The EU, the Nation-State, and the Perennial Challenge to European Integration

Author(s):  
Antonina Bakardjieva Engelbrekt ◽  
Karin Leijon ◽  
Anna Michalski ◽  
Lars Oxelheim
Author(s):  
Sacha Garben

Title XII deals with EU competences in the fields of education, vocational training, youth, and sport. According to Article 6 TFEU, these four areas qualify among those where the EU has the power to ‘support, coordinate or supplement the actions of the Member States’, meaning that the EU’s role is limited to a secondary one and that harmonization of national laws and regulations is excluded. As we shall see, however, this has not prevented a significant amount of European integration taking place in these very areas that are often considered to belong to the core tasks of the nation state.


Author(s):  
Richard Bellamy

This article examines the political challenges of the European Union (EU). It explains that political theorists and scientists alike have viewed European integration as a laboratory for exploring how far the nation state, and the forms of domestic and international politics to which it gave rise, has been affected by the various processes associated with globalization. It discusses the Charter of Rights and Constitutional Treaty of the EU and suggests that the EU can be plausibly characterized as an intergovernmental organization of an advanced kind, a nascent federation of states, and a new form of post-national and post-state entity.


Author(s):  
Richard Bellamy ◽  
Claudia Attucci

This chapter examines the input of normative theory to European integration theory. It first provides a historical background on social contract theory in Europe, followed by an analysis of John Rawls’s work as a way to explore the contribution of contractarian thinking to the normative dilemmas confronting the European Union. In particular, it considers Rawls’s two principles of justice. It also discusses three approaches that emphasize the centrality of democracy and have informed normative assessments of the democratic credentials of the EU, focusing on the writings of Jurgen Habermas, the national limits to the EU, and the normative position that makes sense of the EU’s character as ‘betwixt and between’ the nation state and a supranational institution. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how enlargement illustrates both the appeal of the normative approach and the difficulties it faces.


Author(s):  
Christopher Bickerton

This chapter explores the role of member states in European integration. It first looks at the idea of member statehood, exploring its ambiguities and arguing for a more sophisticated understanding of what it means to be a ‘member state’ of the EU. The chapter considers in detail the role played by member states in the EU, highlighting in particular the centrality of member state governments and their power to EU policy-making and its institutions. At the same time it notes the relative absence of member state publics. The chapter ends with a reflection on whether there is a return of the nation-state, with its associated trends of nationalism and inter-state rivalry.


Author(s):  
Robert Bideleux

Rejecting claims that European integration has been inimical or antithetical to nations, states, and ‘national’ interests, Alan Milward's The European Rescue of the Nation-State (1992) argues that the relationship between European integration and the nation-state has been mutually beneficial and supportive. This article discusses the European Union's ‘rescues’ of small and sub-state nations, languages, cultures, and minorities; EU state-building and ‘rescues of the nation-state’ in the post-Communist East Central European, Baltic, and Balkan regions; transformations of the states in need of ‘rescue’, focusing on ‘embedded neoliberalism’; the EU and ‘the nation-state’ after the Lisbon Treaty of 2009; the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008–2009 and the eurozone crises of 2010–2012; and the decade-long ‘money illusion’ of economic prosperity in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain.


ARGOMENTI ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 51-69
Author(s):  
Francesc Morata

- Drawing on the concept of Europeanization, the paper analyses the interaction between the process of European integration and the Spanish state of the autonomies from a twofold perspective. Firstly, it shows that, though European integration strengthens national executives at the expenses of the regions both at the EU and the national level it may also bring about adaptations under certain conditions related to the specific characteristics of domestic institutions and politics. Secondly, the example of the Euroregions illustrates the extent to which Europeanization provides the regions with opportunities to play a role beyond the nation state.Parole chiave: integrazione europea, europeizzazione, regionalismo, euroregioni.Keywords: European integration, Europeanization, Regionalism, Euroregions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Moland

A large literature investigates support for European integration. However, only recently have public opinion scholars turned their focus to public perceptions of differentiated modes of integration. This article contributes to this growing literature by investigating whether exclusively national identities lead to a demand for more differentiated integration at the EU level, regardless of individual views of the question of EU membership. Using survey data from 2020, I show that solely identifying with one’s nation-state does not increase support for temporally or functionally differentiated European integration in any substantive way. However, it appears to be a key motivator of support for differentiation among those opposing EU membership. This suggests that those most concerned with sovereignty are no more likely than others to support a more differentiated EU. It also suggests that a more differentiated future EU may not be enough to stem constraining dissensus at the popular level.


Author(s):  
Johann P. Arnason

Different understandings of European integration, its background and present problems are represented in this book, but they share an emphasis on historical processes, geopolitical dynamics and regional diversity. The introduction surveys approaches to the question of European continuities and discontinuities, before going on to an overview of chapters. The following three contributions deal with long-term perspectives, including the question of Europe as a civilisational entity, the civilisational crisis of the twentieth century, marked by wars and totalitarian regimes, and a comparison of the European Union with the Habsburg Empire, with particular emphasis on similar crisis symptoms. The next three chapters discuss various aspects and contexts of the present crisis. Reflections on the Brexit controversy throw light on a longer history of intra-Union rivalry, enduring disputes and changing external conditions. An analysis of efforts to strengthen the EU’s legal and constitutional framework, and of resistances to them, highlights the unfinished agenda of integration. A closer look at the much-disputed Islamic presence in Europe suggests that an interdependent radicalization of Islamism and the European extreme right is a major factor in current political developments. Three concluding chapters adopt specific regional perspectives. Central and Eastern European countries, especially Poland, are following a path that leads to conflicts with dominant orientations of the EU, but this also raises questions about Europe’s future. The record of Scandinavian policies in relation to Europe exemplifies more general problems faced by peripheral regions. Finally, growing dissonances and divergences within the EU may strengthen the case for Eurasian perspectives.


2020 ◽  
pp. 102-105
Author(s):  
A. A. Prykhodko

The article analyzes the theoretical and practical aspects of the anti-corruption policy of Ukraine in the context of European integration. Considered that corruption has long been perceived in the EU as a negative phenomenon requiring systematic, strategic and concerted action of a transboundary and transnational character and, in general, a threat to the rule of law. The author concluded that Ukraine will continue to be perceived by a third world country as long as anti-corruption measures are duplicated from one strategic document to another. The anti-corruption strategy of Ukraine should be an early, strategic and systematic tool for the eradication of corruption and the formation of public justice in the context of zero tolerance for such phenomena. Now this is a set of normatively fixed declarative slogans that are consistent with international standards, but are not achievable in practical terms due to the lack of state strategic planning in advance. The new anti-corruption strategy must necessarily include a broad interpretation of all the concepts used in it, including the term “anti-corruption policy”. Taking into account the recommendations of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly, the author’s vision of the term “anti-corruption policy” has been formed, as a set of principles, tasks, goals and principles of implementation of law-making and law-enforcement activity of public administration within the protection of human and civil rights and freedoms a state implemented by a system of methods, means and measures to combat corruption in priority areas and in accordance with anti-corruption standards and on the basis of transnational national and cross-border cooperation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-37
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Kustra-Rogatka

Summary The paper deals with the changes in the centralized (Kelsenian) model of constitutional review resulting from a state’s membership of the EU, which unequivocally demonstrates the decomposition of the classic paradigm of constitutional judiciary. The main point raised in the paper is that European integration has fundamentally influenced on the four above-mentioned basic elements of the Kelsenian model of constitutional review of legislation, which are the following: the assumption of the hierarchical construction of a legal system; the assumption of the supreme legal force of the constitution as the primary normative act of a given system; a centralised model of reviewing hierarchical conformity of legal norms; coherence of the system guaranteed by a constitutional court’s power to declare defectiveness of a norm and the latter’s derogation. All its fundamental elements have evolved, i.e. the hierarchy of the legal system, the overriding power of the constitution, centralized control of constitutionality, and the erga omnes effect of the ruling on the hierarchical non-conformity of the norms. It should be noted that over the last decade the dynamics of these changes have definitely gained momentum. This has been influenced by several factors, including the “great accession” of 2004, the pursuit of formal constitutionalization of the EU through the Constitutional Treaty, the compromise solutions adopted in the Treaty of Lisbon, the entry into force of the Charter, and the prospect of EU accession to the ECHR. The CJEU has used these factors to deepen the tendencies towards decentralization of constitutional control, by atomising national judicial systems and relativizing the effects of constitutional court rulings within national legal systems. The end result is the observed phenomenon, if not of marginalisation, then at least of a systemic shift in the position of constitutional courts, which have lost their uniqueness and have become “only ones of many” national courts.


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