15. European parties:

The party system of the European Parliament (EP) has been dominated by the two main European party families: centre-right conservatives and Christian democrats, on the one hand, and centre-left social democrats on the other, which controlled the majority of the seats until the 2019 elections. In the early 1950s, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) decided to form party-political groups, instead of national blocs, to counterbalance the dominance of national interests in the Council. Over the decades, the shape of the EP party system has become more stable, and traditional levels of group cohesion and coalition formation have not really been affected by the rise of populism and the increasing politicization of European integration. National parties remain influential within party groups, not least through their control of candidate selection. Outside of the Parliament, Europarties—parties operating at the European level—influence both the broader development of integration and the choice of the Commission president.

Coping With Turbulence: EU Negotiations on the 2030 and 2050 Climate Targets

This article analyses European Union (EU) negotiations on the European Climate Law and the 2030 Climate Target Plan in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Adopting Ansell and Trondal’s (2018) conceptualisation of turbulence, it argues that the pandemic intensified the environmental turbulence within which European policy makers had been operating following Brexit, the rule of law dispute with Poland and Hungary, and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Organisational turbulence within EU institutions also affected the negotiations, particularly due to the reliance of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the political support of East-Central European governments that are sceptical of ambitious climate action. Moreover, the Commission, the European Council and the Parliament have taken different positions on the 2030 climate target and on the governance to pursue subsequent targets. Turbulence of scale—reflecting the nature of the EU as a multi-level actor—became relevant too, as the EU found it difficult to agree on its 2030 climate target due to disputes between member states and European institutions. European decision makers responded to turbulence through major policy initiatives, such as the EU Recovery Plan, the Green Deal agenda, and making funds conditional to the respect of the rule of law. They also pursued intra-EU compromises that accommodated different positions—for instance, on the Climate Law. Nonetheless, turbulence continues to pose a formidable challenge to the progress of the EU’s climate agenda.

The abandonment of the Spitzenkandidaten System: (Un)sustainable democracy in the EU?

In the process of the parliamentarisation of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon took a further step forward by introducing into the founding treaties - Article 17.7 TEU- the need to take into account the elections to the European Parliament for the appointment of the President of the Commission. Nevertheless, the European Parliament has been trying to impose its interpretation of Article 17.7 TEU, which has been coined into the Spitzenkandidaten doctrine, according to which the head of the party winning the elections should be elected as Commission President. The Parliament succeeded in imposing its vision with the occasion of the appointment of Juncker in 2014. Nevertheless, by not proposing Manfred Weber, the leader of the most voted party in the 2019 elections, as President, the European Council has prevented the consolidation of the 2014 precedent. Article 17.7 of the TEU also expresses the desire to bring the European elections closer to the citizens, so that their opinion is taken into account when the President of the Commission is elected. And it seems that both the results of participation in 2019 and the perception of the voters show that the Spitzenkandidaten system has been useful for that purpose. In any event, I consider that the fact that citizens voted in the 2019 elections in the belief that their votes would be decisive in appointing the President of the Commission and, in the end, it was not elected an Spitzenkandidaten as head of the Commission, is a very serious lack of consideration for citizens. Received: 03 February 2021Accepted: 25 March 2021

The EU's vaccine troubles may only be temporary

Significance Indeed, by bargaining hard with vaccine providers and opting for a more deliberate approval process, EU countries are considerably behind the United Kingdom and United States in inoculating its citizens. This has fuelled criticism of the European Commission across member states. Impacts The obscure contracts reached with pharmaceutical companies will renew debates about accountability in the EU. Pressure could grow on Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to resign, but France and Germany will strain themselves to avoid this. Russia and China could use the EU's slow vaccine roll-out to promote the vaccines in certain EU countries.

Return to Belgium

In 1977, Robert Triffin decided to return to Belgium. He put forward two reasons: the invitation for a visiting professorship at the University of Louvain and, “most of all,” the opportunity to be involved, as an adviser at the European Commission, in the process of European monetary union. Triffin’s return to Belgium coincided closely with the advent of Roy Jenkins as European Commission president, who consulted Triffin regarding his monetary integration plans. Triffin was enthusiastic about the European Monetary System (EMS), which was established in 1979. With the support of the European Commission, especially Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, he organized four international conferences on different aspects of its functioning. During the 1980s, Triffin promoted the development of the private European Currency Unit (ECU) market, especially the establishment of an ECU clearing system.

„One too much“: Europa braucht einen (nicht zwei) Präsidenten – ein Plädoyer für mehr Effizienz, geopolitische Glaubwürdigkeit und demokratische Legitimation an der Spitze der Europäischen Union

The executive of the European Union (EU) is currently led by two Presidents: the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council. This double Presidency is the result of a compromise between the supranational and the intergovernmental schools of thoughts at the European Convention 2002/2003. However, in practice, the interplay of the two Presidents and their competencies, which are not always clearly separated by the provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon, occasionally leads to inefficiencies or even conflict in the external representation of the EU. This is why former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker proposed, on 13 September 2017, to merge the functions of the two Presidents by always electing the President of the Commission as President of the European Council. The article explains the rationale of the Juncker proposal, which has the potential to make the EU easier to understand for its citizens and more efficient geopolitically, while overcoming the artificial distinction between national and European interests in the leadership of the Union. The current debate about the future of the EU and its more effective positioning in global affairs appears to be a good moment to look again at the Juncker proposal, which could be implemented without the need to change the Treaties.

Framing the European Fund for Strategic Investments: A Comparative Analysis of the EU's Institutional Discourse

In 2014, newly elected Commission President Juncker pushed to create the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the aim of creating jobs and stimulating growth. With guarantees offered by the fund and the involvement of the European Investment Bank, the plan was to use €21 billion to leverage €315 billion of investment in the European economy. The EFSI legislative process was very fast with legislation emerging in just a year, with the first EFSI regulation appearing in mid-2015. Using policy frame analysis, this article zooms in on the discursive patterns of the European Commission, European Parliament and Council, expecting to find transport infrastructure a key theme given the low investment levels in this sector after the financial crisis in 2008. Analysing key documents at two periods in time, and drawing on interviews with officials, it explores the arguments used to make the case for EFSI and how these changes over time, leading to the extension of EFSI through an amended regulation in December 2017. In so doing, it shows the strategic positions of the institutions during Agenda-setting for EFSI. Moreover, he article explores questions of legitimacy and accountability. It reveals how key events including the Paris Agreement on climate change (December 2015) and Brexit referendum (June 2016) increased the persuasiveness of its framing.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter takes stock of the book’s main findings and draws out their implications for the EU’s way forward, especially with regard to the Conference on the Future of Europe. The Conference, one of the main pledges of Ursula von der Leyen’s candidacy for Commission President in 2019, is to develop EU reform proposals by 2022. Based on the theory of constituent power developed in this book, the chapter assesses the debate about the design of the Conference. It argues that the blueprints of European Parliament and Commission, as well as demands put forward in civil society, lack a systematic understanding of the EU’s foundations of legitimacy and neglect the need for a supranational separation of constituent and constituted powers. What is missing is a clear conception of the relation between those who authorize and those who are authorized to engage in EU constitutional politics. The chapter concludes by advancing the argument that the Conference could serve as a catalyst for a reform of the EU’s rules of treaty change, with the goal of enabling citizens to exercise higher-level constituent power.

Decarbonizing Transport in the European Union: Emission Performance Standards and the Perspectives for a European Green Deal

The transport sector is a major driver of climate change both globally and in the European Union (EU). While the EU as a whole is showing declining carbon emissions, transport-related emissions are higher than in 1990. Car traffic is responsible for around 12 percent of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen underlined the efforts to strengthen the decarbonization of the EU at the end of 2019 by publishing the European Green Deal (EGD) communication. In this paper, we analyze the controversy surrounding the emission performance standards for cars adopted in spring 2019. Car manufacturers must reduce the average carbon emissions of their fleets by 37.5% between 2021 and 2030. In this respect, the new emission performance standards are more ambitious than the previous ones. However, our argument is that without a major shift in the balance of power, extensive decarbonization and a departure from car-centered transport development will not be possible. Therefore, it is crucial for mobility research to critically engage with lobbying power in the EU and with concepts such as environmental leadership, which often underexpose the structural power of incumbent actors and existing path dependencies.

9. Maastricht and Amsterdam (the Late 1980s to the Late 1990s)

This chapter examines two important developments in the history of the European Union (EU): the signing of the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties. In June 1989, the European Council agreed to European Commission President Jacques Delors’s three-stage plan for monetary union by 1999, despite British opposition. In 1991, intergovernmental conferences (IGCs) were held on both monetary union and political union. The proposals of these IGCs were incorporated into the Treaty on European Union (TEU), agreed at Maastricht in December 1991. The TEU marked a major step on the road to European integration. It committed most of the member states to adopting a single currency and introduced the concept of European citizenship, among others. This chapter considers the events leading up to the signing of the TEU, from the Maastricht negotiations to the issue of enlargement, the 1996 IGC, and the Treaty of Amsterdam.