Transnational cooperation: a network analysis of town twinning in the Baltic Sea region

The patterns of cooperation between regions and urban spaces are no longer influenced, to the same extent, by national borders. Political integrative events changed the extent of transborder urban cooperation in the Baltic borderlands, a region that has undergone extensive changes. A social network analysis of cooperative ties in the form of town twinning indicates that the end of the Cold War strongly changed the network of town twinning in this region, whereas the effect of the various EU enlargement rounds seems to be more nuanced.     

Does the UK Have Influence in the EU Legislative Process?

The UK has influenced some major EU policies, such as the creation of the single market and enlargement. But how influential are the UK government and British MEPs in the day‐to‐day EU legislative process? To answer this question, this article analyses recent data from the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament. The evidence is mixed. In the Council, in recent years the UK government has been outvoted more often than any other EU government, yet UK officials remain well connected ‘behind the scenes’. In the European Parliament, British MEPs are now more likely to be on the losing side than are the MEPs of any other member state, yet British MEPs still win key committee chairs and rapporteurships. The evidence suggests that if the UK votes to remain in the EU, Britain's political elites will need to re‐engage with Brussels politics if the UK is to avoid becoming further marginalised from mainstream EU politics.     

Alternatives to EU Membership and the Rational Imagination

The domestic scenario following a Brexit vote is likely to be characterised by high stakes, uncertainty and fissile political debate. No off‐the‐peg arrangement touted for Brexit—be it Norwegian, Swiss, Turkish or Canadian—was designed to engage with such a context. Nor does it seem wise to rush to medium‐term commitments which might pre‐empt democratic politics and wise choices. Far more important will be the legitimacy of any institutional settlement governing this arrangement, which will provide the context for its revision and development and the space for democratic reflection over how these policies are to be governed. It will be suggested that here there is much insight to be gained from looking at regional arrangements beyond the EU.     

EU Cohesion Policy Implementation and Administrative Capacities: Insights from Italian Regions

In this article we explain Italy’s partial persisting difficulties in EU cohesion policy implementation by focusing on one specific variable: regional administrative capacity. In line with research findings based on the national level (Tosun, 2014 Tosun, J. (2014), Absorption of regional funds. A comparative analysis, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol.52, No.2, pp.371–387. doi: 10.1111/jcms.12088[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), our working hypothesis is that administrative capacity is the most important explanatory factor of EU cohesion policy implementation also at the regional level. In the article, by adopting a ‘most similar research cases’ design approach, we test the hypothesis with reference to two Italian regions: Campania and Puglia. In addition, we seek to adequately define the concept of ‘administrative capacity’ and operationalize it properly. In the concluding section, we consider the competitive advantage of our definition and operationalization of the notion of administrative capacity also with reference to other policy sectors beyond cohesion policy.     

Encounters with Europe in an Era of Domestic and International Turmoil: Is Turkey a De-Europeanising Candidate Country?

Abstract

This article provides a novel conceptual framework to understand the impact of the European Union on Turkish politics and policies in the aftermath of the opening of accession negotiations in 2005. It argues that the post-2005 developments in Turkey not only attest to lesser and more limited Europeanisation, but also entail a process that is increasingly gaining momentum in the country and which is referred to as ‘de-Europeanisation’.     

Explaining the Crisis of the European Migration and Asylum Regime

Since 2013, the European migration and asylum regime has entered a phase of crisis, which reveals the deep interdependencies between its different components (including intra-EU mobility) and the unbalanced nature of its normative foundations. This original structural fragility had not fundamentally compromised the overall functioning of the regime until two major exogenous factors (the economic crisis, with its asymmetrical impact on the eurozone, and the wave of political instability and conflicts on the southern shore of the Mediterranean) brought its intrinsic limits to the point of rupture. The ongoing, highly contentious process of reform of the European migration and asylum regime is an unprecedented and crucially important test of the capacity of one the European Union’s key sectors to evolve under pressure and to adapt to a rapidly and deeply changing geopolitical, economic and demographic environment.     

Fixing Financial Plumbing: Tax,Leaks and Base Erosion and Profit Shifting in Europe

Aggressive tax planning by multinational enterprises (MNEs) costs EU member states between €50-70 billion and €150-190 billion per annum through base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). This tax gap has been blamed on ‘unethical’ companies acting legally, but inappropriately. Action to curtail this behaviour has been made possible by the confluence of two powerful movements: a popular articulation of tax morality as it relates to MNEs and the high issue salience reached as a consequence of the financial crisis and austerity in Europe, an emerging discourse around tax morality, and the efforts of prominent whistleblowers. As a result, domestic governments have removed their ‘soft’ veto and facilitated supranational bodies in innovating on corporate taxation, helping to rebalance the technical and structural superiority of MNEs in the international tax system.     

Securitising Migration: The European Union in the Context of the Post-2011 Arab Upheavals

The migration-security nexus, already at the heart of EU policymaking before the 2011 Arab uprisings, became acute after the forced displacements from Syria and the deterrence measures introduced. The internalisation by broader publics of “security knowledge” regarding migration contributed to the securitisation move. However, the construction of migration into a security-laden notion goes beyond both the adoption of deterrence measures and the straightforward association of migration with state as well as societal (in)security. Through the lens of its cooperative tools with its southern neighbours, the EU has built complex interdependencies between migration, post-2011 regional stabilisation and security. In order to read the EU’s securitised migration politics properly, the migration-security nexus must be embedded in its social, geopolitical and temporal fields. Perceptions of geopolitical threats, concurrent strains and divergences over European integration and immigration constitute an enabling terrain for the politics of securitisation.     

A test of European Union post-accession influence: comparing reactions to political instability in Romania

The positive role of the European Union (EU) in the democratization process in post-communist countries has been amply documented. The pre-accession conditionality was to a large extent the tool used to enhance adoption of norms, and implementation of policy. In this context, it is less clear what happens after countries join the EU and conditionality is no longer an option. This article seeks to provide an answer by analysing how the EU can influence democratic governance after accession of a new member state. In particular, it focuses on the reactions of EU actors in two institutional conflicts (the 2007 and 2012 presidential impeachment referendums) in Romania. The main findings indicate how EU leverage on domestic politics remains possible, though the effectiveness of involvement, monitoring and evaluation of respect for democratic principles depends on a complex interaction of international and domestic actors.     

Making sense of the EU’s response to the Arab uprisings: foreign policy practice at times of crisis

ABSTRACT

The Arab uprisings of 2011 put into question previously held understandings about the stability of authoritarian regimes in North Africa as well as the European Union’s (EU’s) relations with countries in its southern neighbourhood. Despite early calls on behalf of the EU to change its policies, the Union’s responses in the early stages seemed mostly characterised by continuity. This article claims that certain dispositions and background knowledge developed over several decades vis-à-vis EU’s Mediterranean policies served as a baseline from which EU officials and diplomats acted. Drawing on insights from practice approaches, the article argues that the practical understandings on what the EU can (and cannot) do vis-à-vis partner countries in North Africa create a kind of power politics of practical dispositions. The article focuses on the European Neighbourhood Policy - the EU’s flagship initiative - and builds on a unique set of data that combine policy documents and interviews with about 30 EU officials and national diplomats from before and after the Arab uprisings. In this way, it illustrates how practice relates to change in that even though the EU’s responses drew on an established repertoire of practice, enacting it in a new context opened up new possibilities for action.