18. Policies and Policy Making in the European Union

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

This chapter examines policies and the patterns of policy making in the European Union. The formal EU policy process begins with the European Commission (EC) drawing up proposals for legislation, at which stage it will consult widely with interest groups, technical experts, and national government officials. It will also consult members of the European Parliament (EP). The open method of co-ordination (OMC) has been introduced into what was the EC pillar, giving the member states stronger control and excluding the EP and the European Court of Justice. The chapter first considers how the European policy agenda is formed before discussing the EU policy process. It then explores minor policy areas such as the Common Fisheries Policy, fraud, and the information society, and major policy areas such as competition, employment and social policy, energy, research, and transport.

Policy-Making in the European Union explores the link between the modes and mechanisms of EU policy-making and its implementation at the national level. From defining the processes, institutions and modes through which policy-making operates, the text moves on to situate individual policies within these modes, detail their content, and analyse how they are implemented, navigating policy in all its complexities. The first part of the text examines processes, institutions, and the theoretical and analytical underpinnings of policy-making, while the second part considers a wide range of policy areas, from economics to the environment, and security to the single market. Throughout the text, theoretical approaches sit side by side with the reality of key events in the EU, including enlargement, the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, and the financial crisis and resulting Eurozone crisis, focusing on what determines how policies are made and implemented. This includes major developments such as the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, the reform of the common agricultural policy, and new initiatives to promote EU energy security. In the final part, the chapters consider trends in EU policy-making and the challenges facing the EU.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-456
Author(s):  
Alan Hardacre

The interaction between organised interests and the European Union institutions has been subject to increasing study and analysis in recent years, and the relevance of this increasingly important research agenda has been highlighted by political scandals and developments in 2011.


Policy-Making in the European Union explores the link between the modes and mechanisms of EU policy-making and its implementation at the national level. From defining the processes, institutions and modes through which policy-making operates, the text moves on to situate individual policies within these modes, detail their content, and analyse how they are implemented, navigating policy in all its complexities. The first part of the text examines processes, institutions, and the theoretical and analytical underpinnings of policy-making, while the second part considers a wide range of policy areas, from economics to the environment, and security to the single market. Throughout the text, theoretical approaches sit side by side with the reality of key events in the EU, including enlargement, the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, and the financial crisis and resulting Eurozone crisis, focusing on what determines how policies are made and implemented. This includes major developments such as the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, the reform of the common agricultural policy, and new initiatives to promote EU energy security. In the final part, the chapters consider trends in EU policy-making and the challenges facing the EU.


2020 ◽  
pp. 095207672093632
Author(s):  
John Connolly ◽  
Arno van der Zwet ◽  
Christopher Huggins ◽  
Craig McAngus

Brexit leads to uncertainties about how policies will be ‘rescaled’ from the European Union back to the United Kingdom and its devolved governments. Interviews with key Scottish Government officials show how the UK’s withdrawal from the Common Fisheries Policy presents mixed challenges for the Scottish policy system to absorb policy change at analytical, administrative, political, and communicative levels. Our analysis finds that absorbable areas concern fisheries management, operations, and analysis. Yet there are capacity areas that will require greater investment at political, communicative, and relational levels. This article makes an important contribution to research on the multi-level governance capacities for accommodating Brexit in UK policy-making. In doing so, our contribution applies the governance capacities literature to a new field of scholarship in relation to Brexit studies.


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

This chapter examines policies and the patterns of policy making in the European Union (EU). First it surveys the range of EU policy responsibilities, and identifies ways in which policy dynamics differ between them, the most striking difference in policy making relating to the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and its defence affiliate, the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). It then explores the different stages in the EU policy cycle: the passage of policy issues from agenda-setting stage through policy formulation and decision making to the implementation stage and feedback loops. In a final section, it identifies some important policy areas that are worth being aware of but where space precludes chapter-length treatment.


Author(s):  
Mark A. Pollack ◽  
Christilla Roederer-Rynning ◽  
Alasdair R. Young

The European Union represents a remarkable, ongoing experiment in the collective governance of a multinational continent of nearly 450 million citizens and 27 member states. The key aim of this volume is to understand the processes that produce EU policies: that is, the decisions (or non-decisions) by EU public authorities facing choices between alternative courses of public action. We do not advance any single theory of EU policy-making, although we do draw extensively on theories of European integration, international cooperation, comparative politics, and contemporary governance; and we identify five ‘policy modes’ operating across the 15 case study chapters in the volume. This chapter introduces the volume by summarizing our collective approach to understanding policy-making in the EU, identifying the significant developments that have impacted EU policy-making since the seventh edition of this volume, and previewing the case studies and their central findings.


Author(s):  
Andrea Lenschow

This chapter focuses on the European Union’s environmental policy, the development of which was characterized by institutional deepening and the substantial expansion of environmental issues covered by EU decisions and regulations. Environmental policy presents a host of challenges for policy-makers, including the choice of appropriate instruments, improvement of implementation performance, and better policy coordination at all levels of policy-making. The chapter points to the continuing adaptations that have been made in these areas. It first considers the historical evolution of environmental policy in the EU before discussing the main actors in EU environmental policy-making, namely: the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and environmental interest groups. The chapter also looks at the EU as an international actor.


Author(s):  
John Peterson ◽  
Alberta Sbragia

This chapter examines some of the most important areas of policy-making in the European Union. It first explains how EU policy-making differs from national policy-making before discussing the most important policies aimed at building the internal market and limiting its potentially negative impact on individuals, society, and the environment. The EU’s ‘market-building’ policies include competition policy, trade policy, and the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), while ‘market-correcting’ and ‘cushioning’ policies include the common agricultural policy, the cohesion policy, and environmental and social regulation. The chapter shows how these policies are made and also why and how they matter. It also compares policy types in the EU.


Author(s):  
Ralf Drachenberg ◽  
Alex Brianson

This chapter examines the process of policy-making in the European Union. It first considers how the EU originally made policy decisions before tracing the evolution of the formal balance between the EU institutions over time, with particular emphasis on the increasing legislative power of the European Parliament. It then describes the Community method, which remains the core of the EU policy process but is now complemented with a range of ‘new governance tools’ designed to produce coordinated member state action through iterated processes of standard-setting, best practice identification, and knowledge transfer. One of these processes is the open method of coordination (OMC). The chapter concludes with an analysis of the implementation of EU policy decisions by and in the member states, along with current trends in EU decision-making after the EU enlargements of the 2000s and the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.


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