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Abstract by the author: Differentiation has become a central topic of debate in the EU. Generally, it is considered a positive device for advancing integration in crucial policies, letting the unwilling states opt out from the new regimes. However, the debate has not sufficiently acknowledged that policy differentiation has been made possible by governance differentiation. It was the 1992 Maastricht Treaty's decision to inaugurate an intergovernmental regime for core state power policies, distinct from the supranational regime regulating single market policies, that allowed differentiation to flourish. Differentiation and intergovernmentalism are thus inter-connected. During multiple crises of the last decade, intergovernmental governance has shown its undemocratic effects, thus soliciting a critical reappraisal of the differentiation logic. The federalisation of the EU appears a more promising alternative strategy for advancing integration and, at the same time, meeting the democratic expectations of the EU. This analytical exercise speaks to the Conference on the Future of Europe.
De l'introduction: La tant attendue Conférence sur l’avenir de l’Europe (CoFoE) incarne l’engagement limité, et l’imagination tout aussi limitée, pour une véritable participation en Europe. Cette initiative – qui a émergé comme étant un exercice top-down d’« écoute » basé sur des fondations méthodologiques fragiles, avec un assentiment politique limité, un plan sommaire et une durée limitée – avait prétendument pour effet de centraliser et, inévitablement, de monopoliser toutes les réformes démocratiques de l’UE à venir. Celles-ci vont d’un nouveau système électoral européen à la création d’une Union de la santé. Plus largement, ces réformes touchent à la question du rôle que les citoyens devraient jouer dans la vie démocratique de l’Union et peuvent in fine requérir la révision des traités. Cependant, peu d’entre elles pourraient être réalisées suite à la Conférence elle-même ; elles sont tout au plus suggérées au travers du processus que cette dernière dévoile.
From the introduction: The European Union (EU) is under pressure. Crises, undesirable developments, and loss of confidence are mixed up into a diffuse picture of justified criticism, unease, ignorance, and populist rejection. Paradoxically, perhaps the fact that the EU, with all of its advantages, is so naturally present in the everyday lives of citizens today implies a risk for future of European integration. What is taken for granted may suddenly dissolve, not overnight, but in a creeping process that will only be realized in a historical retrospective. ... It is in this politico-institutional cycle that the EU has to find convincing and efficient answers if it wants to restore trust and regain credibility. The Conference on the Future of Europe could be an important step in this direction. Citizen dialogues in all Member States might feed in debates and finally the results of the conference. However, if this process is to be successful, the EU will need to provide different visions and a narrative, in order to provoke a substantive debate. In this regard, the White Paper on the future of Europe presented by the Commission on 1 March 2017 could contribute food for thought for the conference.
Abstract by the authors: Public opinion on the EU has received growing attention in the last decades, with an ever‐increasing number of studies examining various aspects of it. Surprisingly, most studies focus on attitudes towards the past and present of the EU, yet we know very little about public attitudes towards the future of the EU. This study helps to fill this research gap by examining attitudes towards the EU's long‐term future using a novel approach. We developed eight concrete future EU scenarios based on an inductive analysis of qualitative survey data. Subsequently, respondents (in an independent survey) ranked their top three scenarios according to individual preferences. Using multidimensional unfolding, we show that these preferences form three clusters ordered along a more versus less EU dimension. In a second step, we used multinomial logistic regression to examine not only who supports which scenario (socio‐demographics) but also which EU attitudes lead to which future preferences. The analyses identify distinct characteristics and attitudes that drive people's preference for a given scenario. Overall, we find that factors such as occupational levels or left–right attitudes are strong determinants of preferences for the future of the EU, and that specific EU support (performance and utilitarian evaluations) is more important than diffuse EU support (identity and affect).
Abstract by the author: The Citizens' Convention on Climate (CCC) gathered 150 people, randomly selected but representing the diversity of French society. Its mandate was to formulate a series of concrete measures aimed to achieve at least a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (compared to 1990) while preserving social justice. The citizens auditioned experts on various topics from climate to economics and then formulated their own proposals, thus building an effective consensus, beyond individual specific interests. Moreover, proposals formed a coherent whole, and in this regard fare much better than previous attempts to tackle environmental and climate transition through public debates. This methodology shows how citizen science can produce efficient and quality outcomes. This opens new perspectives for democracy on the basis of new interaction channels between law‐makers, professional experts and citizens. This seems to be the approach chosen for the Conference on the Future of Europe as well. Gathering citizens from all EU countries to work on important topics for Europe and Europeans could be a way to build a common vision, and contribute to the creation of a true European common good. Citizens' direct involvement in science and democracy might be one of the keys to meaningfully and thus successfully address their shortcomings.
Taken from the Introduction: This article assesses the state of European integration in this era of crises. Having examined in the following sections the EU’s the response to the challenges it had to address over the past decade, the article considers the impact of two broader developments on the integration process: on the one hand, the rise of populism and the contestation of expertise that comes with it, and, on the other hand, the shift from a regulated system of liberal world trade to one of geo-economic rivalry between the major global powers. Both of these developments constitute grave threats to the foundations of the European integration project: liberalism, multilateralism and the rule of law. Considering in this context also the EU’s response to the global pandemic, the article concludes that the EU’s institutional structure has demonstrated a remarkable degree of resilience in the era of crises. As European nations are forced to confront far-reaching structural changes, the EU constitutes an essential element in meeting these challenges.
Abstract by the author: This paper studies the determinants of the imbalance between country and European identity. While the two sentiments are positively correlated, recent empirical evidence showed the emergence, in the last years, of an increasing imbalance in favour of the identification with individuals’ country of residence. In the political arena, this phenomenon is accompanied by the increasing support to nationalisms and Eurosceptic parties almost everywhere in the EU. It is therefore interesting to understand what are the individual and contextual factors associated to this identity imbalance. The assumption tested in this paper is that the unequal distribution (among individuals and regions) of the benefits from EU integration is the main determinant of the emerging antagonism between European and national identity. Empirical results support this hypothesis. Individuals with lower education and income, and those living in the lagging behind regions of the EU are more likely than the others to identify more with their own country than with Europe.
Abstract by the authors: The current European context is characterised by the emergence of socio-political tensions that threaten to derail the cohesion objectives traditionally promoted by the authorities of the European Union. With EU citizenship in the shadow of Brexit, the fear of dismemberment of the current Europe of the 28 looms over a renewed debate on concepts like European identity, European citizenship or EU legitimacy and the involvement of its constituents in European affairs, as well as the role of education for promoting democratic awareness among young Europeans. This work aims to collect, appraise and synthesise qualitative evidence obtained in primary research exploring the perceptions of European university students about their civic and cultural identity. This systematic analysis sets out to identify predictors of positive self-identification with the EU and its institutions, focusing on the impact that different educational interventions have had on the attitudes and perceptions expressed by university students, and the importance of foreign language learning in the results obtained. The authors report their assessment of quality of the findings in a Cochrane-style qualitative evidence synthesis (QES), based on the GRADE-CERQual (Confidence in Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative research) method. The 12 informed findings described in this study support decision-making in future education policy formulation.
Abstract by the authors: Transformation processes at both the political and societal level are decisive factors for the future integration process of the European Union. Among the member states, highly variable causes for change are evident and particularly the inclusion-exclusion cleavage stands out. In addition, the pan-European crises of recent years have proved to be catalysts for the transformation of European societies and party systems, which is also being driven forward by new communication structures. Although the European elections themselves did not turn out to be an “earthquake” for the European integration process, they do make it more difficult to find a majority and form a government. The campaign themes that shaped the 2019 European elections have proved to be diverse. Environmental and climate policy does not count among the crucial issues for the elections across Europe.
Abstract by the author: Constitutional pluralism is a theory for the post-sovereign European state. This only makes sense historically, emerging out of postwar European reconstruction through the repression of popular sovereignty and restraining of democracy, including through the project of European integration. It became unsettled at Maastricht and evolved from a series of irritants into a full-blown crisis in the recent decade, with sovereignty claims returning both from the bottom-up and the top-down, to the extent that we can legitimately ask whether we are now moving ‘beyond the post-sovereign state’? Constitutional pluralist literature fails to capture this in that evades material issues of democracy and political economy.
Abstract by the author: This article starts with three commonplace judgements on the European Union – its success in healing the wounds of war, its failure to win democratic engagement and its vulnerability now to the seeds of disintegration. Setting these against the background of the High Middle Ages, and the original making of Europe, the article argues that each of these judgements is overly simplistic and for reasons that are closely interconnected. They are, moreover, the ‘high politics’ of European integration, expressing the concerns of political elites. Against these, the article proposes a rather different agenda, in relation to the following: social and economic justice; the turmoil, dislocation and hurt that European integration produces; the critical questioning of political elites; and the creative diversity of the Union. These are the ‘hot politics’ that matter to ordinary citizens.
Abstract by the author: The European Union – including its precursors, the European Communities – has had many ups and downs since the beginning of institutionalized integration, in the 1950s. Yet the state of the EU today seems exceptionally grave. Debates about the future of European integration are as old as the EU itself. They are particularly prevalent at times of perceived crisis. The current debate takes place at a time of undoubted crisis, even polycrisis. This article discusses the course and contours of the current debate, by looking, first, at the global context in which the debate is taking place; second, at the EU context; and, third, at the contributions to, and overall significance of, the debate so far.
Abstract by the author: Debate on the future of the European Union (EU) never abates because the Union is a polity characterized by considerable change in its internal and external environment. Scenarios are an important tool in mapping possible futures for the Union as they bring underlying trends into focus. Four scenarios on the future of the EU are presented: disintegration, piecemeal adjustment, functional federalism, and a United States of Europe. The political and policy battle concerning the future of the Union is between scenario piecemeal adjustment, the dominant response to the crisis and to events on Europe’s borders, and functional federalism, defined as more integration but in defined fields. Piecemeal adjustment represents a Union that muddles through, incremental reform, whereas functional federalism represents a Union that garners sufficient political capacity to be more strategic in particular functional areas. Systemic disintegration is regarded as unlikely, but partial disintegration may occur because of the exit of the United Kingdom, challenges to a number of EU regimes, and the threats to the Union’s normative order from some member states. A united states of Europe, is highly unlikely as the member states are not in favor of transforming the Union into a state-like federation. The degree of contestation about the future of the EU precludes a transformation of the system at this juncture. Three intervening factors will have a major impact on the future of the EU: the profound changes in the global environment, turbulent politics in the member states, and the Franco-German relationship as a source of leadership in the Union.
Abstract by the author: This article discusses the future of Europe as one of differentiated integration. It argues that this future takes the form of member-states’ overlapping participation in the EU’s many policy communities, making for a soft-core Europe, as an alternative option to the hard-core around the Eurozone. The article contends that this multi-clustered Europe is the only feasible future, given the challenges facing the EU from its many crises, its problems of governance, and the difficulties of decision-making against a background of increasing politicization. But such differentiation is not without its problems, given EU decision-rules, the interconnectedness of policy arenas that can spell problems of spillover, and the need for deeper integration in some policy areas (e.g., migration) while others may benefit from less or more highly differentiated integration (e.g., Eurozone). Institutional reforms would also be necessary to ensure a positive future of differentiated integration: While the EU would continue to require a single set of institutions, it would need modified decision-rules to allow for more (and less) differentiation depending upon the area.
Résumé : Fin 2019, année du renouvellement de la composition des principales institutions européennes, a été acté le principe de la tenue d’une Conférence sur l’avenir de l’Europe, qui devrait commencer en 2020 et durer deux ans. Cette conférence — qui doit être organisée par le Parlement, le Conseil et la Commission européenne — fait partie des principaux engagements pris par la présidente de la Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, et vise à renforcer le processus démocratique européen puisqu’elle est censée impliquer un échantillon représentatif de la société et donner ainsi aux citoyens européens la possibilité de contribuer à la réforme de l’Union européenne. Que peut-on en attendre ? Sur quels sujets majeurs les discussions devraient-elles porter ? Comment les pays membres peuvent-ils faire évoluer le fonctionnement de l’Union post-Brexit ? Jean-François Drevet défriche ici les chantiers sur lesquels la Conférence sur l’avenir de l’Europe pourrait travailler dans les deux ans qui viennent. S.D.
Abstract by the author: The author, member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament (2009-2010, and since 2014) sets off from the recent European recovery after the years of tiredness gone through difficult breaches (North-South, East-West), exploited by powerful anti-European forces, and by diverse national contradictions. For the first time in that "success story" that has been the European process of construction and integration, the logic of taking advantage of the crisis so as to go forwards, was failing because the European narrative and the spirit of unity in the peace and in the progress that has always animated Europe, have been quite absent. Crises are not an insuperable obstacle for Europe, which precisely goes forwards setting out from the solutions found to them. As Monet used to say, "Europe is forged in the crises". They are described by the author, and likewise the context and the signs of response, and he describes five pillars for the future of Europe in the governance of the economic policy, in the social pillar, in the solution of the migratory crisis, in the integration of the European security and defense, and in the reinforcement of the interior market in order to attain a competitive economy. The crisis created by the brexit for the process of European construction, is used as a fulcrum to explain the European federal idea, after which the author describes and defends a new European narrative.
Abstract by the authors: Differentiation is becoming an increasingly salient feature of European integration. The multifaceted European crisis and the subsequent Brexit vote (paving the way for a ground‐breaking case of differentiated disintegration) have led scholars and practitioners to think about the consequences of differentiated integration. This article draws on five empirical models of differentiation experienced by countries both inside and outside the EU: the European economic area model, the Danish model of (quasi‐)permanent differentiation, the Swedish model of de facto differentiation, the instrumental model and the Brexit process of differentiation. It addresses the different risks and opportunities that each of these models entail. The article also introduces the contributions to this symposium, which aims at paving the way for future research on the consequences of differentiation in light of Brexit.
Abstract by the authors: In the present context of intensifying competition between the major trading economies and potentially game-changing technological developments, the European Union is generally seen as the weaker party. Lacking the ‘hard power’ derived from military capabilities, it has laid claim to a ‘soft power’ of normative infl uence externally, yet even that is only partially utilised. Nor has Europe been able to exercise the power to coerce – ‘sharp power’ –commensurate with its economic weight as a trading bloc equivalent in size and reach to the US or China, its most prominent global competitors. How can Europe strengthen its position, and in what fields? Through a scenario exercise, we develop eight policy proposals aimed at countering Europe´s vulnerabilities and enabling it to assert its sharp and soft power more effectively. Specifically, we consider the feasibility, means and scope for their realisation. Together, they provide a transformative agenda for the EU’s position in the world.
Abstract by the author: Europe has seen an alarming increase of populist parties throughout the last two decades. The European debt crisis has only added to their strength and support, and Eurosceptic attitudes have only increased, as exemplified by the recent Brexit vote. However, this exploratory paper will argue that the crisis to which populism has given rise allows the EU to critically reflect on itself and fix many of the fatal flaws that the increase in populist support has pointed out. It will be argued that the EU needs to create a strong civic society to help mend its democratic deficit. Finally, it will be argued that by incorporating particular elements of populist thought and critique (i.e., democratization and fairer economic policies), that is, implanting an “alter-europeanization,” that the ugly side of populism (its xenophobia and racism) will begin to lose support within European countries.
Abstract by the author: This study finds that the longer a country has been part of the EU, the more closely its values approximate those of the EU founding countries, which in turn are the most homogenous. Initial cultural distance to the founders' average values appears irrelevant to acquiring membership or candidacy status. However, new member states experienced substantial cultural convergence with old member states after 1992, as did current candidates between 2001 and 2008. Since 1992, nations not participating in the integration process have diverged substantially from EU members, essentially leading to cultural polarisation in Europe. The findings are independent of (changes in) economic disparities and suggest the importance of cultural diffusion as one of the fundamental mechanisms of cultural change. This empirical study contributes to the literature on European integration, political and sociological theories of globalisation, and cross‐cultural theories of societal value change.
Abstract by the auhtor: The discussion on the future of Europe has been mainly focused on policy regimes and not (also) on governance models for managing them. An economistic bias has largely affected the proposals on the future of Europe advanced by EU and national leaders. The article brings the governance question back to the debate. Using a deductive approach, it identifies four governance models, and their connected policy implications, epitomizing different interpretations of the EU and its future. Two models are derived from the interpretation of the EU as regional organization and the other two from the interpretation of the EU as a federation in the making. Through the four governance models, the article aims to structure the discussion on the future organization of Europe on more solid, logically and empirically, bases.
Abstract by the authors: Although most of the first-time voters and young citizens of the European Union (EU) share a positive attitude towards the EU, less than 30 percent cast their votes in the European elections of 2014. Against this backdrop, this year’s European election campaigns particularly focused on young people aged 15 to 24. In that sense, the youth participation project #EngagEU aimed at motivating young people to vote in the European elections 2019 and at empowering them to formulate concrete political demands. Summarised in the manifesto “Young Ideas for the Future of Europe”, their ideas were presented to the public as well as to Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on 30 April 2019 at the #1stYoung Citizens’Convention organised by the Institut für Europäische Politik and discussed with young candidates for the European elections. Technology-based solutions to combat climate change and an independent monitoring capacity for EU values and democratic principles are concrete demands that political decision-makers might take up in the aftermath of the European elections.
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