European Union Politics Research Articles

Scaling rights: the ‘Turkey deal’ and the divided geographies of European responsibility

ABSTRACTIn this article, Bialasiewicz and Maessen examine how responses of the European Union (EU) to the refugee crisis have been differentially spatialized within and outside the EU’s boundaries, noting how the crisis has operated a geographical sorting, not just of the right to legal and humanitarian protection, but also of the right to be included within the spaces of EUrope’s presumed responsibility. They highlight, in particular, the divided affective geographies delimiting concerns with ensuring the bodily safety of Europeans within the EU’s member states from the need to ensure safe passage for refugees at and beyond the EU’s borders. Such divided geographies made themselves violently visible in the spring of 2016. As EU politicians from the right, centre and left were calling with seemingly one voice for the need to assure ‘the protection of European women’ from what was being presented as an unprecedented surge of sexual attacks perpetrated by newly arrived ‘refugees’, at that very same moment, fundamental legal notions of safety and protection were being rescripted as part of the EU’s ongoing negotiations with Turkey to take on the management of refugee flows at the EU’s external borders. In the current piece, Bialasiewicz and Maessen focus on the ‘Turkey deal’ specifically, but they also locate these events in a broader re-scaling of EU responsibilities over the past decade, noting the effects of such re-scaling on the access to basic rights: within, outside and at the borders of Europe.

Towards political integration in Europe: the involvement of national parliaments in European Union politics and policy-making

ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of the life of the European Union over a period that has witnessed a number of historical international and institutional developments, and provides a politico-juridico-historical perspective on its growth. The article aims to examine the role of national parliaments in relation to increasing European legislative powers. The European Union is using these powers to ensure that non-European-Union states accept its rules as universal standards. At the same time, European foreign policy has expanded remarkably, reflecting its more prominent international role. The European Parliament is the world's first directly elected transnational parliament. In recent decades, the principles of human rights, peace, and democracy have reflected the deeply embedded values at the core of European integration since its inception, determining the evolution of the European Union from international actor to a model of democratization: a model promoting not only respect for human rights, but also democracy and peace, which have become concrete goals steering the European Union foreign policy.

The Alleged Opposition Deficit in European Union Politics: Myth or Reality?

AbstractAccording to the ‘opposition deficit thesis’ European Union politics is characterized by a conspicuous absence of opposition to the policies promoted by the EU. However, once we start looking for systematic evidence supporting the claim of an opposition deficit in EU politics, we come up surprisingly empty handed. This article seeks to rectify the lacuna in previous research by examining how much and what type of opposition actually exist in EU politics. The study formulates four hypotheses on the state of political opposition in EU politics, and breaks new ground by testing their validity by use of unique data collected from the Swedish European Affairs Committee for the period 1995–2016. The results show there is in fact considerably more opposition present in EU politics than has previously been assumed. The opposition deficit thesis thus seems to be more myth than reality.

Energy, economical and ecological analysis of a single-family house using photovoltaic installation

According to European Union politics, Poland is expected to achieve at least 15% of the final energy consumption from renewable sources and to reduce 20% of greenhouse gases reduction in comparison to 1990. Among a variety of sources, (i.e. wind, biomass, geothermal, solar) energy conversion is one of the most promising solutions. The solar energy is clean and free. PV installations do not produce CO2gas to the atmosphere and can be installed to any size based on individual energy demands. Besides, the investment costs for such systems drops every year. Above mentioned reasons cause a strong interest in small photovoltaic installations, and an increasing number of energy prosumers. Selling electricity to the grid in the present renewable energy legislation is not profitable. For this reason energy produced from PV installations should be consumed directly where is produced. This paper shows the results of the computer simulations and analysis of annual, winter and summer half year energy yield of photovoltaic system for a single-family house. Following orientations were taken into account: east-west, south. Effect of tilt angle of the modules integrated with building façade was investigated. Economic and ecological aspects were analysed. DDS-Cad and PVSyst software were used for modelling and simulations.

“We mustn’t fool ourselves”

AbstractThe historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-nationalist, anti-Muslim fearmongering and political infighting within the European Union (EU). Perhaps no one was more influential in promulgating fear and anti-refugee sentiment than Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, whose inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising, illiberal political stance helped escalate the refugee-crisis in a discursive battle of political wills, ideologies, and identity politics within the EU. This paper explores how Orbán employs political discourse practices and strategies to enact his right-wing populist (RWP) ideology and anti-immigrant ‘politics of fear’ (Wodak 2015) vis-à-vis EU politicians’ pro-migration discourses. Adopting a broad critical discourse-analytic approach, we demonstrate Orbán’s iterative production of discourses of threat and defense underlying discourses of fear (law and order, cultural/religious difference), and discourses of oppositional political identities and ideologies throughfractal recursion. We argue that recursive performance of RWP stances creates a recognizable political style characteristic of Orbán’s RWP political persona or type.

SAGE Award for the best article published in European Union Politics, Volume 17

SAGE Award for the best article published in <i>European Union Politics</i>, Volume 17

The role of candidate evaluations in the 2014 European Parliament elections: Towards the personalization of voting behaviour?

We study the personalization of voting behaviour in European Parliament elections. We argue that information from the media is crucial for providing linkages between candidates and voters. Moreover, we contend that candidates can serve as information short-cuts given the complexity of European Union politics. We use a four-wave Dutch panel survey and a media study that enable us to link evaluations of lead candidates, party preferences, and vote choice to exposure to news about these candidates. We show, firstly, that exposure to candidate news is a strong explanatory factor for candidate recognition. Secondly, we find that candidate evaluations positively affect party choice, albeit mainly for those voters who tend to be politically aware. Our research has implications for debates about the European Union’s accountability deficit.

Politics of affect in the EU heritage policy discourse: an analysis of promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label

European cultural heritage is discussed with affective rhetoric in current European Union (EU) policy discourse. How does affect contribute to the meaning-making of a European cultural heritage and how are the workings of affect used by the EU to promote certain meanings of heritage and effect thereupon? The analysis focuses on recent promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label by the EU. In the videos, affective textual, visual, audible, and narrative tropes intertwine with the tropes of EU policy rhetoric, increasing its capacity to impact and ‘move’ the receivers. The ethos of a European cultural heritage in the videos is based on a paradox: the history of the several sites is in various ways intertwined with extreme agony, violence, hatred, oppression, and injustice. However, the stories of the sites in the videos turn their legacy into a positive ethos of conquering these negative extremes and cherishing their positive opposites: freedom, justice, solidarity, and peace. The affectivity of the videos prepares the receivers to adopt their political aim: support for the EU and European integration. The analysis indicates how affect has a key role in producing an impression of the irrefutability and choicelessness of EU politics.

Is the European Union too complicated? Citizens’ lack of information and party cue effectiveness

Previous literature suggests that citizens lack information about European Union politics and need party cues to develop attitudes toward European Union issues. This process would make party positions the cause rather than the consequence of voters’ preferences, reducing the accountability of the political elite. The article tests the premise of this top-down model investigating how issue complexity and citizens’ political knowledge affect party cue effectiveness. The results from both experimental and observational data show that party influence is higher among less knowledgeable citizens. Moreover, well-informed voters have autonomous opinions on easy issues, but they rely on party cues when facing harder ones. Given the low availability of information about European Union politics and the high complexity of the debated issues, parties appear largely able to shape voters’ attitudes.

EU Simulations and Engagement: Motivating Greater Interest in European Union Politics

ABSTRACTWhile the effects of simulation-based courses on the knowledge of participating students may be marginal in relation to standard lecture and discussion-based courses, this article argues that the greatest leverage is gained by increasing participating students’ level of interest in the subject of study and in politics more broadly. Participants tend to become increasingly absorbed in their roles and in the politics of the institutions at the center of the simulation. To better consider this possibility, we conducted a survey of students participating in the 2015 Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation and of appropriate control populations. The survey results indeed suggest that, much more than simply acquiring knowledge about the EU, the simulation experience serves to generate more robust interest in the subject of study.

The Impact of EU Political Conditionality on Minority Rights in Western Balkans: Insights from the Croatian Enlargement

Abstract The present paper addresses the following questions: In what way have the European Union (EU) political conditionality affect minority rights in the Western Balkan (WB) region? Did the EU political conditionality on minority issues succeed in addressing the stateness problems in Croatia? With the term “impact” I mean the absorption of formal and informal rules, procedures, norms and practices and I am going to analyze the relation European Union/Western Balkans as unidirectional i.e. the transposing of EU rules on accession countries. In the first part of this work I will analyse the EU standard of minority rights (internal dimension) and compare it with the norm ‘content’ in its external dimension. In the second part, the EU approach concerning minority rights toward the WB region, will be explored. In order to do so I will analyse the Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges produced by the European Commission (EC) from 2004. In the above document the EC emphasize the main challenges and set out the priorities for the whole region, considered as a single entity. In Western Balkans region we do have an example of recent accession. For this reason, the empirical analysis of this paper will focus on the pre-accession process of one of the new member states, Croatia. In the end I will draw some conclusions concerning the future prospects of the WB region concerning the EU conditionality and the real impact of minority right in the process.

Different narratives, one area without internal frontiers: why EU institutions cannot agree on the refugee crisis

ABSTRACTThis article contextualizes contemporary institutional responses of the European Union (EU) to the refugee crisis within the historical setting in which EU migration and asylum policies emerged – namely during the implementation of the border-free Schengen Area (1984–1995). Using the analytical framework of ‘policy narratives’, it argues that EU institutions have used the creation of the ‘area without internal frontiers’ to build coherent narratives about the nature and scope of EU action and of their own role in it. Such narratives became locked into the institutional discourse and influenced the subsequent evolution of EU politics on the topic.

The EU-Quarter as a political place: Investigating fluid assemblages in EU policy making

We focus on the European Quarter in Brussels as a political place and the spatial context of European Union (EU) policy making. In addition to the EU institutions, the political place consists of a political agglomeration of various kinds of actors, from EU bureaucrats and politicians to a variety of stakeholders and lobbyists from all over the EU, who are permanently present in the Brussels neighbourhood. We present, firstly, the EU Quarter as a fixed setting for policy making with a relatively constant physical, locational and functional shape, and a specific sense of place as the EU bubble. Secondly, we emphasise the fragmentation and fluidity that portray it as a place divided into various political assemblages that make the place an assemblage of assemblages consisting of smaller and constantly evolving sub-processes. Thirdly, we aim to demonstrate the mobile and geographically distributed nature of EU policy making, and thus the dispersal of the political places where it takes place. This generates mobility of different kinds, which include not only the circulation of political ideas and people between different sites of the EU political system, but also the monthly migration of the Parliament and related lobbyists to Strasbourg. We believe that these three aspects of political place help the understanding of the situated but simultaneously spatially dispersed and mobile nature of EU policy making, and the study of the political places in other urban contexts.

Just a Notion of Aid: How (Not) to Create a Fiscal State Aid Doctrine

The European Commission’s review of over 1,000 tax rulings across the European Union (EU) has drawn a lot of attention in recent years, with the EUR 13 billion Apple decision as its pinnacle for now (moneywise).1 It led to heated discussions between EU and US politicians and officials, as the Commission ordered certain large US companies (as well as others) to pay taxes it considered due with regard to fiscal years that were considered settled before.

Exploring the emotional appeal of green and social Europe myths among pan-European Union organizations

ABSTRACTThis article aims to advance European integration research by exploring the emotional appeal of political myths in day-to-day European Union politics with a special focus on the reception and reproduction of myths among pan-European Union non-governmental organizations. I investigate myths associated with ‘EUROPE 2020: a European strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’, adopted in early 2010. What makes Europe 2020 especially interesting here is that it draws upon and feeds into a number of myths about European integration including ‘green Europe’ and ‘social Europe’. The article argues that: (1) pan-European Union non-governmental organizations are receptive to political myths, including in the short term; (2) pan-European Union non-governmental organizations contribute to the reproduction of myths, especially already-institutionalized myths and myths that resonate with their sectoral activities; and (3) pan-European Union non-governmental organizations strategically use political myths to justify policy positions and continually mobilize desires around utopian ideals to secure organizational survival.

Economic and financial structural reform in the European Union. Introductory thoughts on the current situation

It was decided at the Conference of Heads of State or Government in Maastricht on 09.–10.12.1991 to adopt a common currency in these countries. This laid the foundation for the European Economic and Monetary Union. This was and is intended to be a preliminary stage for the creation of the European political union – United States of Europe – according to the model of the United States of America.U.S. economists, above all, were sceptical about this project as a comparison of these two federations would reveal quite considerable differences between the countries. The opinion of Milton Friedman (1912–2006), the 1976 Nobel Prize Laureate, attracted particular attention. He referred to the fact that U.S. experience cannot be transferred to Europe very easily as individual European countries – unlike U.S. states – vary a lot both in economic and sociological terms. In the U.S. most public expenditures are born by the federal government so it is relatively easy in case of regional economic disparities to redirect sufficient aid resources to regions which are in a crisis situation. The labour force and officials are much more mobile between regions due to the common language, in principle commonly perceived culture and relatively few personal connections with their home states. In addition, the labour markets are much less regulated than in Europe. On the basis of all these factors, salaries and wages can be more easily adjusted to different levels of development of economic areas. The same applies to capital flows which can move between the states without.

SAGE Award for the best article published in European Union Politics, Volume 16

<i>SAGE Award</i> for the best article published in <i>European Union Politics</i>, Volume 16

European Money in Greece: In Search of the Real Impact of EU Structural Funds

AbstractThe impact of EU (European Union) Structural Funds (from the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund, the Cohesion Fund, etc.) channelled to Greece and other countries over the last 35 years has been thoroughly evaluated by EU‐commissioned impact reports and relevant academic studies. However, several political consequences of development transfers have been largely neglected. Concepts, methods and conclusions reached by studies of North–South development aid can help greatly to understand the medium‐ and long‐term political impact of EU funds. This article is based on interviews with EU and Greek politicians, officials, beneficiaries and various stakeholders. The conclusion is a less positive – but familiar in other parts of the world – story.

Catalysts of integration – the role of core intergovernmental forums in EU politics

This article synthetises the contributions of the special issue along three major lines of reasoning. First, the European Council is considered as a catalyst of post-Maastricht integration. This is mainly due to its policy-making role in core new areas of European Union (EU) activity. Second, inter-institutional relations that have emerged between the European Council, the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament in the post-Maastricht era and in particular the post-Lisbon era are seen to reflect both the centrality of the European Council and a novel way of initiating and implementing EU policy. Finally, the political process within and around the European Council is considered that has taken place against the background of the most recent crises conditions. In particular, the simultaneous occurrence of consensus and domination is identified as a key element of further research related to the ‘new intergovernmentalism’ and the ‘intergovernmental union’.

With and without supranationalisation: the post-Lisbon roles of the European Council and the Council in justice and home affairs governance

‘Integration without supranationalisation’ is a recent phenomenon in European Union (EU) politics characterising new areas of policy activity which emerged on the EU agenda at Maastricht or beyond. Among fields like economic governance, foreign and security policy or social and employment coordination, the domain of justice and home affairs (JHA) appears to deviate from the pattern. While being a new area of EU activity which originally evolved on the basis of policy coordination arrangements, JHA has been gradually supranationalised in respect to decision-making procedures. However, given the political sensitivity of the issues it covers, JHA is far from functioning as a standard field of EU legislative decision-making, even after the Lisbon Treaty. By examining the active role of the European Council in setting the JHA agenda and the continuous centrality of the JHA Council in decision-making, this article demonstrates an important blend of supranationalisation and intergovernmentalisation in post-Lisbon JHA governance.