Introduction: Explaining the EU Political System PART I: GOVERNMENT Executive Politics Legislative Politics Judicial Politics PART II: POLITICS Public Opinion Democracy, Parties and Elections Interest Representation PART III: POLICY-MAKING Regulation of the Single Market Expenditure Policies Economic and Monetary Union Citizen Freedom and Security Policies Foreign Policies Conclusions: Rethinking the European Union Appendix: Decision-making Procedures of the European Union Bibliography

The political system of European Union

This article argues that current widespread characterisations of EU governance as multi-level and networked overlook the emergent architecture of the EU's public rule making. In this architecture, framework goals (such as full employment, social inclusion, 'good water status', a unified energy grid) and measures for gauging their achievement are established by joint action of the Member States and EU institutions. Lower-level units (such as national ministries or regulatory authorities and the actors with whom they collaborate) are given the freedom to advance these ends as they see fit. But in return for this autonomy, they must report regularly on their performance and participate in a peer review in which their results are compared with those pursuing other means to the same general ends. Finally, the framework goals, performance measures, and decision-making procedures themselves are periodically revised by the actors, including new participants whose views come to be seen as indispensable to full and fair deliberation. Although this architecture cannot be read off from either Treaty provisions or textbook accounts of the formal competences of EU institutions, the article traces its emergence and diffusion across a wide range of policy domains, including telecommunications, energy, drug authorisation, occupational health and safety, employment promotion, social inclusion, pensions, health care, environmental protection, food safety, maritime safety, financial services, competition policy, state aid, anti-discrimination policy and fundamental rights.

http://www2.law.columbia.edu/sabel/papers/learning%20from%20difference%20ELJ%202008.pdf

Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the EU

Taking economic co-ordination in EMU as a starting point, this article explores the development of the open method of co-ordination, addressing whether it is a new form of governance from two related perspectives. First, to what extent can the method be effectively applied outside the scope of economic policy? Second, will it lead to policy transfer to the EU and hence act only as a transitional mode of governance? Identified at the Lisbon European Council, the method codified practices such as benchmarking, target-setting and peer review developed in the Luxembourg, Cardiff and Cologne processes. The method offers a new approach to governance of the EU as a heterarchical, decentred and dynamic process. It supports and radicalizes the principle of subsidiarity; offers an alternative to the treaty rules on enhanced co-operation; and addresses some of the legitimacy issues inherent in the EU. In EMU, the method arose out of a specific policy framework with a common monetary policy complemented by the coordination of national economic policies. The recent recommendation issued against Ireland is the first example of the operation of the method in EMU and shows how debate can be stimulated and how different and arguably equally valid perspectives defended. The particular experience of EMU with a sound money, sound finance paradigm, a long history of project-building by key elites and the central role of the European Council suggest similar conditions are required for the effective application of the method in other policy spheres. The context within which the method has operated to date is contingent and could change either over time or between policy fields. If so, the very openness of the method may serve to reconfigure the boundaries of competence between the Member States and the Union, after all.

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The open method as a new mode of governance: the case of soft economic policy co-ordination

What implications do emerging spaces, concepts and identities of security have for the practice of citizenship? This article examines security and citizenship in the UK. As its focus it takes a recent White Paper published by the British government called Secure Borders, Safe Haven (2002). Two arguments are developed. First, it is argued that with this document, and the reforms it proposes for immigration, asylum and citizenship in the UK, we are in the presence of ‘domopolitics’. Whereas political economy is descended from the will to govern the state as a household, domopolitics aspires to govern the state like a home. Consequently, domopolitics and liberal political economy exist in tension with one another. Second, we need new forms of comparison if we are to adequately map domopolitics. To this end, the article compares the domopolitics of the homeland and similar securitizations not with the interstate security games of the Cold War, but with the governmentality of social security.

Secure borders, safe haven, domopolitics

This article analyses the development of three EU migration databases and their significance for the internal control of irregular migrants. Because bor- ders and immigration policy alone cannot stop irregular migration, many govern- ments turn to internal migration control on settled irregular migrants. Surveillance of this group is aimed at their exclusion from key societal institutions, discourag- ing their stay and ultimately, the deportation of apprehended irregular migrants. These are policies in which identification of irregular migrants is crucial. In this age, registration and identification mean computerized and networked data- bases. The member states of the EU are currently developing a network of data- bases in the field of (irregular) immigration. The Schengen Information System (II), the Eurodac database and the Visa Information System are vast databases, often including biometric data, aimed at controlling migration flows and identi- fying and sorting legal and irregular migrants. These systems are able to 're-identify' parts of the population of irregular migrants on the basis of digital traces of their migration history. It is argued that the digital infrastructure that is now growing past its infancy is developing into a formidable tool for the surveillance of irreg- ular migrants in Europe.

The New Digital Borders of Europe: EU Databases and the Surveillance of Irregular Migrants

The rapid development of justice and home affairs into a major field of EU policy-making since the beginning of the 1990s can be explained by a combination of specific `laboratories' which helped pave the way ? and `driving factors? which triggered development and expansion. Whereas the Council of Europe, Trevi and Schengen have served as effective laboratories, new or increasing transnational challenges to internal security, Member States' interests in a `Europeanization' of certain national problems and the dynamic of its own generated by the launching of the `area of freedom, security and justice? as a major political project have all acted as major driving forces. Yet the rapid development has also had its price in terms of deficits in parliamentary and judicial control, complexity and fragmentation, an uneven development of the main justice and home affairs policy areas and a tendency towards restriction and exclusion.

The Dynamics of Justice and Home Affairs: Laboratories, Driving Factors and Costs

The subject of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) within the European Union only developed during the early 1990s and has consequently been a relatively neglected area of study. This however is no longer the case as the EU has been expanding its activities in JHA matters to the point where they have become some of the most important areas of responsibility for the Union. The EU is engaged in the process of constructing an internal security regime that encapsulates police cooperation, mutual assistance in matters of civil and criminal law and the creation of a judicial network. This EU approach to internal security policy has come about in response to perceptions of threat. With the dismantling of Europe's internal borders and the rise of organized crime and illegal immigration, the EU has been working to develop policies to counter these challenges. The European Union and Internal Security investigates the development of these security challenges and the measures by which the EU seeks to combat them. With the imminent enlargement of the EU to central and eastern Europe, these security challenges are expected to grow.

Jorg Monar

Papers

The Dynamics of Justice and Home Affairs: Laboratories, Driving Factors and Costs

The European Union and Internal Security: Guardian of the People?

Keynote Article: 11 September and the Challenge of Global Terrorism to the EU as a Security Actor

Keynote Article: 11 September and the Challenge of Global Terrorism to the EU as a Security Actor

The rejection of the EU-US SWIFT interim agreement by the European Parliament: a historic vote and its implications