scholarly journals The Nordic Council of Ministers: Aspirations for More Political Relevance

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 11-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Etzold
Keyword(s):  
Majority Voting ◽  
Opting Out ◽  
Nordic Council ◽  
System A ◽  
Differentiated Integration ◽  
Eu Policies ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Council Of Ministers ◽  
Nordic Cooperation ◽  
Incremental Process

Due to changing circumstances and new challenges, the Nordic Council of Ministers underwent an incremental process of change and some modest transformation since the 1990s. However, there has never been a major overhaul of structures and contents owing to considerable inertia. The most recent modernisation process, aiming at more political relevance and flexibility, has been ambitious but whether it has been a success remains unclear thus far. Weaknesses and limits in cooperation in the Nordic Council of Ministers are obvious, i.e., no majority voting or ‘opting-out’ system, a lack in supra-national structures and policies and no common immigration, foreign, security and EU policies. Nonetheless, the organisation has at least some relevance and meaning for the Nordic countries and the potential to promote and facilitate cooperation in policy areas in which common interests exist, such as environment, climate, research and social affairs. Therefore, rather than constituting a common political order of its own, Nordic cooperation, as it is conducted within the Nordic Council of Ministers, is best characterized by differentiated integration, promoting full integration only to a limited extent but respecting integration to different extents and speeds by fostering cooperation and coordination of certain policies where possible and desired.

scholarly journals Going Nordic in European Administrative Networks?

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 65-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reini Schrama ◽  
Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen ◽  
Ellen Mastenbroek
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Internal Market ◽  
European Economic Area ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Differentiated Integration ◽  
Eu Policies ◽  
Nordic Cooperation ◽  
The Eu

The integration and policymaking of the European Union (EU) are claimed to challenge Nordic cooperation as a separate ‘common order.’ Increasing interdependencies in the EU have forced all EU member states to collaborate and share sovereignty in an increasing number of policy areas. This article studies the coexistence of Nordic cooperation and European integration by taking a network approach. It analyses the extent to which Nordic members of European Administrative Networks ‘go Nordic’ to solve problems or exchange advice, information and best practices. Based on unique survey data on interactions related to the implementation of EU policies in Social Policy, Health and the Internal Market by national governmental organisations across the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA), we use social network analysis to test for distinguishable patterns of Nordic cooperation. We find evidence to suggest that Nordic cooperation in the EU and EEA is best characterised by differentiated integration. The Nordic states tend to form a separate community for problem-solving and exchanging best practices, advice and information in Health and Social policy networks, but less so in SOLVIT, a network related to the Internal Market.

Hedley Bull, states systems and international societies

1987 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Watson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
The Other ◽  
Common Values ◽  
System A ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
Regular Contact

Hedley Bull's contribution to the theory of international relations is considerable; and nowhere more acute than in the distinction which he made between the concept of a system of states and that of an international society. His definitive formulation is set out in Chapter I of The Anarchical Society. ‘Where states are in regular contact with one another, and where in addition there is interaction between them sufficient to make the behaviour of each a necessary element in the calculations of the other, then we may speak of their forming a system.’ ‘A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.’

TG2 Innovative and Resilient Regions : Roadshow report

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jukka Teräs ◽  
Alex Cuadrado ◽  
Mari Wøien Meijer ◽  
Alberto Giacometti
Keyword(s):  
Regional Development ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Nordic Council ◽  
Council Of Ministers

This document reports on the Nordic TG2 Roadshow, which was commissioned by the Nordic Thematic Group for Innovative and Resilient Regions. The Nordic Thematic Group for Innovative and Resilient Regions 2017–2020 (TG2) was established by the Nordic Council of Ministers as a part of the Nordic Co-operation Programme for Regional Development and Planning 2017–2020. The TG2 group was organised under the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Committee of Civil Servants for Regional Affairs, and Nordregio has acted as Secretariat for the thematic groups.

Aktuelle Entwicklungen in der EU-Sozialpolitik: effizientere Entscheidungsfindung durch Mehrheitsentscheidungen und differenzierte Integration?

IG ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
Miriam Hartlapp
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Member State ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Qualified Majority ◽  
Differentiated Integration ◽  
Aktuelle Entwicklungen ◽  
Organizational Heterogeneity

Design and adoption of common social policy is conditional. Limited competencies, institutional and organizational heterogeneity among member states, and ideological-programmatic majorities in the institutions of the European Union (EU) have led to far fewer new legal instruments in recent decades. One of the key challenges is the unanimity requirement in the Council, enshrined in the Treaties in areas of great member state sovereignty. In 2019 the Commission proposed to allow a transition to qualified majority voting. This paper discusses what the transition entails in legal and procedural terms and highlights three key advantages it holds. To this aim it provides an overview of the policy areas and instruments that the Commission would like to transfer to qualified majority voting. It outlines how the potential that majority voting offers for EU social policy could be exploited better with more ambitious initiatives and discusses differentiated integration as an alternative.

Paving the Way to an Effective and Efficient Retrieval of Data over Semantic Overlay Networks

2010 ◽  
pp. 151-175
Author(s):  
Federica Mandreoli ◽  
Riccardo Martoglia ◽  
Wilma Penzo ◽  
Simona Sassatelli ◽  
Giorgio Villani
Keyword(s):  
Query Processing ◽  
Overlay Networks ◽  
Local Data ◽  
System A ◽  
Processing Strategies ◽  
Efficient Retrieval ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Routing Mechanism ◽  
Indexing Mechanism ◽  
P2p System

In a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) system, a Semantic Overlay Network (SON) models a network of peers whose connections are influenced by the peers’ content, so that semantically related peers connect with each other. This is very common in P2P communities, where peers share common interests, and a peer can belong to more than one SON, depending on its own interests. Querying such a kind of systems is not an easy task: The retrieval of relevant data can not rely on flooding approaches which forward a query to the overall network. A way of selecting which peers are more likely to provide relevant answers is necessary to support more efficient and effective query processing strategies. This chapter presents a semantic infrastructure for routing queries effectively in a network of SONs. Peers are semantically rich, in that peers’ content is modelled with a schema on their local data, and peers are related each other through semantic mappings defined between their own schemas. A query is routed through the network by means of a sequence of reformulations, according to the semantic mappings encountered in the routing path. As reformulations may lead to semantic approximations, we define a fully distributed indexing mechanism which summarizes the semantics underlying whole subnetworks, in order to be able to locate the semantically best directions to forward a query to. In support of our proposal, we demonstrate through a rich set of experiments that our routing mechanism overtakes algorithms which are usually limited to the only knowledge of the peers directly connected to the querying peer, and that our approach is particularly successful in a SONs scenario.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Committee of the Regions (CoR)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Panke
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
European Union ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Economic ◽  
Eu Policies ◽  
Eu Directives ◽  
Council Of Ministers ◽  
Committee Of The Regions

In the European Union (EU), there are two consultative committees, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Committee of the Regions (CoR). Both, the EESC and the CoR are involved in EU decision-making but lack formal competencies to influence European secondary law directly. Instead of having votes or veto rights concerning EU directives or regulations, the two consultative committees provide recommendations to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. In addition to providing advice to the two EU legislative chambers, the two consultative committees can also approach the European Commission and give input into the drafting of EU policies at the very early stage.

Differentiated Integration and European Union Politics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Schimmelfennig
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Institutional Practice ◽  
European Democracy ◽  
Differentiated Integration ◽  
International Diversity ◽  
Eu Policies ◽  
Relationship Of

Differentiated integration has become a core feature of the European Union. Whereas in uniform integration, all member states (and only member states) equally participate in all integrated policies, in differentiated integration, member and non-member states participate in EU policies selectively. At its core, differentiated integration is formally codified in EU treaties and legislation. The study of differentiated integration has long remained limited to policy-oriented conceptual debate. “Multi-speed integration,” “core Europe,” and “Europe à la carte” are prominent labels that have resulted from this debate. Theoretical and systematic empirical analysis of differentiated integration is a more recent phenomenon. Demand for differentiated integration is theorized to be rooted in international diversity of country size, wealth, and national identity, which result in heterogeneity of integration preferences, interdependence, and state capacities. In addition, agreement on differentiated integration depends on the size and bargaining power of the insider and outsider groups, the externalities that differentiation produces, and the institutional context in which negotiations take place. Finally, differentiated integration is subject to centrifugal and centripetal dynamics of path dependence and institutional practice. Evaluations of differentiated integration vary between negative assessments based on the principles of legal unity, European democracy, and solidarity and positive assessments based on demoi-cratic standards and the facilitation of integration. More research is needed on the relationship of differentiated integration with other forms of flexibility in the EU, citizen attitudes, and party positions on differentiated integration and the effects of differentiation.

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