Environmental and Health Costs in the European Union: Policy-Making⋆⋆The views are the one of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the one of the European Commission.

Author(s):  
D.R. di Valdalbero ◽  
P. Valette
2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Field

To counter the charge that it is an elite-driven political project, the European Union increasingly uses online systems to render its working practices visible to its citizens. This article analyses how the actors involved in European Union policy-making understand the benefits derived from providing information through e-transparency, and examines whether they consider that the e-transparency systems deliver these benefits. Drawing on data from 63 semi-structured interviews with officials, Members of the European Parliament and Brussels-based transparency campaigners, the article shows a wide variation in participants’ views concerning the rationale for e-transparency. It shows that e-transparency is variously seen as the means to address declining citizen trust in the Brussels institutions; as a mechanism through which citizens can participate in European Union processes and as a means of holding its institutions to account. The article argues that these various e-transparency attributes are contradictory, and it advances a framework for information providers to assess how the e-transparency tools can best meet the differing requirements of transparency users.


Author(s):  
Thomas Christiansen

This chapter examines the ‘governance turn’ in the study of European integration. Three approaches to governance are discussed: the multilevel governance approach, which emphasizes the nature of European Union policy-making as involving a multiplicity of actors on a variety of territorial levels beyond the nation state; the new governance approach (or agenda), which views the EU as a ‘regulatory state’ using nonmajoritarian decision-making to engage in problem-solving; and the study of new modes of governance, drawing on the use of non-binding instruments to make policies at the European level. The chapter also considers some of the important normative debates spawned by the ‘governance turn’ and concludes with some observations about the relevance of the governance approach in the current phase of European integration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Eva Eckert ◽  
Oleksandra Kovalevska

In the European Union, the concern for sustainability has been legitimized by its politically and ecologically motivated discourse disseminated through recent policies of the European Commission and the local as well as international media. In the article, we question the very meaning of sustainability and examine the European Green Deal, the major political document issued by the EC in 2019. The main question pursued in the study is whether expectations verbalized in the Green Deal’s plans, programs, strategies, and developments hold up to the scrutiny of critical discourse analysis. We compare the Green Deal’s treatment of sustainability to how sustainability is presented in environmental and social science scholarship and point out that research, on the one hand, and the politically motivated discourse, on the other, do not correlate and often actually contradict each other. We conclude that sustainability discourse and its keywords, lexicon, and phraseology have become a channel through which political institutions in the EU such as the European Commission sideline crucial environmental issues and endorse their own presence. The Green Deal discourse shapes political and institutional power of the Commission and the EU.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088541222199228
Author(s):  
Eva Purkarthofer ◽  
Kaisa Granqvist

This article analyses the academic concept of “soft spaces” from the perspective of traveling planning ideas. The concept has its origin in the United Kingdom but has also been used in other contexts. Within European Union policy-making, the term soft planning has emerged to describe the processes of cooperation and learning with an unclear relation to planning. In the Nordic countries, soft spaces are viewed as entangled with the logics of statutory planning, posing challenges for policy delivery and regulatory planning systems. This article highlights the conceptual evolution of soft spaces, specifically acknowledging contextual influences and the changing relation with statutory planning.


Author(s):  
Simon Bulmer ◽  
Owen Parker ◽  
Ian Bache ◽  
Stephen George ◽  
Charlotte Burns

This chapter examines the European Commission’s functions and structure, along with its role in policy making. The Commission initiates legislation, may act as a mediator, manages some policy areas, is guardian of the Treaties, is a key actor in international relations, and the ‘conscience of the European Union’. The chapter proceeds by discussing the debate on the extent to which the Commission is an autonomous political actor or simply an agent of the member states. Finally, it analyses the increasing challenges faced by the Commission in securing effective implementation of EU policies and its response to concerns over its financial management of EU programmes.


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