more and less powerful countries was not treated in the same way, which by itself made the integration process more difficult. The situation led to, among other consequences, a re-examination of Greek relations with the EU and the limits it had put on the country’s sovereignty in Greek political discourse, including the emerging notion of Greece becoming a “debt colony” of Europe. The tension between Greece and Turkey, as well as the Balkan vector of Greek foreign policy, can be productively examined through the lens of Greek participation in the European integration project, which can reveal the interrelation of the national and European components in the Greek concept of sovereignty.

Zwischen Sorbonne-Rede 2.0 und Neuwahlen – Macrons Visionen im Realitätstest

On 25 April 2024 President Emmanuel Macron described in his second Sorbonne speech the current state of the European Union (EU) in drastic terms and presented solutions to protect Europe and its model of peace, politics, social welfare and prosperity. Seven years after his first major speech on Europe at the Sorbonne, he took stock and once again made a passionate case for the European integration project. However, the speech must also be understood in light of his domestic political challenges and the new European legislative period. This article analyses the speech and the resulting implications for European policy.

European solidarity and multi-speed integration: Results of a laboratory experiment

The conflict around grain and flour imports from Ukraine to the European Union, which made the interests of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia contradict the interests of the majority of member states, and which was taking place having mass farmers’ protests in the background, invites revisiting European solidarity. Any political decision adopted on the EU level by voting of all member states indicates solidarity among them. Authors of this article, however, suggest distinguishing between two types of solidarity, namely the solidarity of the majority with the minority, and the solidarity of the minority with the majority. Game theory provided with the means allowing suggesting the behavioral matrix, which helps distinguishing between the two types of solidarity. Negotiations preceding formal voting help achieving solidarity of both types; those negotiations can be bilateral or multilateral.The results of the experiment staged, again, with the help of game theory demonstrate that solidarity with the majority emerges more often after bilateral negotiations, while solidarity with the minority emerges more often after multilateral negotiations. That conclusion allows recommending choosing the format of negotiations depending on the expected outcome of consequent voting. Based on the experience of the European Union, that recommendation is applicable to all cases of regional integration, first of all, to the Eurasian Economic Union. It also helps explaining why despite the mounting number of the demands for solidarity that the majority of EU member states places on the minority, the latter fails to consolidate and thus to endanger the future of the entire European integration project.

European Defense and Security Integration: a Retrospective Review

Although the end of the Second World War brought long-awaited peace to Europe, a new totalitarian threat, the Soviet Union, emerged almost immediately. After the former anti-Hitler coalition allies found themselves on different sides of the “iron curtain”, the countries of the democratic camp faced a difficult task: how to mobilise the efforts of the war-ravaged countries of “free Europe” and enable them to fend off a possible Soviet expansion. Given the fears that the societies of European countries might compel their governments to satisfy any demands of the Soviet Union for the sake of avoiding another war, it was crucial for the West to project unity and demonstrate readiness to resist the Soviet onslaught. hence the inevitability of the United States’ involvement as a guarantor of Western Europe’s security. Thus, the very first projects of European military-political integration – the Treaties of Dunkirk and Brussels – were to become no more than the basis for the gradual involvement of the U.S. It is noteworthy that even after the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the idea of purely European integration was not off the table. The reasons for this, however, are quite pragmatic. While Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, the originators of the idea of unifying Europe, considered the ultimate goal of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Defense Community (ECC) to be the formation of a supranational European federation, the European countries and especially the United States considered the ambitious EDC project exclusively as a way of solving the more pressing problems, such as the rearmament of West Germany and its gradual integration into NATO. This, coupled with the general unpreparedness of European countries for such a close union, led to the failure of the EDC, which would largely determine the course of European integration for decades.

Invisible social Europe? Linking citizens' awareness of European cohesion funds, individual power resources, and support for the EU.

In the twentieth century national social policies stabilized the European state systems, favouring domestic concordance and citizens' support to the nation-building process. Welfare institutions have historically served this key political function also in federal systems, where social citizenship has been used as a tool to foster unity. In contrast, even though the EU devotes a consistent part of its (however limited) budget to social cohesion and inclusion programmes, it takes little credit for such efforts. Building on original survey data on public opinion collected in 2019 across ten EU countries, this article shows that, indeed, only a limited number of citizens are aware of the social role played by the EU in their local community. On the other hand, it demonstrates that citizens' awareness of EU programmes strengthens the individual perception of power resources stemming from euro-social initiatives, the feeling of 'being heard' by the EU and, ultimately, the support for the European integration project as a whole. By implication, increasing the relevance and visibility of euro-social programmes could possibly reinforce the very foundations of the EU.

AUTHORITARIAN LIBERALISM, ORDOLIBERAL RATIONALITY AND THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROJECT

Abstract. The author assesses the relevance and analytical significance of authoritarian liberalism and interprets it as one of the modern conceptual models of ordoliberalism and European integration. The basic concepts of authoritarian liberalism and ordoliberalism emphasise the political and ideological connection between the authoritarianism of the strong state and the economic liberalism of market rationality. As a flexible market-oriented form of authoritarian liberalism, ordoliberalism means a rational strategy for maintaining and promoting the European integration project towards which the market economy and the technocratic elite are moving to contain crises. Due to the presence of the values of political liberalism, pluralism and the rule of law, authoritarianism in this structure is not repressive or monocentric, but subject to democratic criticism in relation to the supranational regulation of European integration. Keywords: authoritarian liberalism, ordoliberalism, market capitalism, democracy, eurocrisis, European integration

Charting the Impacts of Media Discourses on the European Integration Project

The over-exposure to information facilitated by the hybrid media system and social networks is a key factor contributing to the increasing polarization of public opinion on major political issues. The European integration project is one of the major political processes affected by information manipulation and disinformation. In this regard, social networks have become powerful tools for nurturing news siloes or “echo chambers,” influencing people’s perceptions of important political issues in a manner that could have a destabilizing effect on democratic processes and institutions. In this context, the role of media discourses and their circulation among networked publics has become particularly relevant, leading audiences to adopt different views supporting or rejecting the European project. This thematic issue features a range of articles considering how the Europeanization process is impacted by discourses circulating in the hybrid media system or threatened by the destructive dynamics of disinformation and polarization.

Systemic Failure and Systemic Change in Private and Business Law: An Introduction

European private and business law has been able to maintain its foundational principles and structures intact, while rapidly reacting to and incorporating societal change. Time and again, profound crises have threatened the project of European integration. In hindsight, many of these challenges have furthered rather than derailed this project. However, the system of European private and business law will only be able to evolve if it is able to translate the mechanisms of social change into the language of the law. The task ahead is one for different areas of private and business law, from the law of contracts to company law, but it is also a task for a new theory and methodology of private law. Systemic Failure, System Building, European Private and Business Law, Global Financial Crisis, Climate Crisis, Stability, Evolution, Innovation, Disruption, Regulatory Competition

Downplaying Euroscepticism in Mainstream Media: The Schengen Accession of Romania and Bulgaria

Scholars have expressed concern about the growth of Eurosceptic discourses in the media since Taggart’s (1998) article on Euroscepticism. While some progress has been made in understanding the media’s role in increasing Euroscepticism, previous studies have primarily focused on Western European media discourses. This research aims to address the knowledge gap on Eurosceptic discourse in Eastern Europe by analysing the impact of the veto against Romania and Bulgaria’s application to join Schengen, as reflected in mainstream media. The research question is: To what extent the Eurosceptic discourse arose in both countries in the weeks before and after the Justice and Home Affairs Council (8–9 December 2022)? The findings indicate that mainstream-mediated discourse employed a strategy of downplaying Euroscepticism. The Romanian and Bulgarian political class labelled the failure to join Schengen as “disappointing,” “unfair,” “unjustified,” and “regrettable.” This research provides evidence of how mainstream media discourses addressed the issue while promoting the European integration project by minimising Euroscepticism.

Towards a common vision? Populist radical right parties’ positions on the EU common foreign and security policy towards Russia

ABSTRACT The growth of populism in the EU member states, as a large-scale internal challenge to the European integration project, has a projection on foreign policy of both national states and the European Union. The EU foreign policy, towards Russia, is the area where the deviation of populist programs and strategies from the positions of the mainstream is most clearly manifested. In this regard, it is necessary to determine the foreign policy orientations of the populist radical right parties of the EU member states regarding the EU foreign policy, towards Russia, and opportunities for their synchronization. The main conclusion of this research is that populist foreign policy orientations highlight the internal heterogeneity of the populist phenomenon. Populism in power and in opposition does not have the capacity to change the EU’s foreign policy towards Russia. The nature of populism as an ideology, the instrumental use by right populists of the ‘theme of Russia’ for ‘internal consumption’ and their mainstreaming in power are a significant barrier to the real challenge of the EU policy towards Russia.

State aid policy in the United Kingdom post-Brexit: a case of de-Europeanisation as orbiting Europeanisation

ABSTRACT Competition policy has been at the core of the European integration project from its very inception. The United Kingdom (UK) played a truly pivotal role in the development of European Union (EU) competition policy with the policy long presenting one of the best illustrations of Europeanisation. The public vote for Brexit in 2016 pushed the reset button for the UK’s engagement with the EU and saw successive UK governments all pursuing a de-Europeanisation trajectory as part of their objective of ‘taking back control’. State aid emerged as a contentious issue during the Brexit negotiations. The UK government hailed its new Subsidy Control Act (2023) as a clear departure from the EU state aid regime, but is this a case of de-Europeanisation or partial de-Europeanisation? This article argues that the UK has still not entirely broken free from EU’s state aid regime and finds itself in a state of orbiting Europeanisation.