15. Justice and Home Affairs

This chapter examines the European Union’s justice and home affairs (JHA), which have evolved from a peripheral aspect into a focal point of European integration and today are at the centre of politicization in the EU. It first considers the institutionalization of JHA cooperation and its gradual move towards more supranational competences before discussing political contestation as expressed in the context of Brexit and the crisis of the common asylum and Schengen systems. The development of cooperation is retraced, looking at the main actors in the JHA, the organization and capacities of EU institutions, the continuity of intergovernmentalism, the proliferation of semi-autonomous agencies and databases, and the flow of policy, taking into account asylum policy and immigration policy, police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, and the challenge of implementation. The chapter shows how the gradual move of cooperation among national agencies concerned with combating crime; fighting terrorism; and managing borders, immigration, and asylum from loose intergovernmental cooperation to more supranational governance within the EU has remained contested, and argues that this contestation exemplifies the limits of political unification.

16. Trade Policy

This chapter introduces the importance of EU trade policy both to the European integration project and to the EU’s role in the world. It explains how different aspects of trade policy are made. The chapter also charts how the emphasis of EU trade policy has shifted from prioritizing multilateral negotiations to pursuing bilateral agreements. It considers how the EU has responded to the apparent politicization of trade policy within Europe and to the United States’ more protectionist and unilateral trade policy. It also considers Brexit EU trade policy and how trade policy complicated Brexit. It argues that there has been considerable continuity in EU trade policy despite these challenges.

1. An Overview

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.

19. Enlargement

This chapter examines the main phases of the European Union’s enlargement policy process—association, pre-accession, and accession—and the key decisions involved in each of these stages. It discusses how these decisions are made, and how policy practice has evolved over time. The chapter then explores enlargement as a tool of foreign policy and external governance. It discusses the development of the EU’s accession conditionality as an instrument to influence domestic change in candidate countries and why conditionality appears to have become less effective after the 2007 enlargement round, including the impact of the EU’s ‘enlargement fatigue’ and manifestations of ‘democratic backsliding’ among new member states.

13. Environmental Policy

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.

2. Theorizing EU Policy-Making

This chapter surveys seven decades of theorizing about European Union policy-making and policy processes. It begins with a discussion of theories of European integration, including neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism, liberal intergovernmentalism, institutionalism, constructivism, and postfunctionalism. It then considers the increasing number of studies that approach the EU through the lenses of comparative politics and comparative public policy, focusing on the federal or quasi-federal aspects of the EU and its legislative, executive, and judicial politics. It finally explores the vertical and horizontal separation of powers in the EU and concludes by looking at the ‘governance approach’ to the EU, with emphasis on multi-level governance and EU policy networks, Europeanization, and the question of the EU’s democratic deficit.

18. International Development

The European Union (EU) is widely recognized to be a major actor in international development cooperation. First, this chapter discusses key issues and debates in EU development policy. These relate to the importance of the EU in this field, the different objectives that it pursues, the aid budgets at its disposal, and the legal competences vis-à-vis the member states. Secondly, the uniqueness of this policy domain, compared to other EU policies in this volume, is addressed. Specifically, it highlights three distinctive features: the availability of budgetary power outside the EU, the long historical legacy dating back to member states’ colonial past, and the key role of trade as the preferred tool for development. Thirdly, the chapter elaborates two main policy-making domains: the EU as a donor itself and as a coordinator of member states’ policies. Overall, the EU follows the regulatory and distributional modes in its role as a donor, and when it seeks to coordinate member-state policy, the policy coordination mode is to the fore. Moreover, intensive transgovernmentalist features appear in both domains. The conclusion summarizes the main trends and future challenges including the implications of Brexit, the rise of China, and the increasing politicization of aid.

12. Digital Policy-Making in the European Union

Digital technologies are transforming European societies, politics, and markets. Since the 1970s, the European Union has attempted to navigate these pressures through a package of digital policy-making. These efforts have targeted the dual missions of pan-European market-making, as well as market correction. Relying on a host of governance modes including the regulatory method, policy coordination, incorporated transgovernmental networks, and private governance, the European Union has tried to steer the new information society so as to both spur market growth and protect citizens against abuse. The ultimate success of these efforts has been encumbered by the overall complexity of the sector, where policy efforts quickly bleed over into other issue areas, such as competition policy and justice and home affairs, and have international consequences. Digital policy-making in Europe faces considerable challenges ahead, as EU institutions grapple with the rise of platform companies, disinformation campaigns, and transatlantic disputes over data privacy and the market power of US-based technology companies.

4. An Institutional Anatomy and Five Policy Modes

This chapter examines the European Union’s institutional design and how its institutions interact with national institutions in five different policy modes. The chapter first considers the evolving role and internal functioning of the European Commission, Council of the EU, European Council, European Parliament, and Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It also discusses quasi-autonomous agencies, in particular the European Central Bank (ECB), institutionalized control and scrutiny, and non-state actors. The chapter then offers an analysis of five policy modes that capture the different patterns of interaction between the EU and its member states: the classical Community method, the regulatory mode, the distributional mode, policy coordination, and intensive transgovernmentalism.

5. The Single Market

This chapter examines the renewal of the single European market (SEM) as a major turning point in European policy-making. It presents the argument that many of the analyses that proliferated in response to the Single European Act (SEA) and the SEM overstated their novelty and understated some of the surrounding factors that helped to induce their ‘success’. The chapter first provides a historical background on how the single market was established before discussing the politics of policy-making in the SEM. It explains how new ideas about market regulation permeated the European Union policy process and facilitated legislative activism and important changes in the policy-implementing processes, culminating in the ‘1992 programme’ to make the single market a reality. Although the task of ‘completing’ the single market remains unfinished, the chapter shows that it has moved to the heart of European integration and altered the pattern of state–market relations in Europe. As a consequence, the single market has played a central role in the Brexit process. The Brexit process has also revealed how far the single market has developed.