Special Issue Redefining European Economic Governance

The global financial crisis and sovereign debt crisis exposed the inadequacy of European economic governance. Despite the multitude of new mechanisms and institutions that have arisen over the last few years, many contend that economic governance remains inadequate and the EU must integrate even further to calm still-volatile markets. A tension exists between creating effective instruments that will not overstep the authority delegated to an EU that has integrated economically but not politically. Can the EU’s economic governance system satisfy the demands of markets and politics? Relevant issues include the ability of supranational institutions to dictate policy to national governments, the harmonization of economic policies and institutions across Europe, and a substantial increase in the transfer of funds across borders. Can monetary union continue without political union? How will the new institutions alter the distribution of power between EU institutions as well as between member states? This edited volume analyzes the major policy challenges and institutional mechanisms at the EU- and international levels to combat the global financial crisis and the EU’s sovereign debt crisis such as financial integration, fiscal cooperation, and the rising power of the ECB. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

This book is the first to be dedicated entirely to the European Semester -- a new framework for policy coordination across European Union (EU) member states. The Semester represents a major advancement in EU governance. Created in 2010 in the wake of the financial and sovereign debt crises and revamped in 2015, it was intended to provide a new socio-economic governance architecture to coordinate national policies without transferring legal sovereignty to EU level. The papers in this collection are written by authors who have already contributed to this literature and have conducted original research for their studies. The book offers an empirical and theoretical assessment of the European Semester, examining its implications along three critical axes, running respectively between the economic and the social, the supranational and the intergovernmental, and the technocratic and democratic poles of EU governance. The book concludes that the European Semester challenges established theoretical understandings of EU governance, as it is a prime example of the complexity that supersedes simple polar oppositions. The chapters were originally published in a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Constituting a major contribution to literature on the EU, this comprehensive Companion analyses the structure and value of the EU, capturing the normality of its politics alongside crises and political breakdown.

An innovative, bipartisan and comprehensive account of why European economic integration has been in disarray and how to fix it.

In the context of multiple crises, EU Energy and Climate policy is often identied as one of the few areas still exhibiting strong integration dynamics. However, this domain is not exempt from contestation and re-nationalization pressures. This collection seeks to understand those contradictory integration and disintegration tendencies by problematizing the notion of authority: When, why, and by whom is EU authority in Energy and Climate policy conferred and contested? What strategies are used to manage authority conflicts and to what effect? These questions are examined in some of the knottiest aspects of EU energy and climate policy, for example, the adoption of the landmark Governance of the Energy Union Regulation, the long-drawn-out attempts to complete the EU’s internal energy market, the struggle to achieve ambitious EU targets in renewable energy and energy efficiency beyond 2020, the blurring of economic and security instruments in external energy policy, or the heated discussions over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

The European Parliament in the Contested Union provides a systematic assessment of the real influence of the European Parliament (EP) in policy-making. Ten years after the coming into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, which significantly empowered Europe’s only directly elected institution, the contributions collected in this volume analyse whether, and under what conditions, the EP has been able to use its new powers and shape decisions. Going beyond formal or normative descriptions of the EP’s powers, this book provides an up-to-date and timely empirical assessment of the role of the EP in the European Union, focusing on key cases such as the reforms of the EU’s economic governance and asylum policy, the Brexit negotiations and the budget. The book challenges and qualifies the conventional view that the EP has become more influential after Lisbon. It shows that the influence of the EP is conditional on the salience of the negotiated policy for the Member States. When EU legislation touches upon ‘core state powers’, as well as when national financial resources are at stake, the role of the EP – notwithstanding its formal powers – is more constrained and its influence more limited. This book provides fresh light on the impact of the EP and its role in a more contested and politicised European Union. Bringing together an international team of top scholars in the field and analysing a wealth of new evidence, The European Parliament in the Contested Union challenges conventional explanations on the role of the EP, tracking down empirically its impact on key policies and processes. It will be of great interest to scholars of the European Union, European politics and policy-making. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.