Legal Guidelines for Cooperation between the EU and American State Governments

Author(s):  
Daniel Farber
2021 ◽  
pp. 112-133
Author(s):  
Alasdair R. Young

This chapter presents the EU’s responses with respect to three closely related policies: the approval of genetically modified (GM) crops for sale and (separately) for cultivation and efforts to lift member state bans on EU-approved GM varieties. These most similar cases differ in outcome; with the EU resuming approvals for sale (a change sufficient to placate Argentina and Canada, but not the United States), but not for cultivation and failing to address member state bans despite very permissive decision rules. In these cases, no tariffs were threatened and there was no exporter mobilization. Commission trade officials did push to accelerate approvals. The Commission, which was more favorably disposed toward biotechnology than most of the member states, was able, with the help of very a permissive decision rule, to overcome opposition to approvals for sale, but not for cultivation, reflecting greater concern among regulators about the environmental impacts of GM cultivation than about the safety of GM varieties. The member state governments also balked at forcing their peers to change their policies. There is little evidence that the WTO’s adverse ruling affected any of the protagonists’ preferences.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Max M. Edling

In recent years a new Unionist interpretation of the American founding has presented the US Constitution as a compact of union between sovereign states, which allowed them to maintain interstate peace and to act in unison as a single nation vis-à-vis other nations in the international state-system. Such an understanding of the American founding argues that the Constitution created a bisected American state divided into a federal government in charge of international and intraunion affairs and state governments in charge of promoting socioeconomic development and maintaining civic rights. The introduction provides an overview of different interpretations of the founding and of the structure of the book.


Author(s):  
Christian Freudlsperger

The third chapter of Trade Policy in Multilevel Government introduces the field of procurement as a hard case of trade liberalization. Contracting in line with the principle of ‘best value for money’ curtails public actors’ ability to rely on procurement as a directed means of redistribution. Nevertheless, this principle has served as the rallying cry of an international regime of procurement liberalization that has gradually evolved since the 1970s and whose historical development is described here. In a second step, the chapter elaborates on the patterns of openness and resistance to procurement liberalization among the three multilevel polities chosen for analysis. Over the entire period of observation, the US states’ openness has been comparatively low. Intermittently, their resistance had decreased in the run-up to the 1994 GPA. In recent years, however, the number of states willing to be bound by international procurement disciplines plummeted to virtually zero. As for the Canadian provinces and territories, the picture shifted in recent years. Especially in the negotiations on CETA, they permitted the EU wholesale access to their procurement markets. Within a short period, the Canadian provinces’ position on international procurement liberalization thus witnessed a veritable sea change. Finally, in the EU case, openness on part of member state governments has consistently proved highest among the three cases. Already within the scope of the 1979 GATT Code, all EC members’ central procurement was covered, albeit modestly. In the 1994 GPA and its 2012 revision, the EU covered its procurement on the national, regional, and municipal level.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Bilge Firat

At a time when European integration faces many crises, the efficacy of public policies decided in Brussels, and in member state capitals, for managing the everyday lives of average Europeans demands scrutiny. Most attuned to how global uncertainties interact with local realities, anthropologists and ethnographers have paid scant attention to public policies that are created by the EU, by member state governments and by local authorities, and to the collective, organised, and individual responses they elicit in this part of the world. Our critical faculties and means to test out established relations between global–local, centre–periphery, macro–micro are crucial to see how far the EU's normative power and European integration as a governance model permeates peoples' and states' lives in Europe, broadly defined. Identifying the strengths and shortcomings in the literature, this review essay scrutinises anthropological scholarship on culture, power and policy in a post-Foucaultian Europe.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Williams

Do public attitudes concerning the European Union affect the speed with which member states transpose European directives? It is posited in this article that member state governments do respond to public attitudes regarding the EU when transposing European directives. Specifically, it is hypothesized that member state governments slow transposition of directives when aggregate public Euroskepticism is greater. This expectation is tested using extended Cox proportional hazard modeling and data derived from the EU’s legislative archives, the official journals of EU member states, and the Eurobarometer survey series. It is found that member state governments do slow transposition in response to higher aggregate public Euroskepticism. These findings have important implications for the study of European policy implementation, as well as for our understanding of political responsiveness in the EU.


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