scholarly journals The EU Institutional Architecture in the Covid‐19 Response: Coordinative Europeanization in Times of Permanent Emergency

Author(s):  
Stella Ladi ◽  
Sarah Wolff
2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matjaz Nahtigal

The ongoing European crisis has revealed many deficiencies in the existing European institutional architecture. One of the crucial deficiencies is the unsustainable European regional disparity between the most developed European regions and those regions that are falling behind—a gap that is growing. This pattern of development creates an unsustainable pattern for the future development of the EU. The gap between the advanced segments of society with access to up-to-date knowledge, skills, technology, capital, and other resources and the excluded segments of society is also growing within the advanced European regions. Such observations indicate the need for far stronger anti-dualist economic, social, and legal policy at all levels of European polity. The EU’s response to the crisis has been inadequate as it has ignored the diversity of needs as well as opportunities for local and regional populations across the EU. Instead of focusing the economic, social, and legal reconstruction on a “one size fits all” model imposed from the top, the EU should spur local and regional innovations, initiatives, and development dynamics from below. Thus, in the EU, we need more policy space as well as more opportunities for economic, legal, social, and political innovations at the local, regional, and national levels. We need to create an EU that supports—not suppresses—diversity, sustainability, plurality, and the co-existence of institutional models. The idea of subsidiarity, diversity, and initiatives from below should be revived in order to create a more sustainable future for the EU.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Giovannini ◽  
Laura Polverari ◽  
Antonella Seddone

The European Union (EU) is facing a profound political crisis of leadership, legitimacy, and purpose. This article provides an analysis of these key dimensions of crisis. It does so by examining the way in which they intersect and their impact on the EU’s institutional architecture, on the politicization of the European public sphere, on the wider dynamics of representation that underpin these processes, and on the political systems and polities of the member states. Drawing on such analysis, we assess the 2014 European Parliament election with reference to the findings of the six articles included in this collection. We conclude with a critical reflection on the competing and often piecemeal ‘visions of Europe’ that emerge from the studies in this volume and the challenges they pose to the EU project.


Author(s):  
Monika Mayrhofer

The EU is neither a state nor a ‘normal’ international organisation, but has a unique institutional structure that is sometimes also referred to as a ‘sui generis’ institutional framework. The institutions of the EU have a pivotal role concerning EU human rights policies. This chapter will provide an analysis of how human rights competences are distributed among EU institutions. It will discuss the institutional architecture of human rights in the EU by analysing the European Council, the Council of the European Union and its human rights-related Working Parties, the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European External Action Service and the Special Representative on Human Rights, the Fundamental Rights Agency, and the European Ombudsman. The analysis will be followed by a summary of opportunities and challenges, a presentation of areas for improvements and recommendations, and a brief conclusion.


2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Piattoni

The article starts from a critique of the widespread assumption that intergovernmentalism is not only the more practical but also the more democratic way of handling the current European crises – and particularly the euro crisis – to argue for the need to rethink the working and the definition of democracy in the current heightened interconnectedness of political organization. It suggests that perceiving European citizens as being separated into distinct state communities stands in the way of a full appreciation of the externalities, hence of the reciprocal responsibilities, that they owe each other and turns apparently democratic decisions into potential acts of domination, as theorized by both Pettit (1997) and Bohman (2006). It suggests that we should embrace a more encompassing and dialogical notion of democracy which translates Pallasmaa’s (2012) notion of hapticity from the field of physical architecture to that of institutional architecture. It concludes by suggesting that there are already institutional architectures in the EU which lend themselves to a haptic declension, for example the European Semester.


Author(s):  
Ilze Ruse

There is a strong correlation between the EU’s institutional architecture and policy output. The more complex the institutional set-up, the more challenges it poses for achieving an ambitious and coherent policy output. This is particularly at stake in the situation when the EU has to handle numerous crises and respond to international security challenges. The Lisbon Treaty has introduced a new institutional architecture by adding complexity with multiple actors in the field of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The European External Action Service (EEAS) is in charge of EU foreign and security policy. At the same time, it must accommodate the interests of the EU Member States and those of the EU institutions in order to make the policy output credible and efficient. By contributing to this volume with its multidisciplinary approach, this chapter applies the Principal–Agent (P–A) theory of political science, which argues that the relationship between the Member States and the EEAS can be perceived as a delegation arrangement where the Member States (principal) sign a contract of delegation with the EEAS (agent) for fulfilling the mandate, yet deliberately leave a particular level of ‘discretion’ to the EEAS. The agent’s abuse of its empowered position may lead to ‘slippage’. To avoid this happening, the Member States could employ various control measures to keep the agent adhering to the preferences of the principal. The hypothesis is tested by drawing on the case of the EU Global Security Strategy. The chapter explores the means of control that the Member States use to maintain ownership in framing the new EU security strategy.


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

This chapter examines the pattern of European Union institutions and the formal rules that govern them. It first considers the Treaties that form the founding ‘constitutional’ documents of the EU, from the Treaty of Paris to the Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance in EMU, before turning to the main institutions involved in the processes of decision making, namely: the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament, plus two consultative committees, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. The chapter proceeds by analysing the Union method of decision making, focusing on the budgetary and legislative procedures, as well as the process on the Common Foreign and Security Policy. It also discusses the implementation of EU decisions once they have been made and concludes with some reflections on the post-Lisbon institutional architecture of the EU, including differentiated integration.


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

This chapter examines the pattern of European Union (EU) institutions and the formal rules that govern them. It first considers the Treaties that form the founding ‘constitutional’ documents of the EU, from the Treaty of Paris to the Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance in the economic and monetary union (EMU), before turning to the main institutions involved in the processes of decision making, namely: the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European Parliament, plus two consultative committees, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. The chapter proceeds by analysing the Union method of decision making, focusing on the budgetary and legislative procedures, as well as the process on the Common Foreign and Security Policy. It also discusses the implementation of EU decisions once they have been made, and concludes with some reflections on the post-Lisbon institutional architecture of the EU, including differentiated integration.


Author(s):  
Thomas Ramopoulos

The external relations of the Union span a broad spectrum, from external competences in ‘Community’ areas to external aspects of internal ‘Community’ competences and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which includes the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). There is an overarching institutional architecture governing the external relations of the Union, but at the same time, depending on whether the competence at issue falls within the CFSP or the non-CFSP policies, different institutions assume different roles. It is for this reason that, although Part III of this volume has already examined the institutional framework of the EU legal order as a whole, it is analytically necessary to revisit the institutional architecture of EU external relations in particular, before delving in the following chapters of this Part into specific issues relevant to the actions of the Union and its Member States abroad. The remainder of this introduction serves as a short overview of developments in the constitutional history of the Union that determined the current legal and political outlook of the EU external relations institutional architecture.


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